Victor had a bosom friend, a young man in about the same circumstances that he wuz—only this friend, Felix Ward, had lived with a kind master and mistress durin’ his childhood and early youth.
His father and mother wuz both dead; his father bein’ killed in the war, and his mother soon followin’ him.
He wuz an intelligent negro, with no white blood in his veins, so far as he knew. Felix, for so he had been named when he looked like a tiny black doll, by his young mistress, to whom the world looked so happy and prosperous that everything assumed a roseate hue to her.
Her faithful servant, his mother, brought the little image in ebony to her room to show it to her, jest after she had read the letter from the man she loved askin’ her to be his wife.
She wuz happy; the world looked bright and prosperous to her. She gave the little pickaninny this name for a good omen—Felix: happy, prosperous.
But alas! though the pretty young mistress prospered well in her love and her life while it lasted, the poor little baby she had named had better have been called Infelix, so infelicitous had been his life—or, that is, the latter part of it.
For awhile, while he wuz quite young, it seemed as if his name would stand him in good stead and bring good fortune with it. For being owned till her death by this same gentle young mistress and her husband, both, like so many Southerners, so much better than the system they represented, they helped him, seein’ his brightness and intelligence, to an education, and afterwards through their influence he wuz placed at Hampton School, and at their death, which occurred very suddenly in a scourge of yeller fever, they left him a little money.
At Hampton School he got a good education, and learned the carpenter’s trade. And it wuz at Seybert Court, which wuz bein’ repaired, and he wuz one of the workmen, that Victor and he become such close friends.
Victor had come on to superintend some of the work that wuz bein’ done there to fit the place for the reception of his master’s family, who wuz at that time in New Orleans. And these two young men wuz together several months and become close friends. They wuz related on their mother’s side, and they wuz joined together in that closer, subtler relationship of kindred tastes, feelings, and aspirations.
He finally bought a little carpenter’s shop and settled down to work at his trade in the little hamlet of Eden Centre, where he soon after married a pretty mulatto girl, the particular friend of Genieve.