Nelse Hatton had won the love and respect of his fellow-citizens by the straightforward honesty of his conduct and the warmth of his heart. Everybody knew him. He had been doing chores about Dexter,—cutting grass in summer, cleaning and laying carpets in the spring and fall, and tending furnaces in the winter,—since the time when, a newly emancipated man, he had passed over from Kentucky into Ohio. Since then through thrift he had attained quite a competence, and, as he himself expressed it, “owned some little propity.” He was one among the number who had arisen to the dignity of a porch; and on this evening he was sitting thereon, laboriously spelling out the sentences in the Evening News—his reading was a post-bellum accomplishment—when the oldest of his three children, Theodore, a boy of twelve, interrupted him with the intelligence that there was an “old straggler at the back door.”
“WHA’ ’D YOU KETCH?”
After admonishing the hope of his years as to the impropriety of applying such a term to an unfortunate, the father rose and sought the place where the “straggler” awaited him.
Nelse’s sympathetic heart throbbed with pity at the sight that met his eye. The “straggler,” a “thing of shreds and patches,” was a man about his own age, nearing fifty; but what a contrast he was to the well-preserved, well-clothed black man! His gray hair straggled carelessly about his sunken temples, and the face beneath it was thin and emaciated. The hands that pulled at the fringe of the ragged coat were small and bony. But both the face and the hands were clean, and there was an open look in the bold, dark eye.
In strong contrast, too, with his appearance was the firm, well-modulated voice, somewhat roughened by exposure, in which he said, “I am very hungry; will you give me something to eat?” It was a voice that might have spoken with authority. There was none of the beggar’s whine in it. It was clear and straightforward; and the man spoke the simple sentence almost as if it had been a protest against his sad condition.
“Jes’ set down on the step an’ git cool,” answered Nelse, “an’ I’ll have something put on the table.”
The stranger silently did as he was bidden, and his host turned into the house.
Eliza Hatton had been quietly watching proceedings, and as her husband entered the kitchen she said, “Look a-here, Nelse, you shorely ain’t a-goin’ to have that tramp in the kitchen a-settin’ up to the table?”
“Why, course,” said Nelse; “he’s human, ain’t he?”