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I suppose you don't know Maria? You ought to. She was a great comfort to me while I was at Hampton. Did I love her? Ah, most truly! I have sat on the hotel porch and watched Maria in her front yard by the hour. I suppose if I were to meet her to-day she would hardly recollect my name, so inconsistent is her sex, but I left my heart with her. It is true that she was not conventional, that her skirts hardly came to her knees; that she could not write, and that her general air was not that of a society woman, but to a sick man she was an inexpressible comfort. I have written her name Maria, but she was also called Mar-i-a, Mari-a-a-a, Mari-uh, and oh-h-h, M-a-r-i-a. These names she was called from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. I don't think I have ever known a more versatile genius than Maria. At times she was a steamboat, with loud blowing of the whistle; at other times she was a bear and devoured other children with grunts and growls of great ferocity; at other times, she was a horse of such high mettle and spirit as could only find vent in chewing up the front gate and pawing her mother's geraniums into the earth. But it was in her great and realistic combat with dogs that I admired Maria most. Every day about noon two setter dogs would come lounging about the yard with the most innocent air in the world. It was Maria's lunch time and the little thing would toddle in and bring out her lunch. No sooner would she appear than the dogs would rush on her and roll her in the dirt. There was a brief scuffle, an agonizing scream, the dirt flew, the dogs rushed off, and Maria sat up in tears, dirt and hunger. The lunch was gone. By the time quiet was restored, the dogs would come to see if they had left any in their hurry, and the forgiving little one would start in to play with them as if nothing had happened. I was there two months, and if Maria got a whole lunch in that time, I didn't see it. Sometimes the dogs had forgotten to look at their watches and would be a couple of minutes behind time, but all the same they rushed on her and took what there was. Often the screams would bring her mother out, and Maria would go into a little explanation which, as she couldn't talk, didn't make things very clear, consisting chiefly of "a-h-s" and "o-h-s." Little as she was, she had a spice of shrewdness which unfortunately didn't work well. She would commence her scream directly she brought her lunch out, but as soon as she found it only served to make the dogs more promptly on time, she gave it up. I have had a good deal of amusement, one way or another, but Maria stands at the head of the list in my memory.
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I made the acquaintance of a married couple at Afton. I do not often hold up the private life of my acquaintances to illustrate moral reason, but I must make this an exception. I believe the gentleman was brought to Afton for the protection of sheep, and to test the statement that a goat with a flock of sheep would keep off the dogs. When I saw him he was a moral wreck. He had become a professional lounger around the depot where he chewed up old paper, straw, and such odd crumbs of lunch as the passengers would throw out of the car windows. His hair was full of burrs and he had gotten one of his legs broken by the cars. His occupation was to wrestle with all the trifling fellows, white and black, around the depot, butt them when he could, and be ridden by them when he couldn't. He had long since lost his situation at the sheep fold, having proved rather an attraction to dogs, who are fond of low company, than a protection to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a loafer, kicked and cuffed about by the public and half starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, eminently respectable, and as regular as clockwork in taking them out to pasture and bringing them home. The moral point that I wish to make is this—if you give a woman half a chance she will be a lady; if you give a man half a chance he will go to the dogs. It is in the sex of the animal.
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I often hear it said of a man that he has "the manners of the old school," by which is meant courteous, deferential manners. I don't know that any particular "school," old or new, will give a man good manners, but it is certainly true that age does ripen and mellow those of both men and women. As we grow older we become aware that there are a great many other people besides ourselves in the world, and that if we want to go through it smoothly we must keep to the right and not insist on keeping our elbows akimbo in a crowd. A rude young man may reform, but a rude old man may be regarded as having been illy bred early in life, and hopeless. Good manners are very like the catechism lessons our mothers teach us when children. They don't count for a great deal at the time, but the result comes up in life a long, long time afterwards. I think I can tell you of the "old school" where really good manners originated. The Teacher has long since gone, and sometimes I have fear the old school itself has changed, but He left the rule with us when He departed, and here it is: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." After the Teacher left, many new doctrines were brought about, and much chop-logic was put into the text-books by those who succeeded Him, but with all their human invention they have never approached the perfection of the motto that He left behind for the corner-stone of good manners. It is that, I think, that makes old men have better manners; they have learned that there is a good deal more in the people of the world to appeal to their affection and kindly toleration than they thought for at the beginning of their lives; that there is a great deal of good in every man and woman, and that it won't do to pick out their faults to the exclusion of their virtues; that a touch of kindly courtesy will often reveal to you a wholly different man from the surly one who stood before you a minute before; in short, our old man has learned more and more the lesson to love his neighbor as himself. That is the true "old school" founded eighteen hundred years ago.
OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN X
The procession of two regiments of veterans through our streets a few days ago must have set a good many of us retired veterans who were not in the line, to thinking. It did me. It set me to thinking, not of war, not of peace, not of reunions, but of how time has changed us all in twenty years. In a neighboring city where I volunteered, the old company, with the old name and the old uniform, is still kept up by our young successors. I saw it lately on parade, and as I saw the trim looking young fellows of from nineteen to twenty-five, clad in the same bright uniform of twenty years ago, and stepping out with all the brisk and cheery step of youth, it looked as if there had been a resurrection of the old days. Could we old gray heads ever have looked like these! Could that gay young spark mounted on the leading caisson horse and furtively chaffing No. 13 be Hilleary and Hutchins come to life again? Could that serious, slender boy, all attention to the word of command, be the grave and clerical Hale Houston of this day gone back to youth again. Can that sturdy No. 4 at the gun, be old Boss Lumpkin? Could we all have looked as fresh and full of youth, and as full of engaging humor and good temper as these young fellows? I suppose we did, though it is hard to be believed, even by ourselves. I can tell you of a reunion that, if promised, would bring more of the old boys together than all the patriotism than can ever fill the American heart. Just promise them that for that day they shall be young again! Bless my heart, what a crowd you could have! Young again, mark you, both in mind and body. I don't know one of the old fellows who, if he had the option, wouldn't take back the youth he had twenty-three years ago with the war, famine and hardships that followed. What a deal of difference it does make to a man whether the world is behind or in front of him.
Do you know—of course this is confidential—that I am glad the schools have gone for the summer. Education has been a thorn in our family for some time past, indeed since the younger member got into the higher branches. Until lately it has been the impression of Mrs. Boyzy and myself that we spoke the English language with facility and much correctness, and as for facility I will put Mrs. B. against any picked nine that may be brought. But recently we have been greatly humiliated by our eldest girl, who comes back daily from school with a new pronunciation. Incredulity on our part is met by lugging the dictionary into the conflict and we are defeated at once. So victorious has the little one become that we tremble when we hear, "Mamma, how do you pronounce so and so," and prepare for another humiliation. My wife's plaintive, "It was pronounced so when I was a girl," is very touching to me, but when did the young ever have mercy on the old? The last conflict had—I hope it will be the last—was over the word "Squalor." The young one, after setting the usual trap of demanding how we pronounced it, announced that it was spoken "squaylor." At this my wife, astonished into resistance, made her last flight, and said with much dignity, that that pronunciation was silly and there must be a mistake. In a moment more she was prostrated by the well directed dictionary. In the evening after the children had gone upstairs, Mrs. B. locked up her sewing and remarked that a good deal of what is taught children in these days is nonsense. I did not reply. Had I, I should have been forced to remind her that she and I put our parents through the same mill in which the educational gods are now grinding us so sharply. I take it that pronunciation, I mean that of ordinary refinement and education, varies pretty much as bonnets do in style and, like them, is a matter that taste has a good deal to do with; and locality as well. Forty years ago in the jungles of East Virginia I spoke glahss, fahst, ahnser; I never heard of papa and mamma, but of father and mother, and I find they are teaching the children of this day to say that, too. I was taught to say g-yarden, c-yar, s-yuit, and, I suppose, that will also be resurrected after a while. Pronunciation, I take it, is a matter of provincial taste. Reading Chaucer, I have often wondered what standard of that sparsely educated day fixed the standard by which he could be read aloud. And by the bye who, of this more cultivated day, is authority for fixing the standard? Not the Dictionaries, for they differ. I dare say that after all we must fall back on taste. In the national metropolis of America, I have noticed a half-dozen different pronunciations among educated people, so distinct as to be readily noticed. But the best opportunity to be had is in an army gathered from all quarters of the country, or even from all quarters of a section, as the Confederate army was. I noticed a dozen different pronunciations, the two from North Carolina and Georgia being the most distinctly marked. I have heard it said hastily, that all educated people pronounce alike, but I think, with more deliberation and more opportunity for judging, it would be safer to say that all uneducated people pronounce alike.
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