The Wood Fire in No. 3

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"Woods, you talk like a two-cent demagogue," broke out Boggs. "If you and Lonnegan don't give up Murray Hill life you'll be worse than Mr. Murphy's two dudes. There is no such thing as democracy in our country. You couldn't find it with a microscope. As soon as a man gets one hundred cents together and has got them hived away safely in a savings bank he becomes a capitalist. The next generation breeds aristocrats. The son of the man who waits behind Lonnegan's chair at one of the swell affairs uptown, if he has his way, will be Minister to England, and wear knee-breeches at the Queen's receptions. Even the negroes are climbing; some of them even now are putting on more airs than a Harlem goat with a hoopskirt. When they get on top there won't be anything left of the white man. They are beginning in that way now down South. Now you," turning to his friend Murphy, "have told us a story which illustrates a phase of English life in which the middle classes stand in awe of the higher ones. Now listen to one of mine, which illustrates a phase of American life, and quite the reverse of yours. I'll tell it to you just as Major Yancey told it to me, and I'll give you, as near as I can, his tones of voice. Wonderfully pathetic, that Southern dialect; it certainly was to me the day I heard him tell it. This Yancey was a fraud, so far as being a representative Virginia gentleman; didn't get within a thousand miles of the real thing; but that didn't rob his story of a certain meaning."

Here Boggs rose to his feet. "I'll have to get up," he said, "for this is one of the stories I can't tell sitting down." Nobody ever heard Boggs tell any story sitting down. The restless little fellow was generally on his plump legs during most of his deliveries.

"I had seen Yancey in the hotel corridor when I came in, and had stubbed my toe over his outstretched legs—out like a pair of skids on the tail of a dray; had apologized to the legs; had been apologized to most effusively in return, with the result that a few minutes later I found him at my elbow at the bar, where, after some protestations on his part, he concluded to accept my very 'co-tious' invitation, and 'take somethin'.'

"'I am sorry I haven't a ke-ard, suh. My name is Yancey, suh—Thomas Morton Yancey, of Green Briar County, Virginia. You don't know that po'tion of my State, suh. It's God's own country. Great changes have taken place, suh—not only in our section of the State, but in our people. I myself am not what I appear, suh, as you shall learn later. The old rulin' classes are goin' to the wall; it is the po' white trash and the negroes, suh, that are comin' to the front. Pretty soon we shall have to ask their permission to live on the earth. Now, to give you an idea, suh, of what these changes mean, and how stealthily they are creepin' in among us, I want to tell you, suh, somethin' connected with my own life, for ev'ry word of which I can vouch. Thank you, I will take a drop of bitters in mine,' and he held his glass out to the barkeeper. 'I don't want to detain you, suh, and I don't want to bore you, but it's the first time for some months that I have had the pleasure of meetin' a Northern gentleman, and I feel it my duty, suh, to give you somethin' of the inside history of the South, and to let you know, suh, what we Southern people suffered immediately after the war, and are still sufferin'.

"'As for myself, suh, I came out penniless, my estates practically confiscated, owin' to some very peremptory proceedin's which took place immediately after the surrender. I, of course, suh, like many other gentlemen of my standin', found it necessary to go to work, the first stroke of work that any of my blood, suh, had ever done since my ancestors settled that po'tion of the State, suh. A crisis, suh, had arrived in my life, and I proposed to meet it. Question was, what could I do? I hadn't studied law and so I could not be a lawyer, and I hadn't taken any course in medicine and so I couldn't be a doctor; and I want to tell you, suh, that the politics of my State were not runnin' in a groove by which I could be elected to any public office. After lookin' over the ground I decided to open a livery stable. Don't start, suh. I know it will shock you when I tell you that a Yancey had fallen so low, but you must know, suh, that my wife hadn't had a new dress in fo' years and my children were pretty nigh barefoot. Well, suh, a circus company had passed through our way and left two spavined horses in Judge Caldwell's lot and a bo'rd bill of fo' dollars and ninety-two cents unpaid. I took my note for a hundred dollars and Judge Caldwell endorsed it, and I sold it for the amount of the bo'rd bill, and I got the two horses. Then I made another note for a similar amount and secured it by a mortgage on the horses, and got a fo'seated wagon and two sets of second-hand harness. Then I put a sign over my barn do'—"Thomas Martin Yancey, Livery & Sale Stable."

"'About a week after I had started Colonel Moseley's black Sam—free then, of co'se, suh—come down to my place and said, "Major Yancey, there's goin' to be a ball over to Barboursville——"

"'"Is there, Sam?" I said. "You niggers seem to be gettin' up in the world."

"'"Yes," he said, "and I want you to hook yo' rig and take eight of us——"

"'"What! you infernal scoundrel! You come to me and ask me to——"

"'"Now, don't get het up, Major! Eight niggers at fifty cents apiece is fo' dollars."