Instinctively my eyes closed, and I began my reply in a tone that seemed to chime in with the negro's melody.
'Falsely written for Hallelujah, a word of spiritual exultation, used in hymns; signifies, Praise God. He will set his tongue, to those pious divine strains; which may be a proper præludium to those allelujahs, he hopes eternally to sing.
"'Government of the Tongue.'"
"Hooray! That's a whopper!" he exclaimed, with enthusiasm. "What's a præ-lu-di-um?"
"I told you I hadn't got to p's yet," I returned, not without resentment.
The hymn changed suddenly; the negro in the red shirt, with the scar on his neck, turned his great oxlike eyes upon me, and the next instant his superb voice rolled, rich and deep, as the sound of an organ, from his bared black chest.
"A-settin' in de kingdom,
Y-e-s, m-y-L-a-w-d!"
"Well, you've got gumption," said Bob, the manager. "That's what I always lacked—just plain gumption, and when you ain't got it, there's nothing to take its place. I was talking to General Bolingbroke about you yesterday, Ben, and that's what I said. 'There's but one word for that boy, General, and it's gumption.'"
I accepted the tribute with a swelling heart. "What good will it do me if I can't get an education?" I demanded.
"It's that will give it to you, Ben. Why, don't you know every blessed word in the English language that begins with an a? That's more than I know—that's more, I reckon," he burst out, "than the General himself knows!"