Samantha Among the Colored Folks

“My Ideas on the Race Problem”

By

JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE

(MARIETTA HOLLEY)

Illustrated by E. W. KEMBLE

New York

Dodd, Mead and Company

1898

Copyright, 1892, 1894,

BY

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

To all who work for the advancement of true liberty, irrespective of color or sex, this book is inscribed.

MARIETTA HOLLEY

Bonnie View May, 1894

PUBLISHER’S NOTE.

Samantha on the Race Problem was the title adopted for the editions of this book that were issued exclusively for the subscription market.

In preparing the new edition for popular sale it has been deemed advisable to change its title to Samantha Among the Colored Folks as one more in keeping with its character. Otherwise its contents remain the same.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

“THEY WUZ TRACTS AND BIBLES.”

CHAPTER I.

IT was entirely onexpected and onlooked for.

But I took it as a Decree, and done as well as I could, which is jest as well as anybody ought to be expected to do under any circumstances, either on my side or on hisen.

It was one of the relations on his side that come on to us entirely onexpected and on the evenin’ stage that runs from Jonesville to Loontown. He was a passin’ through this part of the country on business, so he stopped off at Jonesville to see us.

He come with his portmanty and a satchel, and I mistrusted, after consultin’ them signs in the privacy of my own mind, that he had come to stay for quite a spell.

But I found in the fulness of time that my worst apprehensions wuz not realized.

I found instead of pantaloons and vests and things which I suspected wuz in the big satchel, I found out they wuz tracts and Bibles.

Why, I wuz fairly took aback when I discovered this fact, and felt guilty to think I had been cast down, and spozed things that wuzn’t so.

But whether they are on his side or on your own, visitors that come when you are deep in house-cleanin’, and most all your carpets took up, and your beds oncorded, and your buttery shelves dry and arid, can’t be welcomed with quite the cordiality you would show one in more different and prosperous times.

But we found out after a little conversation that Cousin John Richard Allen wuz a colporter, and didn’t lay out to stay only one night. So, as I say, I done the best I could with him, and felt my conscience justified.

He had a dretful good look to his face, for all mebby he wouldn’t be called beautiful. His eyes wuz deep and brilliant and clear, with a meanin’ in ’em that comes from a pure life and a high endeavor—a generous, lovin’ soul.

Yes, though it wuz one on his side instid of mine, justice makes me say he seemed to be a good feller, and smart as a whip, too. And he seemed to feel real friendly and cousinly towards us, though I had never laid eyes on him more than once or twice before. Josiah had known him when they wuz boys.

He had lived in Vermont, and had been educated high, been through college, and preachin’ schools of the best kind, and had sot out in life as a minister, but bein’ broke up with quinsy, and havin’ a desire to be in some Christian work, he took to colporterin’, and had been down in the Southern States to work amongst the freedmen for years.

He went not long after the war closed. I guess he hated to give up preachin’, for I believe my soul that he wanted to do good, and bein’ so awful smart it wuz a cross, I know—and once in a while he would kind o’ forget himself, and fall into a sort o’ preachin’, eloquent style of talkin’, even when he wuz conversin’ on such subjects as butter, and hens, and farmin’, and such. But I know he did it entirely onbeknown to himself.

And to the table—the blessin’ he asked wuz as likely a one as I ever see run at anybody’s table, but it wuz middlin’ lengthy, as long about as a small-sized sermon.

Josiah squirmed—I see he did, he squirmed hard, though he is a good Christian man. He wuz afraid the cream biscuit would be spilte by the delay; they are his favorites, and though I am fur from bein’ the one that ought to speak of it, my biscuit are called delicious.

And though I hate to say it, hate to show any onwillingness to be blessed to any length by so good a man and so smart a one—yet I must say them biscuit wuzn’t the biscuit they would have been had the blessin’ been more briefer, and they had been eat earlier.

Howsomever, they wuz pretty good ones after all, and Cousin John Richard partook of five right along one after the other, and seemed to enjoy the fifth one jest as well as he did the earlier editions. They wuzn’t very large, but light, and tender.

Wall, after supper, he and my pardner sot down in the settin’-room, while I wuz a washin’ up the dishes, and a settin’ the sponge for my griddle-cakes for breakfast.

And I hearn ’em a talkin’ about Uncle Noah, and Uncle Darius, and Cousin Melinda, and Sophronia Ann, and Aunt Marrier and her children—and lots more that I had never hearn of, or had forgot if I had.

They seemed to be a takin’ solid comfort, though I see that Cousin John Richard every time he got a chance would kinder preach on ’em.

If there wuz a death amongst ’em that they talked over, John Richard would, I see, instinctively and onbeknown to himself preach a little funeral sermon on ’em, a first-rate one, too, though flowery, and draw quite a lot of morals. Wall, I thought to myself, they are a takin’ sights of comfort together, and I am glad on it. I dearly love to see my pardner happy.

When all of a sudden, jest as I had got my sponge all wet up, and everything slick, and I wuz a washin’ my hands to the sink, I see there wuz a more excited, voyalent axent a ringin’ out in my pardner’s voice, I see he wuz a gettin’ het up in some argument or other, and I hurried and changed my gingham bib apron for a white one, and took my knittin’ work and hastened into the room, bein’ anxious to avert horstilities, and work for peace.

And I see I wuz only jest in time; for my companion wuz a gettin’ agitated and excited to a high degree, and Cousin John Richard all rousted up.

And the very first words I hearn after I went in wuz these offensive and quarrelsome words that do so much to stir up strife and dessensions—

They have madded me time and agin. They proceeded out of my companion’s mouth, and the words wuz:

“Oh shaw!”

I see in a minute that John Richard couldn’t brook ’em. And I wunk to Josiah Allen to stop, and let Cousin John Richard go on and say what he wuz a minter, both as a visiter, who wuz goin’ to remain with us but a short period, and also a relation, and a ex-minister.

My wink said all of this, and more. And my companion wuz affected by it. But like a child a cryin’ hard after bein’ spanked, he couldn’t stop short off all to once.

So he went on, but in fur mellerer axents, and more long-sufferin’er ones:

“Wall, I say there is more talk than there is any need of. I don’t believe things are to such a pass in the South. I don’t take much stock in this Race Problem anyway. The Government whipped the South and freed the niggers. And there it is, all finished and done with. And everything seems quiet so fur as I can hear on.

“I hain’t heard nuthin’ about any difficulty to speak on, nor I don’t believe Uncle Nate Gowdey has, or Sime Bently. And if there wuz much of anything wrong goin’ on, one of us three would have been apt to have hearn on it.

“For we are, some of us, down to the corners about every night, and get all the news there is a stirrin’.

“Of course there is some fightin’ everywhere. Uncle Nate hearn of a new fight last night, over to Loontown. We get holt of everything. And I don’t believe there is any trouble down South, and if there is, they will get along well enough if they are left alone, if there hain’t too much said.”

UNCLE NATE GOWDEY.

Sez John Richard, “I have lived in the South for years, and I know what I am talking about. And I say that you Northern people, and in fact all the nation, are like folks sitting on the outside of a volcano, laughing and talking in your gay indifference, and thinking the whole nation is in safety, when the flames and the lava torrents of destruction are liable to burst out at any time and overwhelm this land in ruin.”

And then agin, though I hate to set it down—then agin did my pardner give vent to them dangerous and quarrelsome sentiments before I could reach him with a wink or any other precautionary measures. That rash man said agin:

“Oh shaw!”

And I see, devoted Christian as John Richard wuz, the words gaulded him almost more than he could endure, and he broke out in almost heated axents, and his keen dark eye a flashin’, and says he:

“I tell you the storm is brewing! I have watched it coming up and spreading over the land, and unless it is averted, destruction awaits this people.”

His tone wuz a very preachin’ one, very, and I felt considerable impressed by it; but Josiah Allen spoke up pert as a peacock, and sez he:

“Why don’t the Southern folks behave themselves, then?”

And sez John Richard:

“Do you blame the Southern white folks exclusively?”

“Yes,” sez Josiah, in them same pert axents; “yes, of course I do.”

“Then that shows how short-sighted you are, how blind!”

“I can see as well as you can!” sez Josiah, all wrought up—“I don’t have to wear goggles.”

Oh, how mortified, how mortified I felt! John Richard did wear blue goggles when he wuz travellin’. But what a breach of manners to twit a visiter of such a thing! Twit ’em of goggles, blue ones too! I felt as if I should sink.

But I didn’t know Cousin John Richard Allen. He hadn’t give up ease and comfort and the joys of a fireside, for principle’s sake, for nuthin’. No personal allusions could touch him. The goggles fell onto him harmlessly, and fell off agin. He didn’t notice ’em no more’n if they hadn’t been throwed.

And he went on growin’ more and more sort o’ lifted up and inspired-lookin’, and a not mindin’ what or who wuz round him. And sez he:

“I tell you again the storm is rising; I hear its mutterings in the distance, and it is coming nearer and nearer all the time.”

Josiah kinder craned his neck and looked out of the winder in a sort of a brisk way. He misunderstood him a purpose, and acted as if John Richard meant a common thunder-storm.

But Cousin John Richard never minded him, bein’ took up and intent on what his own mind wuz a lookin’ at onbeknown to us—

“I have been amongst this people night and day for years; I have been in the mansions of the rich, the ruins of the beautiful homes ruined by the war, and in the cabins of the poor. I have been in their schools and their churches, and the halls where the law is misadministered—I have been through the Southern land from one end to the other—and I know what I am talking about.

“I went there to try to help the freedmen. I knew these people so lately enslaved were poor and ignorant, and I thought I could help them.

“But I was almost as ignorant as you are of the real state of affairs in the South. But I have been there and seen for myself, and I tell you, and I tell this nation, that we are on the eve of another war if something is not done to avert it.”

My pardner wuz jest a openin’ his mouth in a derisive remark, but I hitched my chair along and trod on his foot, and onbeknown to me it wuz the foot on which he wuz raisin’ a large corn, and his derisive remark wuz changed to a low groan, and Cousin John Richard went on onhendered.

“I went South with good motives, God knows. I knew this newly enfranchised race was sorely in want of knowledge, Christian knowledge most of all.

“I thought, as so many others do, that Christianity and education would solve this problem. I never stopped to think that the white race, of whose cruelty the negroes complained, had enjoyed the benefits of Christianity for hundreds of years, and those whose minds were enriched by choicest culture had hearts encased in bitterest prejudices, and it was from the efforts of their avarice and selfishness that I was trying to rescue the freedmen. We accomplished much, but I expected, as so many others have, choicer Christian fruits to spring from this barren soil, that has grown in the rich garden cultivated for centuries.

“Education has done and will do much—Christianity more; but neither can sound a soundless deep, nor turn black night into day.

“But I never thought of this. I worked hard and meant well, Heaven knows. I thought at first I could do marvellous things; later, when many failures had made me more humble, I thought if I could help only one soul my labor would not be in vain. For who knows,” sez John Richard dreamily, “who knows the tremendous train of influences one sets in motion when he is under God enabled to turn one life about from the path of destruction towards the good and the right?

“Who knows but he is helping to kindle a light that shall yet lighten the pathway of a Toussaint L’Ouverture or a Fred Douglass on to victory, and a world be helped by the means?

“And if only one soul is helped, does not the Lord of the harvest say, ‘He that turns one man from the error of his ways has saved a soul from death’?”

Cousin John Richard’s eye looked now as if he wuz a gazin’ deep into the past—the past of eager and earnest endeavor, and way beyend it into the past that held a happy home, and the light from that forsaken fireside seemed to be a shinin’ up into his face, divinely sad, bitter-sweet, as he went on:

“I loved my wife and children as well as another man, but I left them and my happy, happy home to go where duty called.

“My wife could not endure that hot climate, and she lay dying when I was so far South that I could not get to her till she had got so far down in the Valley that she could not hear my voice when I spoke to her.”

Ah! the waves of memory wuz a dashin’ hard aginst Cousin John Richard then, as we could see. It splashed some of the spray up into his bright eyes.

But he kept on: “I was rich enough then to put my children to school, which I did, and then returned to my labors.

“I loved my work—I felt for it that enthusiasm and devotion that nerves the heart to endure any trials—and I don’t speak of the persecutions I underwent in that work as being harder than what many others endured.

“You know what they passed through who preached the higher truth in Jerusalem. The Book says, ‘They were persecuted, afflicted, tormented, had cruel buffetings and scourgings, were burned, were tortured, not accepting deliverance.’

“In the early days after the war, in some parts of the South there were hardly any indignities that could be inflicted upon us that we were not called upon to endure. We had our poor houses burned down over our heads, our Bible and spelling-books thrown into the flames; we have had rifles pointed at our breasts, and were ordered to leave on peril of death.

“And many, many more than you Northerners have any idea of met their death in the dark cypress forests and in the dreary, sandy by-ways of the Southern States.

“They died, ‘not accepting deliverance’ by cowardly flight. How many of them thus laid down their lives for conscience’ sake will never be known till that hour when He comes to make up His jewels.

“I bear the marks upon me to-day, and shall carry them to my grave, of the tortures inflicted upon me to make me give up my work of trying to help the weak and seek and save them that were lost.”

“The dumb fools!” hollered out Josiah. “What did they act so like idiots for—and villains? The Southerners always did act like the Old Harry anyway.”

“THE DUMB FOOLS!”

My dear companion is fervid and impassioned in his feelin’s and easily wrought on, and he felt what he said. John Richard wuz a relation on his own side, and he could not calmly brook the idee of his sufferin’s.

But Cousin John didn’t look mad, nor excited, nor anything. He had a sort of a patient look onto his face, and as if he had tried to reason things out for some time.

“Such a state of affairs was inevitable,” sez he.

“Then you don’t blame the cussed fools, do you?” yelled out Josiah, fearfully wrought up and agitated.

Oh, what a word to use, and to a minister too—“cussed”! I felt as if I should sink right down into the suller—I wuz about over the potato ben—and I didn’t much care if I did sink, I felt so worked up.

But Cousin John Richard didn’t seem to mind it at all. He had got up into a higher region than my soul wuz a sailin’ round in—he had got up so high that little buzzin’, stingin’ insects that worried me didn’t touch him; he had got up into a calm, pure atmosphere where they couldn’t fly round.

He went on calm as a full moon on a clear night, and sez he:

“It is difficult to put the blame for this state of affairs on any one class, the evil is so far spread. The evil root was planted centuries ago, and we are partaking of its poison fruit to-day.

“In looking on such a gigantic wrong we must look on it on other sides than the one whose jagged edges have struck and bruised us—we must look on it on every side in order to be just.

“After years and years of haughty supremacy, ambition and pride growing rankly, as they must in such a soil, fostered, it would seem, by Northern indolence and indifference, the South was conquered by armed force—brought down to the humiliation of defeat by a successful, if generous foe.

“And then, what was far harder for them to endure, a race of people that they had looked upon much as you look upon your herd of cattle was suddenly raised from a condition of servitude to one of legal equality, and in many cases of supremacy.

“It was hard for this hot-blooded, misguided, warm-hearted Southern people to lose at once all their brilliant dreams of an independent, aristocratic Confederacy—it was hard for them to lose home, and country, and wealth, and ambition at one blow.

“It was hard for their proud, ambitious leader to have his beautiful old country home, full of aristocratic associations and sweet memories, turned into the national graveyard.

“And this one tragedy that changed this sweet home into a mausoleum is not a bad illustration of what the Southern people endured.

“No matter what brought this thing about—no matter where the blame rested—it was hard for them to stand by the graves of their loved ones, who fell fighting for the lost cause—to stand amongst the ruins of their dismantled homes, and know that their proud, ambitious dreams were all ended.

“But this they could endure—it was the fortune of war, and they had to submit. But to this other indignity, as they called it, they would not submit.

“Through centuries of hereditary influences and teachings this belief was ingrained, born in them, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, soul of their soul, implanted first by nature, then hardened and made invulnerable by centuries of habits, beliefs, and influences—this instinctive, hereditary contempt and aversion for the black race only as servants.

“And they would not endure to have them made their equals.

“Now, no preaching, be it with the tongue of men or angels, could vanquish this ingrained, inexorable foe, this silent, overmastering force that rose up on every side to set at naught our preaching.

