“Take you for a tramp, most likely, and shut the door in your face,” I suggest, somewhat flippantly, perhaps; but he answered gravely:
“Father might, but mother ’ll know me, sure enough, though I left home at fourteen years old and I’m now thirty. But she’d know me, ay, even if I was in my coffin. And I should know her dear old face, even if we don’t meet till we meet in heaven.”
We were constantly beset by similar inquiries from perfect strangers; the fact of our nationality once ascertained, somebody would accost us—on the cars, the platform, the hotel corridors, no matter where.
“Excuse me, but do you know my cousin, the Rev. Jonah Smith, a clergyman, curate of St. Jeremiah’s, somewhere down in Cumberland, the place where my grandfather came from?”
Everybody seemed to think we must know their relations—sometimes we found it very difficult to convince them to the contrary. Once I received a long letter, filling several sheets of foolscap, as long as a lawyer’s long brief, setting forth a whole family history up to a certain period, marriages and intermarriages, beseeching me to set inquiries on foot and transmit to them any information I could gather concerning their English relations, with whom they, the American branch, had held no communication for the last generation.
To me there is something touching in this desire to claim kinship with the old family tree, whose branches are flourishing in all quarters of the habitable globe. It is so everywhere in the conservative South. In the more cosmopolitan north it is different; as a rule nobody cares to claim kinship with anybody or anything, except perhaps Wall Street and the money market.
At Perry’s Point we changed cars, and took a “narrow gauge” line to Ocala. It was the first time we had been on the genuine “narrow” gauge, and I fervently hope our last. Nothing could well be narrower, the rails being less than three feet apart; the cars running thereon are almost the usual width, seating four passengers in a row, divided in the centre by a passage two or three feet wide. It was like travelling on a see-saw or a bicycle; the cars oscillated fearfully from side to side, we had to hold on to the straps for dear life; even when it came to a stand it was not still, but slowly rocked from side to side.
During this short journey we twice broke down, and were detained some hours while the injury was repaired. We complained of the danger and discomfort of this mode of travelling, at the risk of life and limb. I believe I was regarded by the whole car as a British malcontent; nobody grumbled nor even lifted a disapproving voice. One lady seemed much surprised at our discomposure, and said, raising her placid brows and smiling sweetly:
“I dare say we shall get to Ocala all right; there is no use in fretting. It is true the cars did topple over an embankment a few weeks ago—such things will happen sometimes; a few limbs were broken, but nobody was killed! Besides, we must all die some time, and I don’t think it matters how or when. I really wouldn’t be uneasy,” she added consolingly, with a slightly contemptuous look upon her face. “I dare say it will be all right; and if not,” she shrugged her shoulders, “well, you know, as we say in our prayers, God’s will be done.”
Alas! I could not view the situation in this spirit of philosophical resignation; but I resolved to sink myself no lower in the eyes of my self-possessed fellow-travellers, and sat through the rest of the journey with outward calm, but inward tribulation of spirit. It was long past midnight when we reached our destination. It was a dark, moonless night, the rain was pouring in torrents, the thunder rolled and reverberated through the stormy air; now and again the heavens opened and let a flood of lightning through, then closed and left us in utter darkness. The train stopped; peering from the car windows we saw a light twinkling here and there, but no other sign of life. There were no omnibuses, no carriages plying for hire. We gathered our light hand-baggage together and followed the dreary procession to the end of the cars; they all seemed to know where they were going, and one by one our fellow-passengers were swallowed up in the darkness. We stood on the car platform for a moment and peered out into the black night; the deluge of rain was still falling.