"Well, madam, what do you wish?"
"What do I wish?" The old lady grew restive and battle-hungry.
"Yes'm! That's what I asked," retorted the youth sharply.
"What do I wish?" slowly repeated the still-rebellious dame. "Well, if you must know, I wish all you Yankees were in —— hell!"
But not all the humor was confined to the governing race; some of its points cropping out sharply here and there, from under the wool of "the oppressed brother"—in-law. One case is recalled of the spoiled body servant of a gallant Carolinian, one of General Wheeler's brigade commanders. His master reproved his speech thus:
"Peter, you rascal! Why don't you speak English, instead of saying 'wah yo' is'?"
"Waffer, Mars' Sam?" queried the negro with an innocent grin. "Yo allus calls de Gen'ral—Weel-er?"
Another, close following the occupation, has a spice of higher satire. A Richmond friend had a petted maid, who—devoted and constant to her mistress, even in those tempting days—still burned with genuine negro curiosity for a sight of everything pertaining to "Mars' Linkum's men"—especially for "de skule."
For swift, indeed, were the newcome saints to preach the Evangel of alphabet; and negro schools seemed to have been smuggled in by every army ambulance, so numerously did they spring up in the captured Capital. So, early one day, Clarissa Sophia, the maid of color, donned her very best and, "with shiny morning face," hied her, like anything but a snail, to school. Very brief was her absence; her return reticent, but pouting and with unduly tip-tilted nose. After a time negro love for confidences conquered; and the murder came out.
The school-room had been packed and pervaded with odors—of sanctity, or otherwise—when a keen-nosed and eager school-marm rose up to exhort her class. She began by impressing the great truth that every sister present was "born free and equal;" was "quite as good" as she was.