"Yas'm ris de place, de house er buggesses, dey call it, 'cause de big bugs of ole Virginny sot dere er making laws. 'Fo de Lawd, marm, dey wuz big bugs; quality folks, quality folks." And John Randolph, our colored coachman, waved his hand with a proud air of ownership, as if he were displaying lofty halls with mahogany stairs and marble pillars, instead of the mortar and brick foundation, in its bare outline, of the old capitol, or House of Burgesses.
"Walk right in, suh. Bring de ladies dis way, boss," John Randolph urged, in a tone of lordly hospitality. "Right hyah is the charmber (room) whar Marse Patrick Henry made dat great speech agin de king—old Marse King George—or bossin' uv de colonies. He wuz er standing on dis very spot, and he lif' up his voice like a lion and he sez, sez he—"
"What did he say?" as the old man paused.
Striking a dramatic attitude, the gray-haired old Virginia darky rolled out in sonorous voice, with impassioned gesture:
"Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third—" "Treason! treason!" said the speaker of the house. "May profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it."
In spite of John Randolph's oratory, Rothermel's painting came before me, and I could see the Virginia cavaliers gazing at the speaker with startled, breathless look, while the colonial dames with their powdered hair and stiff brocade leaned eagerly forward in the gallery to catch each note of the immortal voice; and in the doorway stood Thomas Jefferson, the slim young student of William and Mary College, electrified by the fiery eloquence, "such as I had never heard from any other man," he said: "he appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote."
"But why didn't you say 'Give me liberty or give me death,' Uncle John?" asked the young interrogation point of the party.
"'Cause Marse Patrick never said dem words here, chile. He spoke 'em in old St. John's Church up in Richmond ten year arterwards. I gin you his Williamsburg speech, his fust great speech." And the darky orator and historian smiled with that superior wisdom which we had seen illumminate the dark Italian features of Antonio Griffenreid, the famous sexton of old St. John's as he enlightened the ignorance of a party of sightseers.—Atlanta Constitution.