“Now, Deacon, if yo’ve been setting up anything agin such men as Jesse and Den, and Penny Loo, I just hope yo’ll git chawed up by yo’re own Jacks?” said this Southern aristocratic female Christian, in great ire.
“No danger o’ Texas Jack’s hurting me. He won’t chaw his own arms,” shouted the Deacon, triumphantly. “I’m fo’ defending the State and the white man’s rights; South Car’linans shall rule South Car’lina,” and he reeled about the room, swinging his limp arms, and shouting, “Hurrah for South Car’lina! Hurrah for the old Pal-met-to State!”
“Come, come father,” said his son, “let me help you to bed. You talk like a crazy man.” With the assistance of Mrs. A., the Deacon was soon where his lips were safely guarded by slumber.
“It is a pity you hadn’t let father join the Good Templers with me, but may be he wouldn’t ha’ stuck to the pledge,” said the boy, sadly, as he bade his mother good night.
Near eleven o’clock the next morning, with nerves unstrung, head sore, and stomach disordered, and altogether in an irritable condition of mind and body, Deacon Atwood sauntered out into one of his mother’s fields, where a large mulatto man was mending a somewhat dilapidated rail-fence. The hands of the farmer, were keeping time to a succession of old plantation “spirituals” which rolled from his capacious chest like the sound of a trumpet.
“O, believer, go ring that be—l—l.”
| * | * | * | * | * |
“Don’t you think I’m gwoine to ring that beautiful bel—l—l?”
| * | * | * | * | * |
“This winter’ll soon be ovah.”