“Well,” says Uncle Remus, “de ’oman make ’umble ’pology ter de boy, but howsomever he can’t keep from rubbin’ hisse’f in de naberhood er de coat tails, whar she spank ’im. I bin livin’ ’round here a mighty long time, but I ain’t never see no polergy what wuz poultice er plaster nuff to swage er swellin’ or kore a bruise. Now you jes keep dat in min’ en git sorry fo’ you hurt anybody.”
Joel Chandler Harris
August Twenty-First
The radicals and negroes had, in the summer of 1867, refused to “co-operate” with the representative white citizens in restoring political and social order. The election of delegates to the constitutional convention was held in October, 1867. About 94,000 negroes voted. The radical majority included five foreign born, twenty-five negroes, twenty-eight Northerners, and fourteen Virginians. Never before in the history of the State had negroes sat in a law-making body. The former political leaders were absent. The State had been revolutionized.
John Preston McConnell
(Reconstruction in Virginia)
August Twenty-Second
The moon has climbed her starry dome,
That taper gleams no more:
Delicious visions wait me home,
Delicious dreams of yore.
Old waves of thought voluptuous swell,
And rainbows spread amid the spell
Arcades of love and light.
Oh! what were slumber’s drowsy kiss,
To golden visions such as this,
Through all the wakeful night?
Joseph Salyards
(Idothea; Idyll III)
August Twenty-Third