A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE CAMELIA.
At early dawn in the language of the excited servant, "Dere is sich a flustration agwine on outen old misses flower gyarden as I never seed in my born days."
With this exclamation her young mistress was aroused from her slumber by the old negro as she knocked violently at the door of her bed chamber in a state of great perturbation.
"Fur de land sake! Miss Alice if yu wants to see a sho nuff harricane run outen here as peart as yer ken. De stracted niggers big und leetle has finely tuck de plantashun. Oh my sole, de heabens and de yearth has cum togedder!"
Alice rushed to the window and was horrified at the sight before her. She heard a jargon of boisterous defiant noises graduated from inarticulate sounds to higher and varying keys with occasional snatches of a disgusting song in falsetto.
"We de bosses is er gwine to be,
Kase ole Lincum dun set us free,
In de year of Jubilo."
She saw to her disgust and mortification a score or two of negro children romping like cattle through her sainted mother's flower garden. They were plucking the dahlias and roses and other varieties of flowers with ruthless hands, and blowing their petals hither and thither with their vile breath into the air. Such desecration was never dreamed of by Alice and she spoke angrily to the disgusting little vagrants and attempted to drive them from the premises.
"Yer jes shet yer ole mouf, dats what, ole po white trash. Us yung uns haint eben er studdin you. Is us Maria?"
"Dat us aint," pertly responded Maria. "Yers ole po white trash, dats what my farder and my mudder ses you is, and us cullud ladies haint ergwine to mess wid you nary bit und grane. Us is agwine to pull all dese ole flowers und fling em on de groun, und us aint er skert of nary ole skeer-crow lak yer is nudder."
And with these sundry and divers exclamations, Maria and Susan joined hands and danced a break-down upon the flower beds, while the other negro children big and little clapped hands and sang in shrill piping notes another stanza of the song.