"Everything is beautifully green about here," I said. "It is a positive pleasure to look out on those lovely fields."
"Glad you like 'em," said the judge, helping himself to a generous mouthful of tobacco.
"Well, you see," said I, "I come from Maine, Judge, and I am particularly fond of the spring, and we don't get ours until late. I guess," I added, "that in respect to that we are about a month and a half behind you people down here."
"Yes," said he explosively, "and, by God! you are fifty years behind us in every other respect!"
It was a kindly and tactful remark, and I was duly edified. If he had said it smilingly, I should have been happier, and would have been inclined to enter upon a half-hour of jovial banter on the subject of the respective merits of our several States; but there was a truculent self-confidence about his honor's "atmosphere" that foreshadowed little in the way of a satisfactory issue had I ventured to carry the discussion further. I simply withdrew within myself, like a turtle, finished my cigar in silence, and returned to my seat in the chair car, convinced that in whatever line of action the judge was really an expert—law, history, economics, or what-not—he at least knew how to put a cork in a bottle, and jam it in so tight that nothing could get out of it—I being the bottle.
"Yes, and you are fifty years behind us in every other respect!"
As I sat for the rest of my journey in that chair car my mind reverted to another incident that had occurred two months earlier. The inviting causes were similar; but the party of the second part was a very different sort of individual. The judge was said to be prosperous, the owner of many acres of fertile sugar land, and had, or so I was informed, a professional income of fifteen thousand dollars a year. One would think he could have afforded to be genial under such conditions. The other was a man bent and broken under the stress of his years and his trials, coming home, after a lifetime of failure, to pass his remaining days, manifestly few in number, amid the scenes of his youth. What few locks were left him were gray, and he limped painfully when he walked. He had served on the Confederate side during the war, and still carried with him the evidences of sacrifice.
I met him on the railway platform at a little junction town in Southern Tennessee. I was en route to a small college town in Upper Mississippi. We had had a long and tedious wait upon the fast decaying station platform, hoping almost against hope that at least day before yesterday's train would come along and pick us up, whatever might be the fate of the special combination of wheezy engine and spring-halted cars due that morning. As I nervously paced the dragging hours away I noticed this old fellow limping anxiously about, making over and over again of everybody he met the same inquiry as to the probable arrival or non-arrival of our train; and now and then he would hobble with difficulty over to a small soap box, with a slatted top, which stood just outside the baggage room, in which there was imprisoned a poor, shivering, and I fancy hungry, little fox terrier, whining to be let out.
"Never mind, Bobby," the old man would whisper through the slatted top of the box. "'Taint gwine to be much longer now. We'll be home soon."