A BLACK.

“After twenty-five years of Christian effort it remains the same, and at the end of a century of Gospel work it will still be there just the same.

“And those who do not take into consideration this overwhelming power of antagonism between the races when they are considering the Southern question are fools.

“The whites will not look upon the negroes as their equals, and you cannot make them—”

“Wall, they be!” hollered out Josiah. “The Proclamation made ’em free and equal, jest as we wuz made in the War of 1812.”

“But oh, what a difference!” sez Cousin John Richard sadly.

“The American colonies were the peers of the mother country. It was only a quarrel between children and mother. The same blood ran in their veins, they had the same traits, the same minds, the same looks, they were truly equal.

“But in this case it was an entirely different race, necessarily inferior by their long years of degradation, brought up at one bound from the depths of ignorance and servitude to take at once the full rights awarded to intellect and character.

“It was a great blunder; it was a sad thing for the white race and for the black race!”

Josiah wuz jest a openin’ his mouth to speak in reply to Cousin John Richard’s last words, when all of a sudden we heard a knock at the door, and I went and opened it, and there stood Miss Eben Garlock, and I asked her to come in, and sot her a chair.

I never over and above liked Miss Eben Garlock, though she is a likely woman enough so fur as I know.

But she is one of the kind of wimmen who orniment the outside of their heads more than the inside, and so on with their hearts and souls, etc.

She is a great case for artificial flowers, and ribbin loops, and fringes. And the flowers that wuz a blowin’ out on her bunnet that day would have gone a good ways towards fillin’ a half-bushel basket. And the loops that wuz a hangin’ all round her boddist waist would have straightened out into half a mile of ribbin, I do believe.

The ribbin wuz kinder rusty, and she had pinned on a bunch of faded red poppies on to the left side of her boddist waist, pretty nigh, I should judge, over her heart.

Which goes to prove what I said about her trimmin’ off the outside of her heart and soul.

Her clothes are always of pretty cheap material, but showy, and made after sort o’ foamin’ patterns, with streamers, and her favorite loops and such. And they always have a look as if they wuz in danger of fallin’ off of her. She uses pins a good deal, and they drop out considerable and leave gaps.

Wall, I always use her well; so, as I say, I sot her a chair and introduced her to Cousin John Richard, and he bowed polite to her, and then leaned back in his chair and seemed restin’. Good land! I should thought he’d wanted to.

Miss Garlock seemed real agitated and excited, and I remembered hearin’ that forenoon that they had lost a relation considerable distant to ’em. He lived some fifteen or sixteen miles away.

He and Eben Garlock’s folks had never agreed; in fact, they had hated each other the worst kind. But now Miss Garlock, bein’ made as she wuz, wuz all nerved up to make a good appearance to the funeral and show off.

She had come to borry my mournin’ suit that I had used to mourn for Josiah’s mother in; and I am that careful of my clothes that they wuz as good as new, though I had mourned in ’em for a year. Mournin’ for some folks hain’t half so hard on clothes as mournin’ for others; tears spots black crape awful, and sithes are dretful hard on whale-bones; my clothes wuz good, good as new.

But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.

Miss Garlock wanted to borry my hull suit down to shoes and stockin’s for Eben’s mother, who lived with her. She herself wuz a goin’ to borry Miss Slimpsey’s dress—she that wuz Betsey Bobbets—it wuz trimmed more and more foamin’ lookin’. But she wanted my black fan for herself, and my mournin’ handkerchief pin, it bein’ a very showy one. Ury had gin it to me, and I never had mourned in it but once, and then not over two hours, at a church social, for I felt it wuz too dressy for me. But Miss Garlock had seen it on that occasion and admired it.

And then, after I had told her she could have all these things in welcome, she kinder took me out to one side and asked me “if I had jest as lives lend her a Bible for a few days. She thought like as not the minister would call to talk with Eben’s mother, and she felt that she should be mortified if he should call for a Bible, for they had all run out of Bibles,” she said.

“The last one they had by ’em had jest been chawed up by a pup Eben wuz a raisin’; she had ketched him a worryin’ it out under the back stoop. She said he had chawed it all up but a part o’ the Old Testament, and he wuz a worryin’ and gnawin’ Maleky when she got it away from him.”

Wall, I told her she could have the Bible, and she asked me to have the things done up by the time they got back from Miss Slimpsey’s, and I told her I would, and I did.

Wall, if you’d believe it, I had hardly got them things done up in a bundle and laid ’em on the table ready for Miss Garlock, when that blessed man, John Richard, commenced agin right where he left off, and sez he, a repeatin’ his last words as calmly as if there had been no Garlock eppisode.

“It was a great blunder, a sad thing for the white race and the black race.”

“Wall, what would you have done?” sez Josiah.

“I don’t know,” sez Cousin John sadly—“I don’t know; perhaps mistakes were inevitable. The question was so great and momentous, and the danger and the difficulties seemed so impenetrable on every side.”

“Lincoln did the best he could,” sez Josiah sturdily; “and I know it.”

“And so do I know it,” sez Cousin John. “That wise, great heart could not make any other mistake only a mistake of judgment, and he was sorely tried to know what was best to do. The burden weighed down upon him so, I fancy he was glad to lay it down in any way.

“The times were so dark that any measure adopted for safety was only groping towards the light, only catching at the first rope of safety that seemed to lower itself through the heavy clouds of war.

“The heavy eyes and true hearts watching through those black hours will never be forgotten by this republic.

“And now, in looking back and criticising the errors of that time, it is like the talk of those who are watching a storm at sea, when, in order to save the ship, wrong ropes may be seized, and life-boats cast out into the stormy waves may be swept down and lost. But if the ship is saved, let the survivors of the crew forever bless and praise the brave hands and hearts that dared the storm and the peril.

“But when the sky is clearer you can see more plainly than when the tempest is whirling about you and death and ruin are riding on the gale.

“You can see plainer and you can see farther.

“Now, it was a great and charitable idea, looking at it from one side, to let those who had tried their best to ruin the Union at once take an equal place with those who had perilled life and property to save it—to give them at once the same rights in making the laws they had set at defiance.

“It was a generous and charitable idea, looking on it from one side, but from another side it looked risky, very risky, and it looked dangerous to the further peace and perpetuity of that Union.

“A little delay might not have done any harm—a little delay in giving them the full rights of citizenship.

“And it might, Heaven knows, have been as well if the slaves had had a gradual bringing up of mind and character to meet the needs of legal responsibility, if they had not been at once invested with all the rights and responsibilities which well-trained Christian scholars find it so difficult to assume, if they had not been required to solve by the ballot deep questions of statesmanship, the names of which they could not spell out in the newspaper.

“Could such ignorance make them otherwise than a dangerous element in politics, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to the welfare of the Union?

“Tossed back and forth as they were between two conflicting parties, in their helplessness and ignorance becoming the prey of the strongest faction, compelled, at the point of the sword and the muzzle of the revolver, to vote as the white man made them—the law of Might victorious over the Right—it was a terrible thing for the victim, and a still worse one for the victor.

“What could happen in such a state of affairs only trouble and misery, evasions and perversions of the law, uprisings of the oppressed, secret bands of armed men intent on deeds of violence, whose only motives were to set at naught the law, to fight secretly against the power they had been openly forced to yield to.

“What could happen save warfare, bloodshed, burning discontent, and secret nursing of wrongs amongst the blacks; hatred towards the Union amongst the whites, towards the successful foe who had humiliated them so beyond endurance by this last blow of forcing them into a position of equality towards their former slaves, and rousing up in them a more bitter animosity towards the poor blacks who had been the innocent cause of their humiliation.”

“Wall, what could have been done?” sez Josiah.

“It is hard to tell,” sez John Richard. “It is a hard problem to solve; and perhaps,” sez Cousin John, lookin’ some distance off—“perhaps it was God’s own way of dealing with this people.

“You know, after the children of Israel had broken the chains of their bondage and passed through the Red Sea, they were encamped in the wilderness for forty years before they reached the Land of Promise.

“Maybe it is God’s way of dealing with this people, to make them willing to press forward through the wilderness of their almost unendurable trials and go forward into their own country, from whence their fathers were stolen by these pale faces, and there, in that free, fresh land to found a new republic of their own.

“And with all the education and civilization they have gathered during these long, miserable years of slavery, helped by all they have learned, taught by their losses as well as their gains, found a new republic that shall yet take its place as one of the great nations of the world—yes, perhaps lead the nations, and reveal God’s glory in higher, grander forms than colder-blooded races have ever dreamed of. For it has seemed as if this people have been peculiarly under His protection and care.

“All through this long, bloody War of the Rebellion, when it would seem as if the black race must be crushed between either the upper or lower millstone of raging sectional warfare, they simply, as if bidden by a higher power than was seen marching with the armies, ‘stood still and saw the salvation of the Lord.’”

“Where would you have ’em set up for themselves?” sez Josiah, a lookin’ some sleepy, but holdin’, as it were, his eyes open with a effort. “Would you have ’em go to Mexico, or Brazil, or where?”

“To Africa,” sez Cousin John Richard, “or that is what is in my own mind. I don’t know that it would be better than another place, but I think so.”

“But, good land!” sez Josiah, lookin’ more wakeful, “think of the cost. Why, it would run the Government in debt to that extent that it never would get over it.” He looked skairt at the idee. But Cousin John didn’t; he wuz calm and serene as he went on:

“Thousands and thousands would be able and willing to go on their own account. But if this nation took them all back at its own expense, is it not a lawful debt? Who brought them here in the first place? They did not come of their own accord; no, they were stolen, hunted like beasts of prey amongst their own fields and forests, felled like wild animals, and dragged, bleeding from their wounds, into slave ships to be packed into a living cargo of sweltering agony, and brought off from friends and home and native land for our selfishness’ sake, to add to our wealth.

“It seems to me we owe them a debt that we should pay for our own conscience’ sake as a nation.”

“But the Government couldn’t afford it; it would cost too much.” Josiah is very close.

“THE OLD AND FEEBLE ONES.”

“As I said,” sez Cousin John Richard, “thousands of the more intelligent ones who have property of their own would go at their own expense for the sake of founding free, peaceful homes, where their children could have the advantages of independence, freed from the baleful effects of class antagonism and race prejudices.

“Many of the old and feeble ones, and those who were prosperous and well off, would not go at all. And of those who remained, if the Government should transport them and support them there for a year it would not cost a twentieth part so much as to carry on a civil war.

“And I tell you war will come, Josiah Allen, if something is not done to avert the storm.”

And agin John Richard’s eyes took on that fur-off look, as if he wuz lookin’ at things dretful some distance off.

“Amongst the lower classes you can hear muttered curses and half-veiled threats, and you feel their passion and their burning hatred towards the race that gave them the Indian gift of freedom—gave it, and then snatched it out of their hands, and instead of liberty gave them injustice and worse oppression.

“And the storm is coming up. Evil spirits are in the atmosphere. Over the better feelings of the white race, dominating them, are the black shapes of contempt and repulsion towards the race once their servants, made their equals by a wordy fiction of their enemies, but still under their feet.

“And in their haughty breasts, as of old, only stronger, is the determination to have their own way, to rule this ‘ignorant rabble,’ to circumvent the cowardly will of their Northern foe, who had brought this thing to pass, to still rule them in one way if not in another—rule or ruin.

“And the storm is coming up the heavens. The lightning is being stored, and the tempest of hail, the burning lightning, and deafening thunder peals are awaiting this day of wrath when the storm shall burst.

“And you sit on in your ease and will not believe it.”

His eyes wuz bent on my pardner’s form, who wuz leanin’ back in a almost luxurious attitude in his soft copper-plate-covered rockin’ chair, but I see he didn’t mean him in particeler; no, his eyes had in ’em a wide, deep look that took in the hull country, North and South, and he went on in almost eloquent axents:

“The Northern soldier who twenty-five years ago hung up his old rifle and powder-horn with a sigh of content that the war against oppression and slavery had been won still sits under them in content and self-admiration of his prowess, and heeds not at all the signs in the heavens.

“And the wise men in the National Capital sit peacefully in their high places and read over complacently the words they wrote down a quarter of a century ago:

“‘All slaves are free.’

“And the bandage that Justice wears, having slipped too far down over their wise eyes, they have not seen the handcuffs and chains that have weighed down the still enslaved.

“And they read these words:

“‘We proclaim peace in all your borders.’

“And lost in triumphant thoughts of what they had done, they did not heed this truth, that instead of peace hovering down upon the borders of the fair Southern land, they had blindly and ignorantly, no doubt, let loose the bitter, corroding, wearing curse of animosity and ignorant misrule.

“Yes, those wise men had launched these turbulent spirits instead of peace on the heads of the free and enlightened, if bigoted white people of the South, and upon the black race.

“And never stopped to think, so it would seem, whether three millions strong of an ignorant, superstitious, long-degraded people, the majority of whom could not read nor write, and were ignorant of the first principles of truth and justice, could suddenly be lifted up to become the peers, and in many cases the superiors, of a cultured and refined people who had had long ages of culture and education behind them, and, above all, class prejudices.

“They never paused to ask themselves whether it was in reality just to the white race, or whether this superior class would quietly submit to the legal equality and rule of the inferior.

“The difficulty of this problem did not seem to strike them, whether by any miracle the white race would at once forget its pride and its prejudices.

“Whether by a legal enactment a peacock could be made to change its plumage for the sober habit of a dove, or an eagle develop the humility of a snail.

“The wise men expected to do more than this, and failed.

“And they never seemed to ponder this side of the question: Whether it was not cruelty to the weaker class to thus raise up to a greater strength the prejudice and animosity of the dominant race.

“And whether this premature responsibility they had caused them to assume was not as cruel as to put knives and rifles into the hands of babies, and send them out to fight a battle with giants—fight or die.

“I SOT DEMUTE.”

“And so these wise men, having done their best, it would seem, to rouse the blind passions and intensify the ignorant prejudice and class hatred of the blacks, sit at their ease.

“And so the farce has been played out before a pitying heaven, and has been for a quarter of a century, growing more pitiful to look at year by year.

“The farce of slave and tyrant masquerading in the robes of liberty and equality, and the poor Northern zealot playing well his part with a fool’s cap and bells. The weak crushed and trodden under foot, the strong shot down by secret violence—murder, rapine, and misrule taking the part of law, and both races swept along to their ruin like a vision of the night.”

Why, John Richard’s talk wuz such, he looked on things so different from what I ever had, he put such new and strange idees into my head that I can truly say that he skairt me most to death. I sot demute; I didn’t even think to look to see how my pardner wuz affected by the startlin’ views he wuz promulgatin’. I dropped stitches, I seamed where I hadn’t ought to seam; I wuz extremely nerved up and agitated, and he went on a talkin’ more stranger and startlinger than ever, if possible.

“And still these wise men sit and hardly lift their wise eyes. But when the storm bursts,” sez Cousin John Richard, in a louder voice than he had used, and more threatenin’ like and prophetic—“when the storm bursts, methinks these wise men will look up, will get up if there is enough left of them to stand after the shock and the violence of the tempest has torn and dashed over them. For the clouds will fill with vengeance, the storm will burst if something is not done soon to avert the fury of its course.

“Now, this nation can solve this great question peacefully if it will.”

And I sez in agitated axents:

“How?”

I wuz fearful wrought up. I never had mistrusted there wuz such a state of things anywhere; it come all onbeknown onto me, and sort o’ paralyzed my faculties. I had forgot by this time, if you’ll believe it, whether I wuz a knittin’ or a tattin’. Why, I shouldn’t have been surprised if somebody had spoke up and said I wuz a shearin’ a sheep or pickin’ a goose. I shouldn’t have sensed it, as I know of, I wuz so dumbfoundered and lost and by the side of myself.

Sez I, “How?”

And sez he, “Let the colored race go into a home and a country of their own. Let them leave the people and the influences that paralyze and hinder their best efforts. Let them leave a race that they burden and hamper and oppress, for injustice reacts worse upon the victor than upon the victim. The two races cannot live together harmoniously; they have tried the experiment for hundreds of years, and failed.”

I murmured almost mechanically:

“Won’t religion and education make ’em harmoniouser?”

But before John Richard could answer my question, Eben Garlock come in for the mournin’ bundle, and I gin it to him.

