REMINISCENCES.
“It’s the color that tells”—“Jes hear dem niggers read”—Candle and half-bushel—“Age up country,” &c.—Sad words making glad—“Frosty arms.”
After the full accounts you have been giving your readers of late of the Commencement Exercises, with their attendant essays and orations, brief reminiscences of a few years ago, when the Freedmen knew little of Greek and Latin, but were intent upon “blue-back” spellers and the easy parts of the Bible, may not come amiss.
It happened once that in a dimly-lighted school-house, about nine o’clock at night, filled with men and women of various hue, from white through brown to black, there was one class of nine young men spelling words of three syllables. They were very earnest, and in real old-fashioned way were going “up and down” in the class. At the head stood Joseph, very black; then three nearly as dark, followed by four light ones, with the very darkest of the whole class at the foot. All went well till the upper light one missed and the word passed down; Joseph, seeing it likely to pass from the light ones to the very dark face at the foot, in excitement and joy burst forth with, “Spell it, Dave, and cut up here; it’s the color that tells.” Dave spelt it, and the color did tell.
One man who made his appearance in night-school about the middle of the winter, I shall never forget. His entrance was quite overpowering—a big man, big cane, big hat, and a big shawl thrown over his shoulder, Arab style. I happened to be at leisure, so I went at once to ask him if he intended coming regularly to school. Saying that he did, my next question was, “What’s your name?” “I’m Lucy’s husband, over there.” As I didn’t know Lucy, I was not much the wiser, and had to repeat the question with the emphasis on the your. Wishing to classify him, I asked, “What book do you read in?” “The Bible mostly, ma’am.” “Can you read in the First Reader?” “Yes, first, second, third, fourth and all the other elementary books.” Thinking I might gain some information where to assign him, I looked at the books he had brought with him. There were four: a large family Bible; another book of some size, but very fine print, on “Presbyterian Ordination Refuted;” a “Child’s Scripture Question Book,” and a small geography.
But if the night-schools were amusing, the afternoon schools for the women were not less so. Old women and young women, many of them in fantastic attire, with hats, caps and dresses that would have been considered prizes by an antiquary; the dark faces peering from under the white or speckled turban; old women wiping their spectacles, vainly endeavoring to get “more light” on the subject, while picking away at the letters in some old Primer, as if they were to be transferred bodily to the head. Aunt Chloe Fisher must have been seventy-five or eighty years old, but still she was bright and original. She came into school one afternoon very anxious to learn to read “de way, de troof, and de life.” Seeing some women in another part of the room reading, she exclaimed, “Jes hear dem niggers read! If dis nig can’t read, too, won’t she fight ’em?” and then she vigorously applied her finger to the pages of the Gospel of John which she had with her, finding the words Lord and God, which were about all she knew. She believed in both faith and works, for she used to pray most earnestly that God would help her know the words, and then get up in the middle of the night and light a pine knot to see if she had a word right. Old Aunt Chloe was always happy. I never saw her otherwise but once, and then she was greatly troubled for fear she should lose her place in the grave-yard. One special place she had chosen, and young people were dying so fast she was afraid she should not die soon enough to lie there. She would get happy over her wash-tub or anywhere else, and her hands and her feet would keep time with some negro hymn in a most amusing manner.
One old Aunty was reading the fifth chapter of Matthew, when she came to a passage, which she read thus; “Neither—do—men—light—a—half-bushel—and—put—it—under—a—candle-stick.” On being stopped and told to look again, pointing with her finger all along the lines of the page, with a look of half despair she said, “Bress you, honey, I can’t find either candle or half-bushel now.” Those simple words were quite a sermon for me, and I’ve thought of them many a time since. Are not we, as Christians, in danger of losing our candles? Our good Aunty’s candle was soon found for her; but will ours, once lost, be as easily recovered?
In those days, even in the day-schools, there were many difficulties that could hardly be encountered now. I remember hearing one teacher say that it was almost impossible to get the ages of her scholars. They would say, “My age is up country;” or “Ole missis has my age in the Bible, and she’s gone away.” The trick of giving one name to one teacher and another to the next was practiced. On giving a second name once, one little fellow was brought up with, “Why, I thought your name was George Johnson?” “I done got tired of that name,” was his cool reply.
Perhaps the most interesting prayer-meeting that I ever attended among the Freedmen was in Alabama, where the Ku Klux outrages lasted so much longer than in other places, and where the missionaries looked to their guns and their rifles before retiring. I reached there just the evening of the weekly prayer-meeting at the school-house. ’Twas a stormy night, but with waterproofs and umbrellas we ventured. Wholly unused to bullets, I must confess there was a little trembling under one waterproof, as we wended our way along the little path through the woods, and across the one plank bridge over the Branch; but once within the building all fear vanished. The room was filled with the finest looking colored people I had ever seen. They had, many of them, been house servants in the best families in this aristocratic place. The pastor opened the meeting, and they carried it on with a liveliness that was truly refreshing. Two or three usually rose at once, with words right on their lips. This church had only been organized a little over a year, and then numbered about eighty. There had been much to dishearten all along. They had no church building, and had been striving hard to build; but no sooner would they begin to see little light through the clouds than the white people, fearing that the men with dark skins might acquire too great a hold on this world’s goods, would remove work from the most prosperous, and thus the clouds would gather again. Referring to this method of keeping down, one of the members once said, “No ’count niggers can rub along here well enough, but smart niggers had better look out for other quarters.” Even at that time the danger of their being obliged to disband from outside violence was hardly over, and as they told of their love for their church, one could hardly help thinking of the stories of the early Christians, when persecutions only increased their zeal. There was an undertone of sadness through the remarks of several, for they felt peculiarly uncertain as to what a day might bring forth. But one suddenly rose and changed the key. “I was sad,” he said, “when I first came in here, but your words of sadness have made me glad, for they have shown me how much we all love our church, and such love, with the love of God for us, which is even much greater, will carry us through fiery trials. I never felt as strong as I feel to-night. ’Tis true, I don’t know what may come upon us, but I do feel that the Lord will help us through.” Then he told what he hoped for the future, in such cheerful words, that as he sat down, they burst forth almost with one voice in a song of praise, and then one after another kneeled down, and in the most simple words of faith asked their Father to help His children in this their day of trouble, and I do not think there was one present who had the slightest doubt of His doing so.
Even before the Kansas fever, there were States in the North that were synonyms for all good things to the colored people. I remember a Thanksgiving Day, when a minister was addressing one of the schools, and telling the children what they had to be thankful for, that he burst forth with the question, “Is there any other country so blessed as this?” “Yes, sir,” said a little urchin before him. “Why, what one?” “Massachusetts,” was the reply.
I once heard a colored minister pray heartily for the teachers in this wise, “May God throw around this institution His frosty arms, and bear the teachers from this to another vale of tears.”
The good old days have gone; the better ones, perhaps, have come.