Oh, my eyes are getting blinded, and I cannot see my way;
Hark! There’s somebody knocking at the door.
I hear the angels calling, and I see my Nellie Gray,
Farewell to my old Kentucky shore!
Leaving one house to go to another, the negroes always broke into some rollicking plantation melody, singing it on the way, so that their pilgrimage was a pilgrimage of song. At the end of the town, remote from all the negro settlements, was the home of the sheriff, Mr. John Flournoy, so that the negroes came to his residence last.
They marched melodiously into his yard, spread out over the lawn, taking care to trample down none of the flowers and shrubs, and their mighty voices reverberated through the valleys and from the hilltops, and could literally be heard for miles.
Mr. John Flournoy and his gracious wife stood upon the portico, sometimes smiling, sometimes with serious faces and moist eyes, as they listened to the old melodies which had colored the very fiber of their souls.
Finally a hush fell upon the crowd, and Mr. Flournoy thought the time for his speech had come. But not so.
Vinegar Atts stepped forward within a few feet of the porch steps, removed his battered slouch hat, and began:
“Marse John, all us niggers is been singing to youall white folks ever sense we warn’t more’n hawn-high to a billy-goat. We remembers all dem happy Chris’mus times of yuther years, an’ we wish we could keep up dis music eve’y Chris’mus till ole Gabriel blows his hawn. But de time is done come when us muss tell you good-by, an’ you won’t never hear our singin’ no more!”
“Lawd hab mussy!” a chorus of men’s voices sounded like a prayer.
“You is done been a good frien’ to all us po’ niggers, Marse John,” Vinegar went on earnestly. “We hates to go away an’ leave you——”
The negroes had begun to “weave,” and a moaning sound issued from every throat like a great organ tone, and the light of the full moon casting the shadows of the trees upon the upturned faces of the men, made an effect funereal and impressive indeed.