He said he couldn’t set down, but still he didn’t seem ready to go.

Everybody has such visitors that don’t want to go and don’t want to stay, and you have to use head work to get ’em started either way.

Eben is different from his wife; he is more sincere and open-hearted, and hain’t so affected. He speaks out more than she duz, and finally he told us what wuz on his mind.

I see he had on a good new black overcoat, and the case wuz he wanted to swop with Josiah for the day of the funeral, and take his old London brown overcoat.

And I sez, “For the land’s sake! Why?”

“Wall,” sez he, a lookin’ real candid and sincere as he said it, “the fact is, you know the corpse and I never agreed with each other, and everybody knows it; and I don’t want to act as if I wuz a mournin’ too much. I hate deceit,” sez he.

“Wall,” sez I, “if that is how you feel you can take the coat in welcome.”

And Josiah sez, “Yes, of course you can have it.”

And Eben took off his glossy new black overcoat and put on Josiah’s old shabby brown one and sot off. And I don’t know how he and his wife settled it, and I don’t much care.

Wall, if you’ll believe it, Eben hadn’t much more’n got into his buggy at the gate when Cousin John Richard began agin, took up his remarks jest where he had laid ’em down. I don’t spoze he sensed Eben’s comin’ in hardly any.

I spoze it wuz some as if a fly should light on the nose of a Fourth of July oritor, it would be brushed off without noticin’ it, and the oration would go right on.

Sez John Richard, “All the religion and education in the world cannot make the two races unite harmoniously and become one people, with kindred tastes and united hearts and interests.”

Sez I agin, speakin’ mechanically, “You think the foot is too big for the shoe?”

“Yes, exactly,” sez he. “The shoe is a good sound one, but the foot is too big; it won’t go into it.”

“But,” sez I, “as Josiah remarked to you, wouldn’t it cost awfully?”

“Will it cost any less ten years from now? The colored population of the South increases at the rate of five hundred every twenty-four hours.

“By the most careful estimates it has been found that in less than twenty years the black race will out-number the whites to the number of a million. What will be done then? Will the white man leave this country to make room for the negro? It is plain that there will not be room for both.”

And I murmured almost entirely onbeknown to myself, “No, I don’t spoze he would.”

“No, indeed,” sez Cousin John Richard. “The Anglo-Saxon will not leave this country, his inheritance, for the sake of peace or to make room for another race; then what will be done? I hear the voice of the Lord,” sez John Richard solemnly, “I hear His voice saying, ‘Let my people go.’” The silence seemed solemn; it seemed some like the pauses that come in a protracted meetin’ between two powerful speakers. I felt queer.

But I did speak up almost entirely onbeknown to myself, and sez I, “Could they take care of themselves in a colony of their own? Do they know enough?”

Sez John Richard, “A race that has accumulated property to the extent of six millions of dollars in one Southern State since the war, under all the well-nigh unendurable drawbacks and persecutions that have beset it, will be able, I believe, to at least do as much, when these hampering and oppressive influences are withdrawn and the colored man has a clear field, in an atmosphere of strength and courage and encouragement—where in this air of liberty he can enjoy the rewards of his labor and behold the upbuilding of his race.

“And what a band of missionaries and teachers will go out from this new republic, upon every side of them, in darkest Africa, to preach the peaceful doctrine of the cross!

“In these same dark forests, where their ancestors were hewn down and shot down like so many wild beasts, and dragged, maimed and bleeding, to become burden bearers and chained slaves to an alien race—

“Under the same dim shadows of these lofty trees will these men stand and reveal to the ignorant tribes the knowledge they learned in the torturing school of slavery.

“The dark baptism wherewith they were baptized will set them apart and fit them for this great work. They will speak with the fellowship of suffering which touches hearts and enkindles holy flames.

“Their teachings will have the supreme consecration of agony and martyrdom. They will speak with the pathos of grief, the earnestness and knowledge born through suffering and ‘the constant anguish of patience.’

“It is such agencies as these that God has always blessed to the upbuilding of His kingdom. And will not the dwarfed natures about them gradually be transformed by the teachings of these apostles into a civilized, God-fearing people?

“THE DARK FACES OF THESE APOSTLES.”

“Methinks the dark faces of these apostles will shine with the glowing image of God’s love and providence—the providence that watched over them and kept them in a strange land, and then brought them back in safety, fitted to tell the story of God’s love and power, and His mercy that had redeemed them and made them free.

“And when the lowest and most unknowing one shall ask, ‘Who are these?’ methinks the answer will be as it was to St. John: ‘These are they who come out of great tribulations.’”

I wuz demute, and didn’t say nuthin’, and John Richard sez, in a deep axent and a earnest one, “But will this Government be warned by past judgments and past experience and be wise in time?

“I don’t know,” sez he, a answerin’ himself; for truly I didn’t know what to say nor how to say it.

“You spoke just now of the expense. It will cost less now to avert an evil than it will cost for its overthrow, when time, and national follies, and men’s bad passions, and inevitable causes have matured it, and the red cloud has burst in its livid fury over a doomed land. But time will tell.

“But while delays go on, the mills of the gods are grinding on; time nor tide cannot stop them. And if this nation sits down at its ease for a decade longer, woe to this republic!”

I wuz so thrilled, and skairt, and enthused by Cousin John Richard’s eloquence and strange and fiery words and flowery language that when I sort o’ come to myself I looked up, a expectin’ to see Josiah bathed in tears, for he weeps easy.

But even as I looked, I heard a low, peaceful snore. And I see that Josiah Allen had so fur forgot good manners and what wuz due to high principles and horspitality as to set there fast asleep. Yes, sleepin’ as sweet as a babe in its mother’s arms.

I looked mortified, I know.

But Cousin John Richard took it all historically—nuthin’ personal could touch him, so it seemed.

And sez he to me, “There is a fair instance of what I have told you, cousin—a plain illustration of the indifference and unbelief of the North as to the state of affairs in the Southern States.”

“Wall,” sez I, “Josiah has been broke of his rest some durin’ the year with newraligy, and you must overlook it in him.”

And, wantin’ to change the subject, I asked him if he wouldn’t like a glass of new milk before retirin’ and goin’ to bed.

And he said he would; and I brung it in to him with a little plate of crackers on a tray. And as I come by Josiah Allen I made calculation ahead to hit him axidentally on his bald head with my elbow.

And he started up, with his face nearly covered with smiles and mortification, and sez he:

“That last remark of yours, Cousin John Richard, wuz very convincin’ and eloquent.”

The remark wuz, “I like new milk very much.”

But I wouldn’t throw that milk into his face. And Cousin John received the milk and the remark with composure.

And I kep’ them two men down on to relations, and sheep, and such like subjects till I got ’em off to bed.

I give John Richard a good dose of spignut syrup, for he complained of a sore throat, and he wuz hoarse as a frog. Good land! I should have thought he would be, talkin’ as much as he had, and eloquent too.

Eloquence is dretful tuckerin’; I know well its effects on the system, though mebby I hadn’t ort to be the one to say it.

Wall, in the mornin’ Cousin John Richard wuz weak as a cat. All tired out. He couldn’t hardly get round. And I made him lay down on the lounge in the settin’ room, and I give him spignut syrup once a hour most all day, and kep’ him warm, and lumps of maple sugar for his cough.

And by night he seemed like a new man—that spignut syrup is wonderful; few people know the properties of it.

Wall, Josiah and I both took such a likin’ to that good onselfish eloquent creeter that we prevailed on him to stay a week with us right along.

And we took him to see the children, and Josiah took him up to Uncle Thomas’es, and Cousin Sophronia’s on his own side, and we done well by him.

And I fixed up his clothes with Philury’s help—they wuz good ones, but they needed a woman. But we mended ’em and rubbed ’em up with ammonia where it wuz needed, and they wuz in good condition when he went back to his work.

Good land! wild oxen, nor camels, nor nuthin’ couldn’t have kep’ him from that “field” of hisen.

But when it come the mornin’ for him to leave, he hated to go—hated to like a dog.

And we hated to have him go, we liked him the best that ever wuz. And we tried to make him promise to come to see us agin. But he seemed to feel dubersome about it; he said he would have to go where his work called him.

His bizness now up North wuz to see about some money that had been subscribed for a freedmen’s school and meetin’ house. But he promised to write to us now and then, and he spoke with deep feelin’ about the “sweet rest he had had there,” and how he never should forget it; he talked real eloquent about it, and flowery, but he meant every word, we could see he did.

It happened curius about the chapter Josiah read that mornin’—he most always reads the first one he opens to. And it wuz the one where Paul tells about his hard work and trials, and how the Lord had brought him out of ’em all.

How he wuz beaten with rods, and stuned, and wuz in perils of waters, and perils by his own countrymen, and perils by the heathen, and in the wilderness, and amongst false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness, and hunger and thirst, and cold and nakedness.

And how he gloried in his weakness and infirmities, if so God’s strength should be made perfect and His will be accomplished.

I declare for it, I couldn’t help thinkin’ of Cousin John Richard, though mebby it hain’t right to compare one of our relations to Paul, and then agin I didn’t spoze Paul would care. I knew they both on ’em wuz good, faithful, earnest creeters anyway.

Then Cousin John Richard prayed a prayer that almost caught us up to the gates of Paradise, it wuz so full of heavenly love, and tenderness, and affection for us, and devotion to his work, and everything good, and half saintly.

And then most imegiatly he went away on the mornin’ stage.

And at the very last, when most every other man would be a thinkin’ of umberells or shawl straps, he took our hands in hisen and sez:

“Stand fast in the faith! be strong!” And then he bid us “good-bye, and God bless us!” and wuz gone.

Good, faithful, hard-workin’ creeter. The views he had promulgated to us wuz new and startlin’, and Josiah and he couldn’t agree on ’em; but where is there two folks who think alike on every subject?

But whether they wuz true or false, I knew that John Richard believed every word he had said about the state of affairs in the South.

“WITH PHILURY’S HELP.”

CHAPTER II.

JOSIAH had to go to Shackville with a hemlock saw log that day, so he went off most imegiatly after Cousin John Richard departed.

And I resoomed the occupation I had laid down for the last week, and did a big day’s work, with Philury’s help, a cleanin’ house.

But I had a good warm supper when my companion returned. I always will, work or no work, have meals on time, and good ones too—though I oughtn’t to boast over such doin’s.

We had cleaned the kitchen that day, papered it all over new and bright, and put down three breadths of a new rag carpet, acrost the west end.

And I had put up some pretty new curtains of cream-colored and red cheese cloth, one breadth of each to a winder, and looped ’em back with some red lute-string ribbon.

And I had hung my canary-cage in between the two south winders, over the stand of house plants; and the plants had done dretful well, they wuz in full blow.

And then I brung in the two big easy-chairs covered with handsome new copper plate—one for Josiah and one for me.

And when I had set the supper-table, covered with a snowy cloth, in front of the south winders, the place looked well. We had took the carpet up in the dinin’ room and had to set the table there. But it looked well enough for anybody.

And havin’ had Philury to do the heaviest of the work, I didn’t feel so very beat out, and I changed my dress and sot quiet and peaceful and very calm in my frame a waitin’ for my companion, while the grateful odor of broiled chicken, and cream biscuit, and the rich coffee riz up and permeated the room.

Josiah duz love a cup of hot, fragrant coffee with cream into it when he has been to work in the cold all day. And it wuz quite cold for the time of year.

Wall, I had put on a good new gingham dress and a white apron, and I had a lace ruffle round my neck; and though I hain’t vain, nor never wuz called so, only by the envious, still I knew I looked well.

And I could read this truth in my companion’s eyes as he come home cold and cross and hungry—come into that warm, pleasant room and into the presence of his devoted pardner.

At once and imegiatly his cares, his crossness, and his troubled mean dropped from him like a garment he wuz tired of, and he felt well.

And his appetite was good—excellent.

And it wuzn’t till after the dishes wuz all washed up, and we wuz a settin’ on each side of the stand, which had a bright cloth and a clean lamp on it, I with my knittin’ work and he with his World, that he resoomed and took up the conversation about Cousin John Richard’s beliefs.

And I see, jest what I had seen, that as well as he liked John Richard, that worthy creeter had not convinced him; and he even felt inclined, now the magnetism of his presence wuz withdrawn, to pow at his earnest beliefs and sentiments.

I waved off Josiah’s talk; I tried to evade his eloquence (or what he called eloquence). For somehow John Richard’s talk had made more impression onto me than it had onto Josiah, and I could not bear to hear the cherished beliefs of that good man set all to naut.

So I tried to turn off Josiah’s attention by allusions to the tariff, the calves, the national debt, to Ury’s new suit of clothes, to the washboard, to Tirzah Ann’s married life, and to the excellencies and beauties of our two little granddaughters Babe and Snow—Tirzah Ann’s and Thomas Jefferson’s little girls.

But though this last subject wuz like a shinin’ bait, and he ketched on it and hung there for some time, a descantin’ on the rare excellencies of them two wonderful children, yet anon, or nearly so, he wriggled away from that glitterin’ bait and swung back to the subject that he had heard descanted on so powerfully the night John Richard come.

And in spite of all my nearly frenzied but peaceful efforts—for when he wuz so tired and beat out I wouldn’t use voyalence—he would resoom the subject.

And sez he for the third or fourth time:

“John Richard is a crackin’ good feller—they most all of ’em are that are on my side—but for all that I don’t believe a word of what he said about the South.”

I kep’ demute, and wouldn’t say what I did believe or what I didn’t, for I felt tired some myself; and I felt if he insisted and went on, I should be led into arguin’ with him.

For Cousin John Richard’s talk had fell into meller ground in my brain, and I more than mistrusted it wuz a springin’ up there onbeknown to me.

Josiah Allen and I never did, and I spoze never will, think alike about things, and I am fur more mejum than he is.

And then he sort o’ satisfies himself by lookin’ at one side of a idee, while I always want to walk round it and see what is on the other side on it, and turn it over and see what is under it, etc., etc.

But anon he bust out agin, and his axent was one that must be replied to; I felt it wouldn’t do to ignore it any longer.

Sez he, “I am dead sick of all this talk about the Race Problem.”

“Then why,” sez I, mildly but firmly, “why do you insist on talkin’ on it?”

“I want to tell you my feelin’s,” sez he.

Sez I, “I know ’em, Josiah Allen.”

And then I sot demute, and hoped I had averted the storm—or, ruther, I would call it the squall, for I didn’t expect a hard tempest, more of a drizzle.

So I knit fast, and sot in hope.

But anon he begun agin:

“I am sick on’t. I believe more’n half the talk is for effect. I don’t believe the South is a bleedin’; I hain’t seen no blood. I don’t believe the niggers are a rizen, I hain’t seen ’em a gettin’ up. I believe it is all folderol.”

And then I sez, a lookin’ up from my knittin’ work:

“Be mejum, Josiah Allen; you don’t live there. You hain’t so good a judge as if you lived in the South; you hain’t so good a judge as John Richard is, for he has lived right there.”

And he snapped out real snappish:

“Wall, there is lots of places I never lived in, hain’t there? But anybody can know sunthin’, whether they live anywhere or not.”

But I kep’ on real mejum and a talkin’ deep reason, I know well.

“When anybody is a passin’ through deep waters, Josiah Allen, they can feel the cold waves and the chill as nobody can who is on dry land.”

And then Josiah said them inflammatory words agin that he had hurled at the head of John Richard, and that had gaulded him so. He sez in a loud, defiant axent, “Oh shaw!”

And I sez, “You hain’t there, Josiah Allen, and you hain’t so well qualified to shaw, and shaw accordin’ to principle, as if you wuz there.”

“Wall, I say, and contend for it,” sez he, almost hotly, “that there is too much dumb talk. Why don’t the niggers behave themselves, and why don’t the Southerners treat ’em as I treat Ury?

“Ury has worked for me upwards of seven years, and he hain’t riz, has he? And I hain’t been a howlin’ at him, and a whippin’ him, and a shootin’ at him, and a ridin’ him out on a rail, and a burnin’ him to the stake if he wouldn’t vote me in President; and he hain’t been a massecreein’ us, not that I have ever hearn on, or a rapinin’ round, and I hain’t rapined Philury, have I?

