WHAT guides the bee when, turning from the "suck," he wheels in air and strikes his wonderful line for the "gum"? Heaven knows. And by what process does the negro calculate the shortest distance between the point he occupies and the place he would be? That also is a mystery, yet the least observant person familiar with the negro cannot have failed to note his wonderful—we had almost said his preternatural—power to discover, without guide or compass, the shortest possible distance between two given places—to make, as he calls it, a "near cut."
To the right of us lay a berry and wild-fruit tract, on our left was a large village, and our farm was in a certain portion skirted by an old field, through which the negroes had discovered the most direct path to market. At dawn they could be seen winding around the brow of the hill, men, women and children, with baskets on their heads and buckets on their arms, singly and in couples, sometimes three, four or a half dozen together. And how they stole from us! It seemed impossible to prevent, or even limit, their depredations.
One evening Mr. Smith said to me, "The man Tony is sentenced to be hung."
Tony was a village negro accused of murder, and as he had been confined in the village jail and tried at the village court-house, the case naturally created some excitement in our quiet neighborhood.
"Oh, I am so sorry!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, poor devil!" said Mr. Smith. "But it was a clear case. He belonged to Mr. Lamkin before the surrender, and the old man made every effort to get him off—employed the very best counsel. I am sorry for him, but the wind which is so ill for him will blow us good. He is to be hung in the old field that edges our farm, and after the execution takes place we shall have no more negro trespassers in that quarter. I very much doubt whether I shall be able to obtain hands to work that portion of the land."
It would require a psychological study of the negro character to enable one to explain the spirit in which they flocked to the execution of their comrade, their friend, in some instances their kinsman. They came in holiday attire and with hurrying steps, and long before the hour appointed the adjoining fence was crowded with eager spectators, and, like flocks of blackbirds, they had filled every tree within five hundred yards, chatting and bustling and moving around with no apparent emotion except the desire to see.
At length the cart appeared on the brow of the hill, and every neck was craned for a glimpse of the poor creature who sat on the coffin—a pitiful-looking, half-dwarf mulatto, who gave you the idea of deformity and distress without your being able to tell why. He walked bravely to his place on the scaffold, singing and praying, protesting his innocence and bequeathing forgiveness to his enemies, apparently full of faith, like many others who by reason of weariness and despair have attained resignation; but the fictitious piety born of nervous excitement, and the abnormal elevation of feeling induced by continued spiritual exhortation during weeks of unrest and suspense, both gave way when his old mother, unsightly and pitiful as himself, asked leave to bid him good-bye, and came tottering to his side, saying as well as she could for the tears that choked her, "Oh, Tony! mammy ain't gwine back on you! Mammy don't b'lieve you done it, she don't keer who 'kuses you. Good-bye, my baby! good-bye! 'Twon't be long 'fo' mammy jines you an' daddy whar dar ain't no onjestice an' no mizry. Mammy ain't gwine to stay here long arter you goes."
He threw up his arms with a wild, sobbing cry: "Oh, mammy! mammy! can't you do nothin' fer me? Ain't you got no way to he'p me? Oh, de sun do shine so pretty, an' de leaves shakes 'bout on de trees so natchul! An' I nuvver knowed de birds to sing like dey does to-day. It ain't fa'r—no, it's not fa'r to shet me up in de groun' for what I ain't done. So many 'ginst one, an' me so little an' so po'! I ain't got a fren' on top o' de yuth. Nary one outen all dese folks, what I use ter go to shuckin's wid 'em, an' play de banjer, an' hunt possums—nary one uv 'em didn't stand up for me an' try to git me off! Not eben you, mammy, didn't try to git in jail an' gimme somethin' to wu'k my way out, an' I a-lis'nin' night an' day! Night an' day, an' you nuvver come!"
"Lord! Lord! my baby!" sobbed the poor old thing, her trembling limbs hardly able to sustain the feeble frame. "What could yo' ole mammy do 'ginst all dem folks? Ef Mars' Henry couldn't make 'em let you 'lone, what could a po' ole nigger do what ain't got no money, an' no sense, an' no fren's? Lord! Lord! my blessed chile!" she sobbed, the tears raining down her withered black cheeks, "ef mammy had a hundred nakes she would put dat rope 'roun' 'em all to keep it off o' your'n."