The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann

by Joel Chandler Harris

The Committee of Public Comfort.

Thus the Major talked, blending wisdom with impracticable ideas in the most delightful way. He seemed to be highly pleased when he found that I was to spend a week at Halcyondale, attending the fair and renewing old friendships.

“Then you belong to me!” he exclaimed. “It’s no use,” he went on, shaking his head when I would have protested against imposing on his good-nature; “you needn’t say a word. The tavern is stuffed full of people, and even if it wasn’t, you’d go to my house. If you ain’t been ruined by living in Atlanta, it’ll seem like home to you. Dang it all! I’ll make it seem like home to you anyhow.”

Now, the affectation of hospitality is one of the commonest hypocrisies in life, and, to a thoughtful man, one of the most sinister; but the Major’s hospitality was genuine. It was brought over from the times before the war, and had stood the test of age and long usage, and, most trying of all, the test of poverty. “If you were welcome when I was well off, how much more welcome you’ll be now that I am poor!” This was not said by the Major, but by one of his contemporaries. The phrase fitted a whole generation of noble men and women, and I thank Heaven that it was true at one time even if it is not true now.

When the train, with much clinking and clanking and hissing, came to a standstill at Halcyondale, the Major hustled me off on the side opposite the station, and so I escaped the ordeal of resisting the efforts of the Committee on Public Comfort to convey me to a lodging not of my own selection. The Major’s buggy was in waiting, with a negro driver, who got out to make room for me. He bowed very politely, calling me by name.

“You remember Hamp, I reckon,” said the Major. “He was a member of the Legislature when you lived here.”

Certainly I remembered Hamp, who was Aunt Minervy Ann’s husband. I inquired about her, and Hamp, who had swung up to the trunk-rack as the buggy moved off, replied that she was at home and as well as she could be.

“Yes,” said the Major, “she’s at my house. You may see somebody else besides Minervy Ann, but you won’t hear anybody else. She owns the whole place and the people on it. I had a Boston man to dinner some time ago, one of Conant’s friends—you remember Paul Conant, don’t you?—and I stirred Minervy Ann up just to see what the man would say. We had a terrible quarrel, and the man never did know it was all in fun. He said they never would have such a lack of discipline among the servants in Boston. I told him I would give him any reasonable amount if he would go out and discipline Minervy Ann, just to show me how it was done. It would have been better than a circus. You heard her, didn’t you, Hamp?”

Hamp chuckled good-naturedly. “Yasser, I did, an’ it make col’ chills run over me ter hear how Minervy Ann went on. She cert’n’y did try herse’f dat day.”