“If there is any truth in these stories, why don’t the South foller on and do as I do? That would end their troubles to once.

“Let the Southerners act as I do, and the niggers act like Ury, and that would end up the Race Problem pretty sudden.”

Sez I, in pretty lofty axents, for I begun to feel eloquent and by the side of myself, “How many generations has it took to make you honest and considerate, and Ury faithful and patient? How long has it took, Josiah Allen?”

“Why, about seven years or thereabouts. He come in the middle of winter, and now it is spring.”

Sez I, “It has took hundreds and hundreds of years, Josiah Allen.”

And I went on more noble and deep:

“Ury’s parents and grandparents, and back as fur as he knows, wuz good, hard-workin’, honest men—so wuz yours. You are both the children of freedom and liberty. You haven’t been saddled with a burden of ignorance and moral and physical helplessness and want. He has no lurid background of abuse and wrongs and arrogance to inflame his fevered fancies.

“You might as well say that you could gather as good grain down in your old swamp that has never been tilled sence the memory of man, as you can in your best wheat field, that has been ploughed, and harrowed, and enriched for year after year.

“The old swamp can be made to yield good grain, Josiah Allen, but it has got to be burned over, and drained, and ploughed, and sown with good grain.

“There is a Hand that is able to do this, Josiah Allen. And,” sez I, lookin’ off some distance beyend him and Jonesville, “there is a Hand that I believe is a dealin’ with that precious soil in which saints and heroes are made, and where the beauteous flower of freedom blows out.

“Has not the South been ploughed with the deep plough of God’s purpose—burned with the lightnin’ of His own meanin’, enriched with the blood of martyrs and heroes? Has not the cries of His afflicted ones rose to the heavens while onbeknown to ’em the chariot of Freedom wuz marchin’ down towards the Red Sea, to go ahead on ’em through the dretful sea of bloodshed and tribulations, while the black clouds of battle riz up and hid the armies of Slavery and Freedom, hid the oppressors and the oppressed?

“But the sea opened before ’em, and they passed through on dry land.

“Now they are encamped in the wilderness, and the tall, dark shapes of Ignorance and Hereditary Weakness and Vice are a stalkin’ along by their sides, and coverin’ ’em with their black shadows. The stumps are thick in their way. The old trees of Custom and Habit, though their haughty tops may have been cut off a little by the lightnin’ of war, yet the black, solid, onbroken stumps stand thick in their way—so thick they can’t force their way through ’em—and the black mud of Open Enmity, and Arrogance, and Prejudice is on one side of ’em, and on the other the shiftin’, treacherous quicksands of Mistaken Counsel.

“Their way is blocked up, and the light is dim over their heads. Religion and Education is the light that is goin’ ahead on ’em; but that piller of fire is some ways ahead of ’em, and its rays are hindered by the branchin’ shadows over their heads. And who will be the Moses to lead ’em out of this wilderness into their own land?”

I wuz almost entirely by the side of myself with deep emotions of pity and sympathy and a desire to help ’em, and I felt riz up, too, in my mind—awful riz up—and I spoke out agin, entirely onbeknown to myself:

“Who will be the Moses to lead ’em into the Promised Land?”

“Wall, it won’t be me,” sez Josiah. “I am goin’ out to bed down the horses.”

I wuz took aback, and brung down too sudden from the Mount of Eloquence I had been standin’ on.

And I put on my nightcap and went to bed.

Now, I don’t spoze you would believe it—most anybody wouldn’t—but the very next mornin’ Josiah Allen resoomed and took up that conversation agin, that I fondly hoped he had thrown down for good when he so suddenly departed to the horse barn.

But if you can believe it, before I got breakfast ready, while he was a wipin’ his hands to the sink on the roller towel, he broke out agin as fresh seemingly in debate as ever.

If I had mistrusted it ahead I should have made extra preparation for breakfast, for the purpose of quellin’ him down, but I hadn’t dreamed of his resoomin’ it agin; and I only got my common run of brekfasses, though it wuz very good and appetizin’.

I had some potatoes warmed up in cream, and some lamb-chops broiled brown and yet juicy, some hot muffins light as a feather, and some delicious coffee—it wuz good enough for a King or a Zar—but then it wuzn’t one of my choice efforts, for principle’s sake, which I often have to make in the cookin’ line, and—good land!—which every other human woman has to make who has a man to deal with.

We can’t vote, and we have to do sunthin’ or other to get our own way.

Wall, as I wuz a sayin’, he broke out anew, and sez he:

“I am sick as a dog of all this talk about the Race Problem.”

And then agin I uttered them wise words I had spoken the night before; they wuz jest heavy with wisdom if he had only known it; and sez I:

“What makes you keep a bringin’ it up, then and a talkin’ about it?”

And agin he sez, “He done it to let me know how he felt about it.”

And agin I sez, “I knew it before.”

And I silently but smoothly poured my sweet cream over my sliced potatoes, and turned my lamb-chops and drawed my coffee forwards so it would come to a bile.

And he repeated, “I believe in lettin’ things alone that don’t consarn us; it hain’t none of our bizness.”

And seein’ he wuz bound on talkin’ on it, why, I felt a feelin’ that I must roust up and set him right where I see he wuz wrong; I see it was my duty as a devoted pardner. And so, after we had got down to the table, and he sez agin in more powerful and even high-headed axents, “that it wuz none of our bizness,” then I spunked up and sez, “It seems to me, Josiah Allen, that the cause of eternal truth is always our bizness.”

“Oh, wall! it hain’t best to meddle; that is my idee, and that is my practice. Don’t you know that when Ury had that fight with Sam Shelmadine, I said I wouldn’t either make nor break? I said I won’t meddle, and I didn’t meddle. It wuzn’t my bizness.”

“WHEN URY HAD THAT FIGHT WITH SAM.”

“But you found it wuz your bizness before you got through with it—you lost Ury’s help six weeks in your hurryenst time, when he wuz away to the lawsuit, etc., etc. And it made Philury sick, and you and I had to be up with her more or less, and you took cold there one night, and had a sickness that lasted you for weeks and almost killed you; and if you had died,” sez I in deep tones of affection and pathos, “if you had left your devoted pardner forever, could you have looked me in the face and said that this trouble of theirs wuzn’t nuthin’ that affected us? No; when a black cloud comes up the sky you can’t tell where the lightnin’ is a goin’ to hit—whether it will strike saint or sinner.” I see he wuz affected by my tender and eloquent allusion to his passin’ away; for a moment he looked softened and almost as if he wuz a goin’ to lay down the argument somewhere and leave it there. But anon his linement clouded up, and he assumed the expression of doggy obstinacy his sect knows so well how to assume, and sez he:

“But this is sunthin’ entirely different. There hain’t no earthly possibility that this nigger question can affect us one way or another; there hain’t no way for it to,” sez he.

Sez I, “Hain’t you got a heart, Josiah Allen, to help others who are in trouble and jeopardy, and don’t know which way to turn to get the right help?”

“I have got a heart to help Number One—to help Josiah Allen—and I have got a heart to mind my own bizness, and I am a goin’ to.”

And he passed over his cup agin for the third cup of coffee. That man drinks too much coffee—it hain’t good for him; but I can’t help it; and my coffee is delicious anyway, and the cream is thick and sweet, and he loves it too well, as I say; but as good as it wuz, it couldn’t draw his mind from his own idees.

Sez he agin, in louder axents and more decideder ones:

“There hain’t no possible way that we can be affected by the Race Problem one way or another.”

And I begun to feel myself a growin’ real eloquent. I don’t love to get so eloquent that time of the day, but mebby it wuz the effect of that gauldin’ tone of hisen. Anyway, I sez:

“It is impossible to guard one’s self aginst the effects of a mighty wrong.

“The links that weld humanity together are such curius ones, wove out of so many strands, visible and invisible, strong as steel and relentless as death, and that reach out so fur, so fur on every side, how can any one tell whether a great strain and voyalence inflicted on the lowest link of that chain may not shatter and corrode and destroy the very highest and brightest one?

“The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand, and we are bein’ pulled along by that mighty, inexorable hand into we know not what.

“The link that shines the brightest to-day may be rusty to-morrow, the strongest one may be torn in pieces by some sudden and voyalent wrench, or some slow, wearin’ strain comin’ from beneath.

“How can we tell, and how dast we say that a evil that affects one class of humanity can never reach us—how do we know it won’t?”

“Because we do know it!” hollered Josiah. “I know it is jest as I tell you, that that dumb nigger question can’t never touch us anyway. I’ve said it, and I’ll stick to it.”

But I still felt real eloquent, and I went right on and drew some metafors, as I most always do when I get to goin’, I can’t seem to help it.

Sez I, “The temperate man may say the liquor question will never affect him, but some day he gathers his sober children about him, and finds one is missin’—the pet of them all driven down in the street to death by a drunken driver.

“A Christian woman sez, ‘This question of Social Purity cannot affect me, for I am pure and come from a pure ancestry.’ But there comes a day when she finds the lamb of her flock overtaken and slain by this evil she thought could never touch her.

“The rich capitalist sets back in his luxurious chair and reads of the grim want that is howlin’ about the hovels of the poor laborers, the deaths by exposure and starvation. The graves of these starved victims seem fur off to him. They can never affect him, he thinks, so fur is he removed in his luxurious surroundin’s from all sights of woe and squalor.

“But even as he sets there thinkin’ this, in his curtained ease, a bullet aimed by the gaunt, frenzied hand of some starvin’ child of labor strikes his heart, and he finds in death the same level that the victims of want found by starvation.

“The mighty chain of humanity has drawn ’em on together, the high and the low, down to the equality of the grave.

“The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand anyway, and is beyend our control in its consequences.

“And how dast we to say with blind confidence that we know thus and so; that the evils that affect our brothers will not some time come to us; that the shadows that lay so heavy on their heads will not some time fall on us?”

“They hain’t our brothers,” hollered out Josiah in fearful axents. He wuzn’t melted down at all by my eloquent remarks; no, fur from it.

“They hain’t my brothers, and I know these dumb doin’s in the South won’t affect us, nor can’t, and you can’t make it,” sez he.

The idee of my wantin’ to! But that is the nater of men—wantin’ to say sunthin’ to kinder blame a female. And truly he acted mad as a hen to think I should venter to talk back, or even speak on the subject.

Oh, short-sighted man that he wuz—when the darkness wuz even then gatherin’ in the distance onbeknown to us, to take the shape of the big shadow that wuz to fall on his poor old heart and mine—the shadow reachin’ from the Southern sky even unto the North, and that would blot out all the sunshine for us for many and many a weary day, and that we must set down under for all the rest of our lives!

But I am a eppisodin’.

MELINDA.

CHAPTER III.

WALL, it never rains but it pours, duz it? And it has been my experience durin’ quite a middlin’ long life (jest how long, hain’t no matter, as I know on, to anybody but the man who takes our senses).

But as I wuz sayin’, it has always been my experience that if company gets to comin’ either on my side or hisen, they keep a comin’.

And it wuz only a short time after John Richard’s departure and exodus that I got a letter from a aunt on my side kinder askin’ and proposin’ to have her daughter Melinda Ann come to Jonesville to make us a long visit.

And only a little while after this, one of hisen writ to the same effect.

And we had ’em both here to one time.

It wuz hard, but it seemed providential, and couldn’t be helped, and it worked out a onexpected good in the end that paid us some for it. But I wouldn’t go through it agin for a dollar bill.

You see the way on’t is, I sot out in married life determined to do as well or better by the relations on his side than I did by them on my own side. I wuz bound to do well by the hull on ’em, jest bound to.

But I made up my mind like iron that I would stand more, take more sass, be more obleegin’, and suffer and be calm more from hisen than from mine, and I would do awful, awful well by both sides.

And it wuz these beliefs carried out and spread out into practice that caused my agonies and my sufferin’s that I went through for weeks.

The way on’t wuz, I had a letter from the city from my great-aunt Melinda Lyons, a tellin’ me that her oldest girl, Melinda Ann (a old maiden), wuz all run down with nervous prostration, nervous fits and things, and she asked me if I would be willin’ to have her come down into the country and stay a few weeks with me.

Wall, Aunt Melinda had done a good many good turns by me when I wuz a girl, and then I set quite a good deal of store by Melinda Ann, she and I wuz jest about of a age, and I talked it over with Josiah, and we give our consents and writ the letter, and the next week Melinda Ann come on, bag and baggage. A leather trunk and a bag for baggage.

Wall, we found Melinda Ann wuz very good dispositioned and a Christian, but hard to get along with.

MELINDA HAS A FIT.

The least thing we could do or say that wuz not jest so would throw her into a fit—a nervous fit you know—she would have spazzums, and all sally away, and faint like, and act.

And then I would have to soothe her with catnip, and bring her up with mustard poultices, and apply a soap-stone to her.

Why, one night Josiah happened to throw he bootjack down kinder hard (he had a corn and hit it, bein’ the cause).

Wall, I stood over Melinda more’n two hours after that, three poultices bein’ applied in vain for relief, till arneky softened the blow to her.

And one night the slats came out of the hired man’s bed, jest acrost the hall from hern, and it took more’n a quart of catnip to make her hull agin.

And the cat fell through the suller winder—we have got a blind cat that acts like fury, always a fallin’ round and a prowlin’—wall, I thought Melinda Ann would never come to.

She thought it wuz Injuns; and the cat did scream awful, I’ll admit; it fell onto some tin ware piled up onto a table under the winder, and it skairt even the cat almost to death, so you can imagine the condition it throwed Melinda into. I thought it wuz ghosts, and so did Josiah, and felt riz up in my mind and full of or.

But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.

Wall, I guess Melinda Ann had been there about a week, and as well as I liked Aunt Melinda, and as well as I loved duty, I wuz a beginnin’ to feel perfectly beat out and fearfully run down in my mind and depressted, for fits is depresstin’, no matter how much duty and nobility of soul you may bring to bear onto ’em, or catnip.

Wall, I wuz a beginnin’ to look bad, and so wuz Josiah, although Josiah, though I am fur from approvin’ of his course, yet it is the truth that he seemed to find some relief in givin’ vent to his feelin’s out on one side, and blowin’ round and groanin’ out to the barn and in the woodhouse, more than I did, who took it calm, and considered it a dispensation from the first, and took it as such.

Wall, if you’ll believe it, right on the top of these sufferin’s come a letter from a relation of Josiah’s, a widowed man by the name of Peter Tweedle.

He wuz a distant relation of Josiah Allen—lived about two hundred miles away.

He writ that he wuz lonesome—he had lost his companion for the third time, and it wore on him. He felt that the country air would do him good. (We found out afterwards that he had rented his house sence his bereavement and had lived in a boarding-house, and had been warned out by the crazed landlady and the infuriated boarders, owing to reasons which will appear hereafter, and had to move on).

Wall, he wanted to come and visit round to our house first, and then to the other relations.

And I sez to myself, it is one of ’em on his side, and not one word will I say agin the idee, not if I fall down in my tracks.

And Josiah was so kinder beat out with Melinda, and depressted and wore out by havin’ to go round in his stockin’ feet so much and whisperin’, that he said, “That any change would be a agreeable one, and he should write for Peter to come.”

And I, buoyed up by my principle, never said a word agin the idee, only jest this:

“Think well on it, Josiah Allen, before you make the move.”

And sez Josiah, “It will be a comfort to make a move of any kind.”

He had been kep’ awful still, I’ll admit. But I couldn’t see how it wuz goin’ to make it any better to have another relation let in, on whomsoever’s side they wuz.

Howsomever, I see that Josiah wuz determined, and I felt a delicacy about interferin’, knowin’ well that I had one of the relations on my own side in the house. Who wuz I, I sez to myself—who be I, to set up agin hisen? No, I never will. So the letter of acceptance wuz writ, and in less than a week’s time Peter Tweedle come.

We spozed he would bring a satchel bag with him; mebby a big one, but—good land! Josiah had to go after his baggage with the Democrat wagon. We see he had come to stay; it wuzn’t a evenescent visit, but a long campane.

We didn’t know at the time that they wuz most all musical instruments; we thought they wuz clothes.

I see a black shadder come over my companion’s face as he shouldered the fifth trunk and took it up two flights of stairs into the attick.

