The line between the North and the South seems very sharply drawn in more respects than one. We were scarcely well out of Louisville before delays and stoppages commenced; and though the country was pleasant enough to look at in the bright, fall days, it was not necessary to stop from noon till nightfall in one place, to fully enjoy the pleasure. Another drawback to this pleasure was the reliance we had placed on the statement of the railroad agent, who told us it was quite unnecessary to carry a lunch-basket "on this route." Since we had found a lunch-basket, if not really cumbersome, at least not at all indispensable, from Sacramento to Omaha, we saw no reason why we should drag it with us through a civilized country, and consequently suffered the penalty of believing what a railroad ticket-agent said. In another section of the same sleeping-car with us was a party who had been wiser than we, and had brought loads of provisions with them. No wonder: they were Southerners, and had learned not to depend on the infallibility of their peculiar institutions.
The head of the party was a little lady of twenty-five or thirty years, with pale, colorless face, and perfectly bloodless lips. I should have gone into all sorts of wild speculations about her—should have fancied how a sudden, dread fright had chased all the rosy tints from her lips back to her heart, during some terrible incident of the war; or how the news, too rashly told, of some near, dear friend stricken down by the fatal bullet, had curdled the red blood in her veins, and turned it to ice before it reached her cheeks—had she not been so vigorous and incessant a scold. Now it was the French waiting-maid to whom she administered a long, bitter string of cutting rebukes, while the unfortunate girl was lacing up my lady's boots; next it was her younger sister—whom she was evidently bringing home from school—whose lips she made to quiver with her sharp words; and then, for a change, the mulatto servant was summoned, by the well-scolded waiting-maid, to receive his portion of the sweets meted out. An ugly thing she was, and so different from the Southern lady I had met in the hotel at Louisville—one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen—whose grace nothing could exceed as she handed me a basket of fruit across the table, when one glance had told her that I was a stranger and tired out with the heat and travel.
But, in spite of what I have said, I must confess that I accepted the sandwiches the little scold sent us, for the supper-station was not reached till eleven o'clock at night. As the conductor promised us another good, long rest here, the gentlemen left the ladies in the cars, and returned after some time, followed by a number of negroes, who carried a variety of provisions and divers cups of coffee. I thought, of course, that it was luncheon brought from some house established at the station for that purpose; but was told that the chicken the mulatto boy was spreading before us had been abstracted from his massa's hen-yard, and that the eggs the old negro was selling us had not by any means grown in his garden. Only the coffee, which was sold at twenty-five cents a cup, was a legitimate speculation on the part of some white man (I am sure his forefathers were from the State of Maine), who went shares with the negro peddling it, and charged him a dollar for every cup that was broken or carried off on the cars, which accounted for the sable Argus' reluctance to leave our party till we had all swallowed the black decoction and returned the cups.
We were to take dinner at Holly Springs, some time next day; and it was "some time" before we got there, sure enough. We had picked up an early breakfast somewhere on the road, and when the dinner-bell rang at the hotel as the cars stopped, we did not lose much time in making our way to the dining-room. The door, however, was locked, and we stood before it like a drove of sheep, some hundred or two people. Through the window we could see mine host, in shirt-sleeves and with dirty, matted beard, leisurely surveying the crowd outside; in the yard, and on the porch near us, stood some barefooted negroes, with dish-cloth and napkin in hand, staring with all their might at train and passengers, as though they were lost in speechless wonder that they should really have come. In the party with us was a Californian, some six feet high, who, though a Southerner by birth, had lived too long in California to submit patiently to the delay and inconvenience caused by the "shiftlessness" of the people hereabouts.
"Now, you lazy lopers," he called to the darkies, swinging the huge white-oak stick he carried for a cane, "get inside to your work. And if that door ain't opened in five seconds from now, I'll break it down with my stick."
He drew his watch; and, either because of his determined voice, or his towering figure, the darkies flew into the kitchen, and the landlord sprang to open the door, while the crowd gave a hearty cheer for the big Californian.
New Orleans seemed familiar to me; I thought I could remember whole streets there that I had passed through, as a little child, clinging to the hand of my father—himself an emigrant, and looking on all the strange things around him with as much wonder as the two little girls he was leading through the town. How it came back to me! the slave-market, and the bright-faced mulatto girl, hardly bigger than myself, who so begged of my father to buy her and take her home with him, so that she could play with and wait on us. There was nothing shocking to me, I regret to say, in seeing this laughing, chattering lot of black humanity exposed for sale, though my good father doubtlessly turned away with a groan, when he reflected on what he had left behind him, in the old fatherland, to come to a country where there were liberty and equal rights for all. I can fancy now what he must have felt when he spoke to the little woolly-head, in his sharp, accentuated dialect, which his admirers called "perfect English," as he passed his hand over her cheek and looked into her face with his great, kind eyes. He said he had brought his children to a free country, where they could learn to work for themselves, and carve out their own fortunes; and where they must learn to govern themselves, and not govern others.
Day after day, on foot or in carriage, we rambled through the streets, and I never addressed a single question to the driver or any of the party, satisfied with what information accidentally fell on my half-closed ear. I was living over again one of the dreams of my early days: the dream I had dreamed over again so often, among the snows of the biting, cold Missouri winter, and on the hot, dusty plains of Arizona, amid the curses of those famishing with thirst and the groans of the strong men dying from the fierce stroke of the unrelenting sun. Passing through the parks and by the marketplaces, I saw again the negro women, with yellow turbans and white aprons, offering for sale all the tempting tropical fruits which foreigners so crave, and still dread. And I thought I saw again the white, untutored hands of my father, as he laboriously prepared seats for us in the deepest shade of the park, and dealt out to us the coveted orange and banana. The cool, delicious fruit, and the picture of flowers and trees in the park; the black, kindly faces of the negro servants, and the laughing, white-clad children at play—how often I had seen them again in my dreams on the desert!
Canal street looked lonely and deserted, as did the stores and shops lining either side of the broad, aristocratic street. The material for a gay, fashionable promenade was all there; only the people were wanting to make it such. True, there were groups occasionally to be seen at the counters of the shops, but in most such cases a black, shining face protruded from under the jaunty little bonnet, perched on a mass of wool, augmented and enlarged by additional sheep's-wool, dyed black. One of these groups dispersed suddenly one day, vacating the store with all the signs of the highest, strongest indignation. The tactless storekeeper, who had not yet quite comprehended the importance and standing of these useful members of society, had unwittingly offended an ancient, black dame. She had asked to see some silks, and the shopkeeper had very innocently remarked, "Here, aunty, is something very nice for you."
"I wish to deform you, sir," replied Aunt Ebony, bridling, "that my name is Miss Johnson." With this she seized her parasol and marched out of the store, followed by her whole retinue, rustling their silks, in highest dudgeon.