“As Burns says,
‘I’ll cock my nose aboon them a’,’
“For I’m bound for dear New England, away from this land of rags and dirt, slatterly ways, lazy habits, flowing whiskey and tobacco, narrow brows and wide mouths, and people of all imaginable shades, from ebony to cream-color or white,” replied the gentleman. “If you like to continue studying and comparing these faces, do so; but don’t suggest it to me, for I long to be where the very air is not darkened with—‘nigger, nigger’ and my ears shall rest from the sound of their uncouth voices.”
“Their voices are expressive. You should call out the smooth tones.”
“But I can’t always. I’m sure I can’t forget the night of our arrival at Jacksonville,” he continued, “Thirty, weren’t there fifty black men standing near that train, all barking their loudest for passengers? Yes, you may reprove me, I know these don’t sound like the words of an abolitionist. But I am one, I insist; but if upon oath describing that sound that greeted our arrival in that city, I must say the voices of ‘thirty yelping curs;’ and to pass through among them, with their grabbing for one’s baggage, and those frightful sounds in one’s ears, and the knowledge of the unsettled state of the country—the antagonism between the races—I’d as lief—well, I don’t know what I wouldn’t choose!”
“Yes, but if, when that big-mouthed, two-fisted fellow grabbed your satchel, you, instead of striking him with your cane and umbrella, had looked kindly into his great-rolling eyes, and mildly said you preferred to walk and carry it yourself, I think he would have dropped it as quickly, and more quietly, and been more likely to remember you kindly. I remember quite similar scenes in the North, with Irish hackmen. But we have outgrown them; and so will the South, and the negroes out-grow these scenes; and for me, the more I see these colored faces, the more that is intelligent and agreeable I see in them.”
Elly’s face had been singularly bright and cheerful before over-hearing this colloquy; but then a change came, and presently he leaned out of the window, gazing at a large dilapidated mansion (it could not worthily be called a ruin,) which stood some rods from the railroad.
Many a day he had played about the door of a poor little cabin in its rear, or ran at the bidding of his young mistress as she walked in a small grove the train was just then entering; or had held the bridles for the gentlemen mounting at the door of “the great house,” watching well their movements, least, as is the habit of some men to cut their dogs with their whips and laugh at their yelps and leaps, they should thus enjoy an exhibition of his agility.
Under that great tree, in the edge of yonder cornfield, his mother writhed under the lash, for complaining that her task was too heavy; and obliged to witness the rising of the great welts upon her naked back, his father had snatched the instrument of torture from the hand that wielded it, and on an attempt being made to dispossess him of it, had dealt the overseer a smart blow across the back of his hand.
Then had followed a gathering of “the hands” from that and neighboring plantations, to witness the “maintenance of discipline,” and Elly’s father—a valuable specimen of plantation stock—was made, under the cat o’ nine tails, a physical wreck.