He had filled the bedroom and hall.

Wall, I guess Peter Tweedle hadn’t been in the house over half an hour before he walked up to the organ and asked me if it wuz in good repair.

I sez, “I guess so.”

Sez he, “How many banks of reeds is in it?”

I sez, “I don’t know.”

Sez he, “Have you any objections to my tryin’ it?”

I sez, “No.”

Sez he, “Sence my last affliction I have turned my mind agin towards music, I find it soothes.” Sez he, “After my first bereavement I took up the pickelo—I still play on it at intervals; I learned that and the snare drum durin’ them dark hours,” sez he. “And I still play on ’em in lonesome moments. I have ’em both with me,” sez he.

“Durin’ my next affliction I learned the clarinet, the fife, and the base violin. Now,” sez he, “I am turnin’ my mind onto the brass horn in various keys. But I have brought all my instruments with me,” sez he, in a encouragin’ axent. “I frequently turn from one to another. When I get lonesome in the night,” sez he, “I frequently run from one to another till I have exhausted the capabilities of each, so to speak.”

I sithed and couldn’t help it, but I held firm on the outside, and he turned to the organ.

“I love the organ,” sez he; and with that he sot down on the music-stool, opened up all the loud bases, the double octave coupler, blowed hard, and bust out in song.

Wall, it all come jest as sudden onto Melinda as a thunder-clap out of a parlor ceilin’, or a tornado out of a teacup, it wuz as perfectly onexpected and onlooked for as they would be, and jest as skairful.

For this wuz one of her bad days, and bein’ a old maid, we thought mebby it would excite her too much to know a widower wuz in the house, so we had kep’ it from her.

And the first intimation she had of Peter’ses presence wuz this awful loud blast of sound.

His voice wuz loud in the extreme, and it wuz “Coronation” he bust out in.

He is pious, there hain’t a doubt on’t, but still “Coronation” is the loudest him in the him-book.

Wall, the very first time he blasted forth I knew jest as well as I knew afterwards what the result would be.

I hastened upstairs, and there she wuz, there sot Melinda Ann in a fit; she hadn’t had time to get onto the bed, and there she sot bolt upright in her rockin’ chair in a historical fit. We had better let her known he wuz there.

Wall, I histed her onto the bed as quick as I could, and hollered down the back stairs for catnip.

And as soon as I had brung her to a little, she would clench right into me, and groan and choke, and sort o’ froth to the mouth.

And I’ll be hanged if I didn’t feel like it myself, for right down under our feet I heard that loud, thunderin’ organ, for his legs wuz strong, and he blowed hard.

But yet so curius is human nater, specially wimmen’s human nater—right there in my agony I couldn’t help bein’ proud o’ that instrument. I had no idee, I said to myself, not a idee, that it had such a volume of sound.

But loud as it wuz, Peter’ses clarion voice rung out loud and high above it.

It wuz a fearful time, very. But even at that moment I sez to myself agin:

“He is a relation on his side—be calm!” and I wuz calm.

“IT WUZ ‘HOLD THE FORT’ HE BELCHED OUT IN.”

Wall, I rubbed Melinda Ann and explained it to her, and poulticed her, and got her kinder settled down.

And I see it took up her mind some. She didn’t seem to dislike it now, after the first shock wuz over.

And I left her propped up on her piller a listenin’, and went down and got supper.

Wall, it wuz all I could do to get that man away from the instrument long enough to eat.

He seemed to be kinder absent-minded and lost like till he got back to it agin.

Wall, it had been still for some time; you couldn’t hear a thing from the dinin’ room up in Melinda’s room. And when he bust out agin imegiatly after supper, it wuz too much, too much, for I spoze she had been in a drowze.

It wuz “Hold the Fort” he belched out in, with all the steam on. He had a way, Peter had, of bustin’ out loudest when he begun, and then kinder dwindle down towards the last of the piece. (But it wuz one of ’em on his side, and I didn’t murmur, not out loud, I didn’t.)

Wall, I knew what wuz before me at the first volley of sound. I sez to myself:

“Melinda Ann! Melinda Ann!” and hurried upstairs.

And there she wuz layin’ back on her piller with her eyes rolled up in her head and fixed, and her nuckels clenched.

Wall, I brung her to agin after a long and tejus process, and then agin I see that she sort o’ enjoyed it; and I left her propped up and went down and helped do up the work.

Wall, Peter never stopped playin’ till a late bedtime.

And then I might have slept some at first, only Josiah begun a noise where he left off, a scoldin’ and a jawin’.

And oh! my sufferin’s that I suffered with that man. I reminded him that Peter wuz a relation on his side—no avail.

I brung up his lonesome state.

Josiah said, “He’d ought to be lonesome! He’d ought to be fur away in the middle of the desert or on a island in the depths of the seas. Alone! alone!”

He raved, he swore, he said, “Dumb him!” repeatedly.

You see Josiah hated music anyway, only the very softest, lowest kind; and Peter’ses wuz powerful—powerful and continuous.

But I reminded Josiah Allen in the cause of duty that he had complained that the house wuz too still sence Melinda Ann had come, and he wanted a noise.

“I never wanted to be in a Lunatick Asylum,” sez he; “I didn’t hanker for Bedlam,” he yelled.

Wall, suffice it to say that I never got a wink of sleep till past midnight. And mebby it wuz about one o’clock, when all of a sudden we wuz all waked up by a low, rumblin’ noise, strange and weird.

My first thought was a earthquake, and then a cyclone.

But Josiah Allen had waked up first and got his senses before I did, and sez he:

“It is that dumb fool a playin’ on a base viol.”

And that wuz what it proved to be. He had got lonesome in the night, and got up and onpacked the base viol, and wuz playin’ a low, mournful piece on it, so’s not to wake us up.

He said in the mornin’ that he held it in for that purpose.

He is a good-natured creeter, and a mourner, there hain’t no doubt on’t, and so I told Josiah.

And he snapped out enough to take my head off:

“He’d ought to mourn! I mourn,” sez he, “Heaven knows I do. But I shan’t mourn after the first ray of daylight, for I’ll take his trunks and throw ’em outdoors, and him on top of ’em. And I’ll cast out Melinda Ann like a viper,” sez he. “I’ll empty the house of the hull crew of fools and lunaticks! I’ll do it,” sez he, “if I have a breath left in my body.”

When he sez this I thought of Melinda Ann. Had she got a breath left? Wuz she alive? Or wuz she not?

I jest sprung over Josiah Allen, I trompled on him, I won’t deny it, in my haste to get up, and I left him groanin’ and a sayin’ in a low, mournful axent:

“That foot could never be stepped on agin by him.”

But I didn’t stop to comfort him; no, my mind wuz too much took up with the relation on my side.

I hastened upstairs, and there wuz my worst fears realized.

Melinda Ann wuz wild as a hen hawk.

She had got the winder up and wuz jest a springin’ out. I ketched her by her limb and hollered for Josiah. Before he got there she had got her hands clenched into my hair and wuz a tryin’ to choke me.

But, good land! she didn’t know what she wuz a doin’.

Wall, Josiah Allen by main strength got her into the house agin, and after a tussle we got her onto the bed. And then I begun to doctor her up.

But I never tried to go to bed agin that night, for it wuz daylight before I got her quieted down.

“I KETCHED HER BY HER LIMB.”

Wall, Josiah had to go off that mornin’ early on bizness, to be gone all day. And I wuz glad on’t, for I wuz afraid, in spite of all I could do, he would do sunthin’ to disgrace himself in the eyes of both sides. His last words to me wuz:

“If I find either of them cussed fools in the house when I get back, I’ll burn the house down over their heads.”

But I knew he wouldn’t, I knew he would quiet down while he wuz gone, and he did.

But my sufferin’s through that day can’t never be told or sung. And the martyrs that I called on, and the groans and sithes that I smothered in my breast waist, couldn’t be told.

But jest as I expected, when Peter first blasted out on the clarinet loud and strong, not bein’ afraid of wakin’ anybody up, I had to drop everything and go right up to Melinda Ann. But the attack wuz light, and, as usual, after she got over the first shock she enjoyed it.

And I happened to mention—havin’ that pride I have spoke of, of havin’ the relations on his side stand on their best foot before mine—I happened to mention that Peter got up and played in the night because he wuz lonesome, and that he said he would give half his property (he wuz well off) if he had somebody to play the organ while he played the clarinet.

I see she grew more meller-lookin’ and brightened up, and she sez:

“I used to be a good player.”

And if you’ll believe it—I don’t spoze you will, for Josiah wouldn’t when I told him that night—

But when Josiah Allen came home that night they wuz a playin’ together like a pair of turkle doves, she a playin’ the organ, and he a settin’ by her a tootin’, both as happy as kings.

And from that time out she never got skairt agin when he bust out sudden in song or begun gradual. And her fits grew lighter and lighter and fur seldomer.

And though our sufferin’s wuz heavy and severe to hear that organ and clarinet, or base viol, or pickelo, or brass horn a goin’ day and night, yet I seemed to see what wuz a comin’ on’t, and I held Josiah by main force to stand still and let providential circumstances have a straight path to move on in.

Wall, after two weeks of sufferin’ on our part almost onexampled in history, ancient or modern, the end come.

Peter Tweedle took Josiah out one side and told him, as bein’ the only male relation Melinda Ann had handy to get at, “that he had it in his mind to marry her quietly and take her at once to his home in the city,” and he asked Josiah “if he had any objections.”

And Josiah told me that he spoke out fervently and earnestly, and sez, “No! Heaven knows I hain’t.”

And he urged Peter warm to have the weddin’ sudden and to once, that very day and hour, and offered to get the minister there inside of twenty minutes.

But I wuz bound to have things carried on decent. So I sot the day most a week off, and I sent for Aunt Melinda and his children that wuz married, and the single one, and we had a quiet little weddin’, or it would have been, only the last thing that they done in the house before they left wuz to get the hull crew on ’em to bust out in a weddin’ song loud enough almost to raise the ruff.

Wall, Peter writ to Josiah that he hadn’t been lonesome sence it took place, not a minute.

And Melinda Ann writ to me that she hadn’t had a fit sence, nor a spazzum.

So, as I told Josiah Allen, our sufferin’s brung about good to two lonesome and onhappy and fitty creeters, and we ort to be thankful when we look back on our troubles and afflictions with ’em.

And he looked at me enough to take my head off, if a look could guletine, and sez he:

“Thankful! Oh, my gracious Heaven! hear her! Thankful!”

And his tone wuz such that I hain’t dasted to bring up the subject sence. No, I don’t dast to, but I do inside of me feel paid for all I went through.

PETER AND MELINDA ANN.

CHAPTER IV.

WALL, it wuzn’t more than a few days after the marriage and departure of Peter and Melinda Ann, when I got a letter from Cousin John Richard—he wuz then in South Carolina, hard at work agin, literally follerin’ the example of Him who went about doin’ good.

The letter wuz writ in pure friendship, and then he wanted to find out the ingredients of that spignut syrup I had give him when he wuz at Jonesville, his throat wuz a botherin’ him agin, and he said that had helped him.

That is a good syrup, very, though mebby I hadn’t ort to say it. It is one that I made up out of my own head, and is a success.

Yeller dock, and dandelion roots, and spignut, steeped up strong, and sweetened with honey.

I sent it to him to once, with some spignut roots by mail; I wuz afraid he couldn’t get ’em in the South.

And in my letter I asked him out of politeness, as it were, how he wuz a gettin’ along colporterin’, and if things looked any brighter to him in the South.

And such a answer as I got—such a letter! why, it wuz a sermon almost. Jest as skairful, jest as earnest, and jest as flowery as the talk he had talked to us when he wuz with us.

Why, it fairly sent the cold chills over me as I read it.

But it madded Josiah. He wuz mad as a hen to hear it, and he said agin that he believed Cousin John Richard (Josiah knew he wuz jest as good as gold, and he wouldn’t brook a word from anybody else agin him), but he said he believed he wuz a losin’ his faculties.

He didn’t believe a word on’t. He didn’t believe there wuz any danger nor any trouble; if folks would only let the South alone and mind their own bizness, it would get along well enough. But some folks had always got to be a putterin’ around, and a meddlin’, and he shouldn’t wonder a mite if John Richard wuz a doin’ jest such a work as that.

And I sez mildly, “Sometimes things have to be meddled with in order to get ahead any.”

“Wall,” sez he, “don’t you know how, if there is any trouble in a family, the meddlers and interferers are the ones that do the most mischief?”

“But,” sez I, “teachin’ religion and distributin’ tracts and spellin’ books hadn’t ort to do any hurt.”

“Wall, I d’no,” sez Josiah. “I d’no what kind of tracts he is a circulatin’, mebby they are inflamitory. If they are offen a piece with some of his talk here, I should think the South would ride him out.”

And so Josiah went on a runnin’ John Richard’s work and belief down to the lowest notch; and I wuz glad enough when Deacon Henzy come in on a errant, for I wuz indeed in hopes that this would change the subject.

But my hopes, as all earthly expectations are liable to be, wuz blasted. For Josiah went right on with his inflamed speeches and his unbelief about any danger a threatenin’ the nation from the South.

And I truly found myself in the condition of the one mentioned in Scripture (only different sex and circumstances), where it sez the last state of that man wuz worse than the first. For while my pardner’s talk had consisted mostly of the sin of unbelief, Deacon Henzy’s remarks wuz full of a bitter hatred and horstility towards the ex-slaveholders of the Southern States.

He truly had no bowels of compassion for ’em, not one.

He come from radical abolitionist stock on both sides, and wuz brung up under the constant throwin’ of stuns, throwed by parents and grandparents at them they considered greater sinners than themselves.

And Deacon Henzy had gathered up them stuns and set ’em in a settin’ of personal obstinacy and bigotry, and wore ’em for a breastplate.

And hard it wuz to hit any soft place under them rocky layers of prejudices inherited and acquired.

And he and his folks before him didn’t know what the word mejum wuz, not by personal experience.

It needed only a word to set him off. Josiah spoke that word, and the wheel begun to turn and grind out denunciations of the Southerners as a class and as a people.

Oh, how he rolled out big-soundin’ terms of scathin’ reproaches and burnin’ rebukes, and the horrible wickedness of one human bein’ enslavin’ another one and enrichin’ himself on the unpaid labor of a brother man!

Why, it wuz fairly skairful to hear him go on, fur skairfuller than Josiah’s talk.

He had always talked rampant on the subject I knew, but as rampant as he had always been he wuz now fur rampanter than I had ever known him to be.

But as I found out most imegiatly, he wuz agitated and excited on this occasion almost more than he could bear, when he first come in.

For he soon went on and told us all about it.

A boy he had took—Zekiel Place by name—had run away and left him; or, that is, he had made all his preparations to go when the Deacon found it out, and the boy give him the chance of lettin’ him go or keepin’ him and payin’ him wages for his work.

Now, Deacon Henzy, like so many other human creeters, wuz so intent on findin’ out and stunin’ other folks’es faults, that he didn’t have time to set down and find out about his own sins and stun himself, so to speak.

He never had thought, so I spoze, what a hard master he wuz, and how he had treated Zekiel Place.

But I knew it; and all the while he went on a talkin’ about “the ignorance and wastefulness and shiftlessness of this class of boys, and how impossible it wuz to manage ’em and keep ’em down in their places; how you had to set down on ’em and set heavy if you didn’t want to be bairded to your face and run over by ’em; how if you give ’em an inch they would take a ell, and destroy and waste more than their necks wuz worth,” etc., etc., etc.—

All the while he wuz a goin’ on and a sayin’ all this I kep’ up a thinkin’, for I knew that Zekiel was a middlin’ good boy, and had been misused by the Deacon, so I had hearn—had been worked beyend his strength, and whipped, and didn’t get enough to eat, so the boy said.

The Deacon had took him for his board and clothes; but his board wuz hard indeed, and very knotty, and his clothes wuz very light, very.

And so, bein’, as I spoze, sort o’ drove to it, he riz. And as I say, the Deacon was madder than any hen I ever see, wet or dry.

“The idee,” sez he, “of that boy, that I have took care on ever sence he wuz a child, took care on him in health, and nussed him, and doctored him when he wuz sick” (lobelia and a little catnip wuz every mite of medicine he ever give him, and a little paregoric, so I have been told)—“the idee of that boy a leavin’ me—a rizin’ up and a sayin’ as pert as a piper, ‘If you don’t want to hire me, let me go.’”

“Wall, which did you do, Deacon?” sez I.

“Why, I hired the dumb upstart! I couldn’t get along without his work, and he knew it.”

“‘The laborer,’ Deacon Henzy,” sez I, solemn, “‘is worthy of his hire.’”

“Wall, didn’t I lay out to pay him? I laid out this very fall to get him a pair of pantaloons and a vest and a cravat. I laid out to pay him richly. And he had better a trusted to me, who have been a perfect father and gardeen to him, than to have riz up and demanded his pay. But,” sez he, “there is no use of talkin’ about it now, it only excites me and onmans me, and I come in merely to borry a augur and have a little neighborly visit.”

And then wantin’, I spoze, to take his mind offen his own troubles, he sort o’ launched off agin onto his favorite theme of runnin’ down the Southerners.

“The Southern people,” sez he, “are a mass of overbearin’, tyrannical slave-drivers, selfish, without principles or consciences, crackin’ their whips over the blacks, drivin’ ’em to work, refusin’ ’em any justice.”

“Why,” sez I, “the slaves are liberated, Deacon Henzy.”

“Wall, why be they?” sez he. “It wuzn’t from any good-will on the part of the bloated aristocracy of the South. They liberated ’em because they had to. Why didn’t they free ’em because it wuz right to free ’em? because it wuz right and just to the slaves? because it wuz a wicked sin that cried up to the heavens to make ’em labor, and not pay ’em for it?”

Why, he went on in fearful axents of wrath and skorn about it, and finally bein’ so wrought up, he said, “that them that upholded ’em wuz as bad as they wuz.”

Why, we had never dreamed of upholdin’ ’em, nor thought on’t; but he felt so.

He threw stuns fearful at the South, and at Josiah and me because we didn’t jine in with him and rip and tear as he did.

DEACON HENZY.

And them stuns kinder hurt me after a while; and so, when he asked me for the seventh time:

“Why didn’t they free their slaves before they wuz obleeged to?”

Then I sez, “It wuz probable for the same reason that you didn’t liberate Zekiel—mostly selfishness!”

“What! what did you say?” He could not believe his ear; he craned his neck, he turned the other ear. He wuz browbeat and stunted; and agin he sez: “What did you say?”

And I sez agin, calm as cream, but sharp and keen as a simiter, “I said it wuz selfishness, Deacon, and the power of old custom—jest the reasons why you didn’t free Zekiel.”

His linement fell more’n a inch. Like the Queen of Sheba before Solomon (only different sex) he had no spirit left in him.

He never had mistrusted; it made him feel so awful good to run the South further down than anything or anybody wuz ever run—he never mistrusted that he had ever done anything onjust, or mean, or selfish.

He loved to deplore Southern sins, but never looked to see if Northerners wuzn’t committin’ jest as ojeus ones.

I mean good, well-meanin’ Christian men, not to say anything about our white slaves in the cities who make shirts for five cents apiece, and sign their contracts with their blood.

Nor the old young children who are shut away from God’s sunshine and air in Northern manufactories and mines, and who are never free to be out under the beautiful sky till the sun has gone down or the grass is growin’ between it and their hollow, pitiful faces.

Nor the droves of street ruffians and beggars whose souls and bodies suffer and hunger jest as much under the Northern Star as under the Southern Cross.

No, I didn’t mean any of these, but jest respectable church-goers like Deacon Henzy.

And he, like so many others, wuz jest as blind to the idee as if he had been born with leather spectacles on and had wore ’em ever sence.

It is a good thing for folks North or South to have their blinders tilted up a little now and then, and get a glimpse of daylight into their orbs. I had tilted up hisen, and wuzn’t sorry a mite, not a mite. He had been a throwin’ stuns powerful, and he had got hit from one.

And pretty soon, after settin’ demute for quite a spell, he got up and left for home, feelin’ and actin’ quite meek and humble-sperited for him.

And I have hearn sence, and it comes straight to me—Zekiel’s mother told Miss Biddlecom’s Liza, and Liza’s sister-in-law told it to the Editor of the Augur’ses wife’s mother-in-law, and she told it to she that wuz Celestine Gowdey, and she that wuz Celestine told old Miss Minkley, and she told me—it come straight—that Deacon Henzy give Zekiel that very night a dollar bill, and from what I hear he has mellered up and used him first rate ever sence.

Yes, that man wuz blind as a bat and blinder. He had been for years a hackin’ at the beams that riz up on the Southern brethren’s eyes, and there he wuz a growin’ a hull crop of motes, and payin’ no attention to ’em.

But selfishness and injustice grows up jest as rank under Northern skies as Southern ones, and motes and beams flourish equally rank in both sections.

And Christians North and Christians South have to tussle with that same old man the Bible speaks of, and anon or oftener they get throwed by him.

“JOSIAH’S BALD HEAD AND MINE.”

CHAPTER V.

I WUZ a strange thing to come most imegiatly after Cousin John Richard’s visit, and our almost excited interview with Deacon Henzy—that Thomas J. should make the dicker he did make, and havin’ made it, to think that before a very long time had passed over Josiah Allen’s bald head and mine (it wuz his head that wuz bald, not mine) that we two, Josiah Allen and me, should be started for where we wuz started for, to come back we knew not when.

Yes, it happened curius, curius as anything I ever see—that is, as some folks count curiosity. As for me, I feel that our ways are ordered and our paths marked out ahead on us.

You know when the country is new, somebody will go ahead through the forests and “blaze” the trees, so the settlers can foller on the path and not get lost.

Wall, I always feel that we poor mortals are sot down here in a new country—and a strange one, God knows—and the wilderness stretches out round us on every side, and we are likely to get lost, dretful likely.

But there is Somebody who goes ahead on us and marks out our pathway. He makes marks that His true children can see if they only look sharp enough, if they put on the specks of Faith and the blinders of Onworldliness, and look keen. And, above all, reach out their hands through the shadows, and keep close hold of the hand that guides ’em.

And all along the way, though dark shadows may be hoverin’ nigh, there is light, and glory, and peace, and pretty soon, bimeby they will come out into a large place, the fair open ground of Beauty and Desire, into all that they had hoped and longed for.

But I am a eppisodin’ fearful, and to resoom.

As I say, to the outside observer it seemed queer, queer as a dog, that after all our talk on the subject (and it seemed as if Providence had jest been a preparin’ us for what wuz to come), that I myself, Josiah Allen’s wife, should go with my faithful pardner down South to stay for we knew not how long.

Wall, the way on’t wuz, our son Thomas Jefferson, who is doin’ a powerful big bizness, made a dicker with a man from the South for a big piece of land of hisen, a old plantation that used to be splendid and prosperous before the war, but wuz now run down. The name of the place—for as near as I can make out they have a practice of namin’ them old plantations—wuz Belle Fanchon, a sort of a French name, I wuz told.

Wall, Thomas J., in the way of bizness, had got in his hands a summer hotel at a fashionable resort, and this man wanted to trade with him. He hadn’t owned this plantation long—it had come into his hands on a mortgage.

Wall, Thomas Jefferson was offered good terms, and he made the trade.

And early in the fall Maggie, our son’s wife, got kinder run down (she had a young child), and comin’ from a sort of a consumptive family on her father’s side, the doctor ordered her to go South for the winter.

He said, in her state of health (she had been weak as a cat for months) he wouldn’t like to resk the cold of our Northern winter.

Wall, of course when the doctor said this (Thomas Jefferson jest worships Maggie anyway) he thought at once of that old plantation of hisen, for he had made the bargain and took the place, a calculatin’ to sell it agin or rent it out.

And the upshot of the matter wuz that along the last of October, when Nater seemed all rigged out in her holiday colors of red and orange to bid ’em good-bye, our son Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and little Snow, and the baby boy that had come to ’em a few months before, all set sail for Belle Fanchon, their plantation in Georgia.

Yes, the old girl (Nater) seemed to be a standin’ up on every hill-top a wavin’ her gorgeous bandana handkerchief to ’em in good-bye; and her blue gauze veil that floated from her forwerd looked some as if it had tears on it, it looked sort o’ dim like and hazy.

Josiah and I went to the depot with ’em, and on our way home Nater didn’t look very gay and festive to us neither, though she wuz dressed up in pretty bright colors—no, indeed!

Her gorgeous robes looked very misty and droopin’ to me. I didn’t weep, I wouldn’t be so simple as that. The tears sort o’ run down my face some, but I wouldn’t weep—I wouldn’t be so foolish when I knew that they wuz comin’ home in the spring, God willin’.

But the kisses they had all left on my face seemed to kinder draw me after ’em. And I felt that quite a number of things might happen between that time and the time when Nater and I would dress up agin to meet ’em—she in her pale green mantilly, and I in my good old London brown, and we would both sally out to welcome ’em home.

But I didn’t say much, I jest kep’ calm and demute on the outside, and got my pardner jest as good a dinner as if my heart wuzn’t a achin’.

I felt that I had to be serene anyway, for Josiah Allen was fearfully onstrung, and I knew that my influence (and vittles) wuz about the only things that could string him up agin.

So I biled my potatoes and briled my steak with a almost marble brow, and got a good, a extra good dinner for him as I say, and the vittles seemed to comfort him considerable.

Wall, time rolled along, as it has a way of doin’.

Good land! no skein of yarn, no matter how smooth it is, and no matter how neat the swifts run, nor how fast the winder is—nuthin’ of that kind can compare with the skein of life hung onto the swifts of time—how fast they run, how the threads fly, how impossible it is to stop ’em or make ’em go slower, or faster, or anything!

They jest turn, and turn, and turn, and the day’s reel offen the swifts, and the months and the years.

Why, if you jest stopped still in your tracks and meditated on it, it would be enough to make you half crazy with the idee—of that noiseless skein of life that Somebody somewhere is a windin’—Somebody a settin’ back in the shadows out of sight, a payin’ no attention to you if you try to find out who it is, and why he is a windin’, and how long he calculates to keep the skein a goin’, and what the yarn is a goin’ to be used for anyway, and why, and how, and what.

No answer can you get, no matter how hard you may holler, or how out of breath you may get a tryin’ to run round and find out.

You have got to jest set down and let it go on. And all the time you know the threads are a runnin’ without stoppin’, and a bein’ wound up by Somebody—Somebody who is able to hold all the innumerable threads and not get ’em mixed up any, and knows the meanin’ of every one of ’em, till bimeby the thread breaks, and the swifts stop.

But I am a eppisodin’. Wall, as I said, time rolled along till they had been down South most two months, and Thomas Jefferson wrote me that Maggie seemed a good deal better, and he wuz encouraged by the change in her.

When all of a sudden on a cold December evenin’ we got a letter from Maggie. Thomas Jefferson wuz took down sick, and the little girl.

And there wuz Maggie, that little delicate thing, there alone amongst strangers in a strange land.

And sez she, “Mother, what shall I do?”

That wuz about all she said in the way of complaint or agony. She wuzn’t one to pile up words, our daughter Maggie wuzn’t. But that wuz enough.

“Mother, what shall I do? what can I do?”

I illustrated the text, as artists say, while I wuz a readin’. I see her pale and patient face a bendin’ over the cradle of the infant, and little Snow, and over my boy, my Thomas Jefferson, who laid on my heart in his childhood till his image wuz engraved there for all time, and for eternity too, I think.

Wall, my mind wuz made up before I read the last words: “Your loving and sorrowful daughter, Maggie.”

Yes, my mind wuz all made up firm as a rock; and to give Josiah Allen credit, where credit is due, so wuz hisen—his mind wuz made up too.

He blowed his nose hard, and used his bandana on that, and his two eyes, and he said, “Them specks of hisen wuz jest a spilin’ his eyes.”

And I took up my gingham apron and wiped my eyes.

My spectacles sort o’ hurt my eyes, or sunthin’, and my first words wuz, “How soon can we start?”

And Josiah’s first words wuz, “I’ll go and talk it over with Ury. I guess to-morrow or next day.”

Wall, Ury and Philury moved right in and took charge of things and helped us off, and in less than a week’s time we wuz on our way down through the snow-drifts and icickles of the North to the greenness and bloom of the orange-trees and magnolias. Down from the ice-bound rivers of the North to the merry, leapin’ rivulets of Belle Fanchon. Down from the cold peace and calm of our Jonesville farm, down to the beauty and bloom of our boy’s home in the South land, the sorrow and pathos of his love-watched sick-bed, and our little Snow’s white-faced gladness.

We got there jest as the sun set. The country through which we had been a passin’ all day and for some time past wuz a hard and forbidden-lookin’ country—sand, sand, sand, on every side on us, and piled up in sand-heaps, and stretched out white and smooth and dreary-lookin’.

Anon, or mebby oftener, we would go by some places sort o’ sot out with orange-trees, so I spozed, and some other green trees. And once in a while we would see a house set back from the highway with a piazza a runnin’ round it, and mebby two on ’em.

And the children a playin’ round ’em, and the children a wanderin’ along the railroad-track and hangin’ about the depots wuz more than half on ’em black as a coal.

A contrast, I can tell you, to our own little Jonesvillians, with their freckled white faces and their tow locks a hangin’ over their forwerds.

The hair of these little boys and girls wuzn’t hair, it wuz wool, and it curled tight round their black forwerds. And their clothes wuz airy and unpretentious in the extreme; some on ’em had only jest enough on to hide their nakedness, and some on ’em hadn’t enough.

THE COLORED CHILDREN.

But our boy’s place wuz beautiful. It looked like a picture of fairy land, as we see it bathed in the red western light. And though we felt that we might on closter inspection see some faults in it, we couldn’t seem to see any then.

It wuz a big house, sort o’ light grey in color, with a piazza a runnin’ clear round it, and up on the next story another piazza jest as big, reared up and runnin’ all round—a verandy they called it.

And both stories of the piazza wuz almost covered with beautiful blossomin’ vines, great big sweet roses, and lots of other fragrant posies that I didn’t know the name of, but liked their looks first rate.

There wuz a little rivulet a runnin’ along at one side of the front yard, and its pleasant gurglin’ sound seemed dretful sort o’ friendly and pleasant to us.

The yard—the lawn they called it—wuz awful big. It wuz as big as from our house over to Deacon Gowdey’s, and acrost over to Submit Danker’ses, and I don’t know but bigger, and all sorts of gay tropical plants wuz sot out in bunches on the green grass, and there wuz lots of big beautiful trees a standin’ alone and in clusters, and a wide path led up from the gate to the front door, bordered with beautiful trees with shinin’ leaves, and there in the front door stood our daughter Maggie, white-faced, and gladder-lookin’ than I ever see her before.

How she did kiss me and her Pa too! She couldn’t seem to tell us enough, how glad she wuz to see us and to have us there.

And my boy, Thomas Jefferson, cried, he wuz so glad to see us.

He didn’t boohoo right out, but the tears come into his eyes fast—he wuz very weak yet; and I kissed them tears right offen his cheeks, and his Pa kissed him too. Thomas Jefferson wuz very weak, he wuz a sick boy. And I tell you, seein’ him lay there so white and thin put us both in mind, his Pa and me, what Jonesville and the world would be to us if our boy had slipped out of it.

We knew it would be like a playhouse with the lights all put out, and the best performer dumb and silent.

It would be like the world with the sun darkened, and the moon a refusin’ to give its light. We think enough of Thomas Jefferson—yes, indeed.

Oh, how glad little Snow wuz to see us! And right here, while I am a talkin’ about her, I may as well tell sunthin’ about her, for it has got to be told.

Snow is a beautiful child; she becomes her name well, though she wuzn’t named for real snow, but for her mother’s sirname. I say it without a mite of partiality. Some grandparents are so partial to their own offsprings that it is fairly sickenin’.

But if this child wuz the born granddaughter of the Zar of Russia or a French surf, I should say jest what I do say, that she is a wonderful child, both in beauty and demeanor.

She has got big violet blue eyes—not jest the color of her Pa’s, but jest the expression, soft and bright, and very deep-lookin’. Their gaze is so deep that no line has ever been found to measure its deepness.

When you meet their calm, direct look you see fur into ’em, and through ’em into another realm than ourn, a more beautiful and peaceful one, and one more riz up like, and inspired.

I often used to wonder what the child wuz a lookin’ for, her eyes seemed to be a lookin’ so fur, fur away, and always as if in search of sunthin’. I didn’t know what it wuz, but I knew it wuzn’t nuthin’ light and triflin’, from her looks.

Some picture of holiness and beauty, and yet sort o’ grand like, seemed before her rapt vision. But I couldn’t see what it wuz, nor Josiah, nor her Pa, nor her Ma.

Her hair is a light golden color, not yeller, nor yet orbun, but the color of the pure pale shiny gold you sometimes see in the western heavens when the sky is bright and glowin’.

It looked luminous, as if a light from some other land wuz a shinin’ on it onbeknown to us, and a lightin’ it up. You know how the sun sometimes, when it gets where we can’t see it, will shine out onto some pink and white cloud, and look as if the color wuz almost alive—so her hair looked round the rose pink and white of her pretty face.

Her little soft mouth seemed always jest on the pint of speakin’ some wonderful words of heavenly wisdom, the look on it wuz such, made in jest that way.

Not that she ever give utterance to any remark of national importance or anything of that kind.

But the expression wuz such you seemed to sort o’ look for it; and I always knew she had it in her to talk like a minister if she only sot out to.

And she did, in my opinion, make some very wise remarks, very. Josiah spoke to me about ’em several times, and said she went ahead of any minister or politician he ever see in the deepness of her mind.

And I told him he must be very careful and not show that he wuz partial to her on account of relationship. And I sez:

“Look at me; I never do. I always look at her with perfectly impartial and onprejudiced eyes, and therefore, therefore, Josiah, I can feel free to say that there never wuz such a child on earth before, and probable never will be agin;” and sez I, “if I wuz partial to her at all I shouldn’t dast to say that.”

“Wall,” sez he, “I dast to say what I am a minter; and I know that for deep argument and hard horse sense she will go ahead of any man on earth, no matter where he is or who he is, President, or Bishop, or anything.”

Josiah Allen has excellent judgment in such things; I feel that he has, and I knew he wuz simply statin’ the facts of the case.

Ever sence she wuz a very young infant, little Snow has made a practice of settin’ for hours and hours at a time a talkin’ to somebody that wuzn’t there; or, to state the truth plainer and truthfuller, somebody that we couldn’t see.

And she would smile up at ’em and seem to enjoy their company first rate before she could talk even, and when she begun to talk she would talk to ’em.

And I used to wonder if there wuz angels encamped round about her and neighborin’ with her; and I thought to myself I shouldn’t wonder a mite if there wuz.

Why, when she wuzn’t more than several months old she would jest lay in her little crib, with her short golden hair makin’ a sort of a halo round her white forwerd, and them wonderful heavenly eyes of hern lookin’ up, up—fur off—fur off—and a smilin’ at somebody or other, and a reachin’ out her little hands to somebody, a wavin’ ’em a greetin’ or a good-bye.

Curius! Who it wuz I’d gin a dollar bill any time, and more too, to have ketched a glimpse of the Form she see, and hearn the whispers or the music that fell on her ears, too fine and pure for our more earthly senses.

And most probable I never wuz any madder in my hull life than I wuz when old Dr. Cork, who wuz doctorin’ her Ma at that time, told me “It wuz wind.”

Wind! That is jest as much as he knew. But he wuz an old man, and I never laid it up aginst him, and I never said a word back, only jest this little triflin’ remark. I sez, sez I:

“The divine breath of Eden blowin’ down into pure souls below, inspirin’ ’em and makin’ ’em talk with tongues and see visions and dream dreams, has always been called ‘wind’ in the past, and I spoze it will be in the future, by fools.”

This little remark wuz everything that I said, and for all the world he looked and acted real meachin’, and meached off with his saddle-bags.

But now little Snow’s golden hair wuz a shinin’ out from the piller of sickness, the big prophetic eyes wuz shot up, and the forwerd wuz pale and wan.

But when she heard my voice she opened her eyes and tried to lift up her little snowflake of a hand—a little pretty gesture of greetin’ she always had—and her smile wuz sweet with all the sweetness of the love she had for me.

OLD DR. CORK.

And she sez, as I took her into my arms gently and kissed her poor little pale face time and agin, she sez:

“My own Grandma!” Now jest see the deepness and pure wisdom of that remark!

Now, fools might say that because I wuz her father’s stepmother that I wuzn’t her own Grandmother.

But she see further down; she see into the eternal truth of things. She knew that by all the divine rights of a pure unselfish love and the kinship of congenial souls, that her Pa wuz my own boy, and she wuz my own, heart of my heart, soul of my soul.

Yes, there it wuz, jest as she had always done, goin’ right down into any deep subject or conundrum and gettin’ the right answer to it imegiatly and to once.

Curius, hain’t it? and she not more’n four and a half—exceedingly curius and beautiful.

And as I bent there over her, she put up her little thin hand to my cheek and touched it with a soft caress, then brushed my hair back with the lily soft fingers, and then touched my cheek agin lightly but lovingly.

It wuz as good as a kiss, or several of ’em, I don’t know which I would ruther have, if I had been told to chuse between ’em at the pint of the bayonet—some kisses, or these caressin’ little fingers on my face.

They wuz both sweet as sweet could be, and tender and lovin’. And she wuz “my own sweet little baby,” as I told her morn’n a dozen times.

I loved her and she loved me; and when you have said that you have said a good deal; you have said about all there is to say.

And I felt that I wuz glad enough that I could take holt and help take care on her, and win her back to health and strength agin, if it lay in human power.

There wuz a tall, handsome girl in the room when I went in, and I spozed, from her ladylike mean, that she wuz one of the neighbors, and she wuz there a neighborin’ with my daughter Maggie, for she seemed to be a doin’ everything she could to help.

And I spozed, and kep’ on a spozin’ for more than a hour, that she wuz a neighborin’, till after she went out of the room for a few minutes, Maggie said she wuz a young colored girl, a “quadroon” she called her, that she had hired to help take care of Snow.

Sez I in deep amaze:

“That girl colored?”

“Yes,” sez Maggie.

“Wall,” sez I, “she is handsomer than any girl I ever sot eyes on that wuz oncolored.”

“Yes,” sez Maggie, “Genny is a beautiful girl, and jest as good as she is pretty.”

“Wall,” sez I, “that is sayin’ a good deal.”

Maggie told me her name was Genieve, but they called her Genny.

Wall, my daughter Maggie had spells all that evenin’ and the next day of comin’ and puttin’ her arms round me, and sort o’ leanin’ up aginst me, as if she wuz so glad to lean up aginst sunthin’ that wouldn’t break down under her head. I see she had been dretful skairt and nervous about Thomas Jefferson and Snow, and I don’t blame her, for they wuz very sick children, very. And there she (in her own enjoyment of poor health too) had had all the care and responsibility on her own self.

But I tell you she seemed real contented when her head sort o’ rested and lay up aginst my shoulder, or breast-bone, or arm, or wherever it happened to lay.

And she sez, and kep’ a sayin’, with a voice that come from her heart, I knew:

“Oh, Mother! how glad, how thankful I am you have come!”

And Thomas Jefferson felt jest so, only more so. He would reach out his weak white hand towards me, and I would take it in both of my warm strong ones, and then he would shet up his eyes and look real peaceful, as if he wuz safe and could rest.

And he sez more than once, “Mother, I am goin’ to get well now you have come.”

And I sez, cheerful and chirk as could be, “Of course you be.”

I’d say it, happy actin’ as could be on the outside, but on the inside my heart kep’ a sinkin’ several inches, for he looked dretful sick, dretful.

Maggie, the weak one when they left Jonesville, wuz the strongest one now except the young babe, that wuz flourishin’ and as rosy as the roses that grew round the balcony where he used to lay in his little crib durin’ the hot days.

As soon as I got rested enough I took sights of comfort a walkin’ round the grounds and a smellin’ the sweet breath of the posies on every side of me.

And watchin’ the gay birds a flutterin’ back and forth like big livin’ blossoms on wing.

And a listenin’ to the song of the little rivulet as it wound its way round amongst the pretty shrubs and flowers, as if it wuz loath to leave so beautiful a place.

Yes, I see that our son Thomas Jefferson had done well to make the dicker he had made and get this place for his own.

There wuz several little hills or rises of ground on the lawn, and you could see from them the roofs and chimneys of two little villages a layin’ on each side of Belle Fanchon, and back of the house some distance riz up a low mountain, with trees a growin’ up clear to the top. It wuz over that mountain that we used to see the sun come up (when we did see it; there wuzn’t many of us that see that act of hisen, but it paid us when we did—paid us well).

First, there would be a faint pink tinge behind the tall green branches of the trees, then golden rays would shoot up like a flight of gold arrows out over the tree-tops, and then pink and yellow and pinkish white big fleecy clouds of light would roll up and tinge the hull east, and then the sun would slowly come in sight, and the world would be lit up agin.

Down the western side of Belle Fanchon stretched the fair country for a long ways—trees and green fields, and anon, or oftener, a handsome house, and fur off the silvery glimpse of a river, where I spoze our little rivulet wuz a hurryin’ away to jine in with it and journey to the sea.

Yes, it wuz a fair seen, a fair seen. I never see a prettier place than Belle Fanchon, and don’t expect to agin.

The way it come to be named Belle Fanchon wuz as follows—Maggie told me about it the very next day after I arrived and got there:

She said the man that used to own it had one little girl, the very apple of his eye, who wuz killed by poison give to her by a slave woman, out of revenge for her own child bein’ sold away from her. But it wuz done by the overseer; her Pa wuz innocent as a babe, but his heart was broke all the same.

THE SLAVE WOMAN WHO POISONED THE CHILD.

The little girl’s name wuz Fannie—named after the girlish wife he lost at her birth. And he bein’ a foreigner, so they say, he called her all sorts of pretty names in different languages, but most of all he called her Belle Fanchon.

And when the little girl died in this terrible way, though he had a housefull of boys—her half brothers—yet they said her Pa’s head wuz always bowed in grief after that. He jest shet himself up in the big old house, or wandered through the shadowy gardens, a dreamin’ of the little one he had loved and lost.

And he give her name to the place, and clung to it as long as he stayed there for her sake.

It is a kind of a pretty name, I thought when I first heard it, and I think so still.

The little girl lay buried on a low hill at one side of the grounds, amongst some evergreens, and tall rose bushes clasping round the little white cross over her pretty head, and the rivulet made a bend here and lay round one side of the hill where the little grave wuz, like a livin’, lovin’ arm claspin’ it round to keep it safe. And its song wuz dretful low and sweet and sort o’ sad too, as it swept along here through the green shadows and then out into the sunshine agin.

It wuz a place where the little girl used to play and think a sight of, so they said. And it wuz spozed that her Pa meant to be laid by her side.

But the fortunes of war swept him out of the beautiful old place and his shadowy, peaceful garden, him and his boys too, and they fill soldiers’ graves in the places where the fortune of war took ’em, and her Pa couldn’t get back to his little girl. And Belle Fanchon slept on alone under the whisperin’ pines—slept on in sunlight and moonlight, in peace and war.

Sleepin’ jest as sweet at one time as the other—when the roar of cannon swept along through the pines that wuz above her, as when the birds’ song made music in their rustlin’ tops.

And jest as calm and onafraid as if her kindred lay by her side.

Though it seemed kinder pitiful to me, when I looked at the small white headstone and thought how the darlin’ of the household, who had been so tenderly loved and protected, should lay there all alone under dark skies and tempests.

Nobody nigh her, poor little thing! and an alien people ownin’ the very land where her grave wuz made.

Poor little creeter! But that is how the place come to be named.

Snow loved to play there in that corner when she wuz well; she seemed to like it as well as the little one that used to play there.

As for Boy, he wuz too young to know what he did want or what he didn’t.

He used to spend a good deal of his time a layin’ in his little cradle out in the veranda, and Genieve used to set there by him when she wuzn’t needed in the sick-rooms.

And I declare for it if it wuzn’t a picture worth lookin’ at, after comin’, as I had, from the bareness and icy whiteness of a Jonesville winter and the prim humblyness of most of the Jonesville females, especially when they wuz arrayed in their woollen shawls and grey hoods and mittens. To be jest transplanted from scenes like them, and such females a shinin’ out from a background of icickles and bare apple-trees and snow-drifts.

And then to shet your eyes in Jonesville, as it were, and open ’em on a balcony all wreathed round with clamberin’ roses, and set up aginst a background of orange-trees hangin’ full of oranges and orange blossoms too, and in front of that balcony to see a little white crib with some soft lace over the top, and a perfectly beautiful male child a layin’ on it, and by the side of him a girl with a slender figure as graceful as any of the tall white flowers that wuz a swayin’ and bendin’ beneath the balmy South wind, under the warm blue sky.

A face of a fair oval, with full, sweet lips, and an expression heavenly sweet and yet sort o’ sad in it, and in the big dark eyes.

They wuz as beautiful eyes as I ever had seen, and I have seen some dretful pretty eyes in my time, but none more beautiful than these.

And there wuz a look into ’em as if she had been a studyin’ on things for some time that wuz sort o’ pitiful and kind o’ strange.

As if she had been a tryin’ to get the answer to some momentous question and deep conundrum, and hadn’t got it yet, and didn’t seem to know when she would get it.

Dretful sad eyes, and yet sort o’ prophetic and hopeful eyes too, once in a while.

Them eyes fairly drawed my attention offen the young babe, and I found that I wuz, in spite of myself, a payin’ more attention to the nurse than I did to the child, though he is a beautiful boy, beautiful and very forward.

Wall, I entered into conversation with Genieve, and I found that she had lived in that neighborhood ever sence she wuz a small child, her mother havin’ owned a small place not fur from Belle Fanchon.

Her mother had gone out nursin’ the sick, and Genieve had learnt the trade of her; and then she had, poor child, plenty of time to practice it in her own home, for her mother wuz sick a long time, and sence her death Genieve had gone out to take care of little children and sick people, and she still lived on at the little cottage where her mother died, an old colored woman and her boy livin’ with her.

There wuz a few acres of land round the cottage that had fruit trees and berry bushes and vines on it, and a good garden. And the sale of the fruit and berries and Genieve’s earnin’s give ’em all a good livin’.

Old Mammy and Cato the boy took care of the garden, with an occasional day’s work hired, when horses wuz required.

The fruit and vegetables Cato carried to a neighborin’ plantation, where they wuz carried away to market with the farmer’s own big loads.

And there Genieve had lived, and lived still, a goin’ out deeply respected, and at seventy-five cents to a dollar a day.

I felt dretfully interested in her from the very first; and though it is hitchin’ several wagons before the horses’ heads, I may as well tell sunthin’ of her mother’s history now as to keep it along till bimeby. As long as it has got to be told I may as well tell it now as any time, as fur as I know.

Maggie told it to me, and it wuz told to her by a woman that knew what she wuz a sayin’.

Genieve’s mother wuz a very beautiful quadroon who had been brought up well by an indulgent and good-natured mistress, and a religious one too. There are as good wimmen in the South as in the North, and men too. She had educated Madeline and made a sort of a companion of her. She wuz rich, she could do as she wuz a mind to; and bein’ a widder, she had no one to say to her “Why do ye do so?”

So she had brought up Madeline as a sort of a pet, and thought her eyes of her.

Wall, this mistress had some rich and high-born French relatives, and one of ’em—a young man—come over here on a visit, and fell in love the first thing with Madeline, the beautiful quadroon companion of his aunt.

And she loved him so well that in the end her love wuz stronger than the principles of religion that the old lady had instilled into her, for she ran away with this Monseur De Chasseny, and, forgettin’ its wickedness, they lived an ideally happy life for years in a shootin’ lodge of hisen in the heart of a fragrant pine forest in South Carolina. They lived this happy life till his father found him, and by means of family pride, and ambition, and the love of keepin’ his own word and his father’s pledges, he got him to leave his idyllic life and go back to the duties of his rank and his family in the old country.

MADELINE

He had pledged his word to marry a rich heiress, and great trouble to both sides of their noble families wuz goin’ to take place and ensue if he did not go, and his own family wuz goin’ to be disgraced and dishonored if he did not keep his word.

Wall, men are often led to do things that at first they shrink from in mortal horror—yes, and wimmen are too.

De Chasseny vowed that he would not leave the woman he loved and the little girl they both worshipped, not for any reason—not for father, nor pride, nor for honor.

But he did. He left her, with plenty of money though, as it wuz spozed, and a broken heart, a ruined life, and a hoard of bitter-sweet and agonizin’ memories to haunt her for the rest of her days.

She wuz a lovin’-hearted woman bound up in the man she loved—the man she had forsaken honor and peace of mind for.

There wuz no marriage—there could be none between a white man and a woman with any colored blood in her veins.

So in the eyes of the world and the law he wuz not guilty when he left her and married a pure young girl.

Whether he wuz found guilty at that other bar where the naked souls of men and wimmen stand to be judged, I don’t spoze his rich and titled friends ever thought to ask themselves.

Anyway, he left Madeline and little Genieve—for so he had named the child after an old friend of his—he left them and sailed off for France and the new life to be lived out in the eyes of the world, where Happiness and gratified Ambition seemed to carry the torches to light him on his way.

Whether there wuz any other attendants who waited on him, a holdin’ up dim-burnin’ lamps to light him as he walked down Memory’s aisles, I don’t know, but I should dare presume to say there wuz.

I should presume to say that in the still night hours, when the palace lights burned low and the garlands and the feast robes put away for a spell, and his fair young wife wuz sleepin’ peacefully at his side—I should presume to say that these black-robed attendants, that are used to lightin’ folks down dark pathways, led him back to love—first, true, sweet love—and Madeline, and that under their cold, onsympathizin’ eyes he stayed there for some time.

As for Madeline, she wuz stunned and almost senseless by the blow, and wuz for a long time. Then she had a long sickness, and when she come to herself she seemed to be ponderin’ some deep thought all to herself.

The nurse who was watchin’ with her testified that she dropped to sleep one mornin’ before daylight, and when she woke up her patient wuz gone, and the child.

She had some money that her old mistress had give her from time to time, and that she had never had to use; that wuz taken, with some valuable jewelry too that that kind old friend had give her—for she had loved to set off her favorite’s dark beauty with the light of precious stones—all these wuz taken; but every article that Monseur De Chasseny had give her wuz left. And all the money that he left for her not a penny wuz ever called for. She disappeared as if she had never been; lawyers and detectives, hired, it wuz spozed, by De Chasseny, could find no trace of her.

There wuz a good, fatherly old missionary in the little settlement near by who might perhaps have given some information if he had wanted to; but they never thought of askin’ him, and they would have been no wiser if they had, most probable.

But about this time a woman in deep mournin’, with a beautiful young child, come to the little hamlet near Belle Fanchon.

She said she wuz a colored woman, though no one would have believed it.

The good priest in charge of the Mission—Father Gasperin—he seemed to know sunthin’ about her; he had a brother who wuz a priest in South Carolina. He got her employment as a nurse after her health improved a little.

She bought a little cottage and lived greatly respected by all classes, black and white, and nursed ’em both to the best of her abilities—some for nuthin’ and some at about a dollar a day.

But her earnest sympathies, her heartfelt affection wuz with the black race. She worked for their good and advancement in every way with a zeal that looked almost as if she wuz tryin’ to atone for some awful mistake in the past—as if she wuz tryin’ to earn forgiveness for forsakin’ her mother’s race for the white people, who wuz always faithless to her race, only when selfishness guided them—who would take the service of their whole life and strength, as if it belonged to ’em; who would take them up as a plaything to divert an hour’s leisure, and then throw the worthless thing down agin.

Her whole heart wuz bent upon the good of her mother’s people. She worked constantly for their advancement and regeneration. She bore their intolerable burdens for ’em, she agonized under their unexampled wrongs. She exhorted ’em to become Christians, to study, to learn to guide themselves aright; she besought ’em to elevate themselves by all means in their power.

She became a very earnest Christian; she went about doin’ good; she studied her Bible much. The Book that in her bright days of happiness she had slighted became to her now the lamp of her life.

Most of all did this heart-broken soul, who had bid good-bye to all earthly happiness, love the weird prophecies of St. John the Evangelist.

She loved to read of the Belovéd City, and the sights that he saw, to her become realities. She said she saw visions in the night as she looked up from dyin’ faces into the high heavens—she foretold events. Her prophetic sayin’s became almost as inspired revelations to them about her.

She said she heard voices talkin’ to her out of the skies and the darkness, and I don’t know but she did—I don’t feel like disputin’ it either way; besides, I wuzn’t there.

But as I wuz a sayin’, from what I wuz told, the little girl, Genieve, inheritin’ as she did her mother’s imaginative nature and her father’s bright mind and wit, and contemplatin’ her mother’s daily life of duty and self-sacrifice, and bein’ brought up as she wuz under the very eaves of the New Jerusalem her mother wuz always readin’ about, it is no wonder that she grew up like a posy—that while its roots are in the earth its tall flowers open and wave in the air of Eden.

The other world, the land unseen but near, became more of a reality to her than this. “The voices” her mother said she heard was to her real and true as the voice of good Father Gasperin, who preached in the little chapel every month.

The future of her mother’s race wuz to her plain and distinct, lit with light fallin’ from the new heavens on the new earth that she felt awaited her people.

The inspired prophecies to her pointed to their redemption and the upbuilding of a New Republic, where this warm-hearted, emotional, beauty lovin’ race should come to their own, and, civilized and enlightened, become a great people, a nation truly brought out of great tribulations.

She grew up unlike any other girl, more beautiful than any other—so said every one who saw her. A mind different from any other—impractical perhaps, but prophetic, impassioned, delicate, sorrowful, inspired.

When she became old enough she followed her mother’s callin’ of nursin’ the sick, and it seemed indeed as if her slight hands held the gift of healin’ in them, so successful wuz she.

Guarded by her mother as daintily as if she wuz the daughter of a queen, she grew up to womanhood as innocent as Eve wuz when the garden wuz new.

She turned away almost in disgust from the attention of young men, white or colored.

But about a year before I went to Belle Fanchon she had met her king. And to her, truly, Victor wuz a crowned monarch. And the love that sprung up in both their hearts the moment they looked in each other’s eyes wuz as high and pure and ideal an attachment as wuz ever felt by man or woman.

Victor wuz the son of a white man and a colored woman, but he showed the trace of his mother’s ancestry as little as did Genieve.

His mother wuz a handsome mulatto woman, the nurse and constant attendant of the wife of Col. Seybert, whose handsome place, Seybert Court, could jest be seen from the veranda of Belle Fanchon.

Col. Seybert owned this plantation, but he had been abroad with his family many years, and in the States further South, where he also owned property.

He had come back to Seybert Court only a few months before Thomas J. bought Belle Fanchon.

Mrs. Seybert wuz a good woman, and in a long illness she had soon after her marriage she had been nursed so faithfully by Phyllis, Victor’s mother, that she had become greatly attached to her; and Phyllis and her only child, Victor, had attended the Colonel and his wife in all their wanderings. Indeed, Mrs. Seybert often said and felt, Heaven knows, that she could not live if Phyllis left her.

And Victor wuz his mother’s idol, and to be near her and give her comfort wuz one of the reasons why he endured his hard life with Col. Seybert.

For his master wuz not a good man. He wuz hard, haughty, implacable. He wuz attached to Victor much as a manufacturer would be to an extra good piece of machinery by which his gains wuz enhanced.

Victor wuz an exceptionally good servant; he watched over his employer’s interests, he wuz honest amongst a retinue of dishonest ones. He saved his employer’s money when many of his feller-servants seemed to love to throw it away. His keen intelligence and native loyalty and honesty found many ways of advancin’ his master’s interests, and he helped him in so many ways that Col. Seybert had come to consider his services invaluable to him.

Still, and perhaps he thought it wuz the best way to make Victor feel his place and not consider himself of more consequence than he wuz—and it wuzn’t in the nater of Col. Seybert to be anything but mean, mean as pusley, and meaner—

Anyway, he treated Victor with extreme insolence, and cruelty, and brutality. Mebby he thought that if he didn’t “hold the lines tight,” as he called it, Victor might make disagreeable demands upon his purse, or his time, or in some way seek for a just recognition of his services.

Col. Seybert, too, drank heavily, which might perhaps be some excuse for his brutality, but made it no easier for Victor to endure.

At such times Col. Seybert wuz wont to address Victor as “his noble brother,” and order his “noble brother” to take off his boots, or put them on, or carry him upstairs, or perform still more menial services for him, he swearin’ at him roundly all the time, and mixin’ his oaths with whatever vile and contemptible epithets he could think of—and he could think of a good many.

And perhaps it did not make it easier for Victor to obey him that he told the truth in his drunken babble. Victor wuz his brother, and they two wuz the only descendants of the gallant old Gen. Seybert, the handsomest, the wittiest, the bravest and the most courtly man of his day.

He went down to the grave the owner of many hundred slaves, the husband of a fair young bride, and the father of two children, one the only son of his pretty Northern bride, the other the son of his mother’s maid.

And what made matters still more complicated and hard to understand, to this unowned, despised son had descended all the bright wit and philosophical mind, and suave, gentle, courteous manners of this fine gentleman Gen. Seybert; and to the son and legal heir of all his wealth, not a bit of his father’s sense, bright mind, and good manners.

One of his maternal great-uncles had been a rich, new-made man of low tastes and swaggerin’, aggressive manners. It wuz a sad thing that these inherited traits and tastes should just bound over one gentlemanly generation and swoop down upon the downy, lace-festooned cradle of this only son and heir—but they did.

All the nobility of mind, the grace, the kindly consideration for others, and the manly beauty, all fell as a dower to the little lonely baby smuggled away like an accursed thing, in his maternal grandmother’s little whitewashed cabin.

To the young heir, Reginald, fell some hundreds of thousands of dollars, two or three plantations, and an honored name and place in society, the tastes of a pot-boy, the mind and habits of a clown, the swaggerin’, boastin’ cruelty of an American Nero.

Col. Seybert drove and swore, and threatened his negroes as his great-uncle Wiggins drove the white operatives in his big Northern factory, kept them at starvation wages, and piled up his money-bags over the prostrate forms of gaunt, overworked men and women, and old young children, who earned his money out of their own hopeless youth; with one hand dropped gold into his coffers, and with the other dug shallow graves that they filled too soon.

Northern cupidity and avarice, Southern avarice and cupidity, equally ugly in God’s sight, so we believe.

It wuz indeed strange that to Reginald should descend all the great-uncle’s traits and none of his father’s, only the passionate impulses that marred an otherwise almost faultless character; and to Victor, the cast-off, ignored son, should descend all the courtly graces inherited from a long line of illustrious ancestors, and all the brilliant qualities of mind too that made old Gen. Seybert’s name respected and admired wherever known.

His sin in regard to Victor’s mother wuz a sin directly traceable to the influence of Slavery. As the deeds a man commits when in liquor can be followed back to that source, so could this cryin’ sin be traced directly back to the Slave regime.

It wuz but one berry off of the poisonous Upas-tree of Slavery that gloomily shadowed the beautiful South land, and darkens it yet, Heaven knows.

The top of this tree may have been lowered a little by the burnin’ fires of war, but the deep roots remain; and as time and a false sense of security relaxes the watch kept over it, the poison shoots spring up and the land is plagued by its thorny branches, its impassable, thick undergrowth.

The tree may be felled to the earth before it springs up agin with a more dangerous, vigorous growth and destroys the hull nation.

So Cousin John Richard said; but I don’t know whether it will or not, and Josiah don’t.

But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom and continue on.

Reginald Seybert wuz tolerably good-lookin’ in an aggressive, florid style, and he had plenty of boldness and wealth. And some, or all of these qualities, made it possible for him to marry a good woman of an impoverished but aristocratic Southern family.

The marriage wuz a sudden one—he did not give the young lady time to change her mind. He met her at a fashionable watering-place where they wuz both strangers, and, as I said, he give her no time to repent her choice.

After the honeymoon trip and her husband brought her to his home, she heard many strange things she had been kept in ignorance of—amongst them this pitiful story of Victor and his mother—and being what she wuz, a good, tender-hearted woman, with high ideals and pure and charitable impulses—perhaps it wuz this that made her so good to Victor’s mother, so thoughtful and considerate of him, and that made her, during her husband’s long absences on his wild sprees, give him every benefit of teachers and opportunity to study.

And Victor almost worshipped his gentle mistress, his unhappy mistress, for it could not be otherwise, that after she knew him well, her feelin’s for her husband could hardly have been stronger than pity. Perhaps after a time aversion and disgust crept in, and as she had no children or brothers of her own, she grew strongly attached to Phyllis and to Victor, the only relative—for so this strange woman called him in her thoughts—the only relative near her who wuz kind to her.

For as her beauty faded, worn away by the anguished, feverish beatings of a sad heart, Col. Seybert grew cruel and brutal to her also. It was not in his nature to be kind to anything, or to value anything that did not minister to his selfishness. He lived only for the gratification of his appetites and his ambition.

He prized Victor, as we said, as a manufacturer would prize an extra good loom, on which valuable cloth might be woven, and which would bear any amount of extra pressure on occasion.

Victor’s loyal affection and gratitude to his mistress, and his determination to shield her all he could from her husband’s brutality, and his love for his mother, made him conceal from them all he could the fiendish cruelties his master sometimes inflicted upon him.

Old Gen. Seybert had been noted all his brilliant life for his tender consideration and thoughtful courtesy towards women, and his desire to shield them from all possible annoyance.

His son Victor had this trait also, added to the warm-hearted gratitude of his mother’s race towards one who befriends them.

COLONEL SEYBERT.

Many a time did he carry a scarred back and a smilin’ face into the presence of his mother and mistress.

Many a time did he voluntarily absent himself from them for days, or until the bruises had healed that some too skilfully aimed missile had inflicted upon him.

But soon after he came to Belle Fanchon, and after he had met and loved Genieve, Col. Seybert’s treatment became so unendurable that Victor begged of his mother to go away with him, tellin’ her he could now earn a good livin’ for her; and he had dreams, hardly formulated to himself then, of the future of his mother’s race. They lay in his heart as seeds lie in the dark ground, waitin’ for the time to spring up—they were germinatin’, waitin’ for the dawn to waken them to rich luxuriance.

But his mother felt that she could not leave her kind mistress in her lonely troubles, and she entreated him prayerfully that he would not leave her, “and she could not go away and leave Miss Alice with that tyrant and murderer”—for so she called Col. Seybert in her wrath.

And his mistress’s anguished entreaties that he would not leave her, for she felt that she had but a little time to live, her health was failin’ all the time—

“And the blessed lamb would die without us anyway,” his mother would say to Victor—

And all these arguments added to his loyal desire to befriend this gentle mistress who had educated him and done for him all she could have done for son or brother—all these arguments caused him to stay on.

But after comin’ to Seybert Court, Victor had given Col. Seybert another opportunity to empty the vials of his wrath upon him.

Victor had a bosom friend, a young man in about the same circumstances that he wuz—only this friend, Felix Ward, had lived with a kind master and mistress durin’ his childhood and early youth.

His father and mother wuz both dead; his father bein’ killed in the war, and his mother soon followin’ him.

He wuz an intelligent negro, with no white blood in his veins, so far as he knew. Felix, for so he had been named when he looked like a tiny black doll, by his young mistress, to whom the world looked so happy and prosperous that everything assumed a roseate hue to her.

Her faithful servant, his mother, brought the little image in ebony to her room to show it to her, jest after she had read the letter from the man she loved askin’ her to be his wife.

She wuz happy; the world looked bright and prosperous to her. She gave the little pickaninny this name for a good omen—Felix: happy, prosperous.

But alas! though the pretty young mistress prospered well in her love and her life while it lasted, the poor little baby she had named had better have been called Infelix, so infelicitous had been his life—or, that is, the latter part of it.

For awhile, while he wuz quite young, it seemed as if his name would stand him in good stead and bring good fortune with it. For being owned till her death by this same gentle young mistress and her husband, both, like so many Southerners, so much better than the system they represented, they helped him, seein’ his brightness and intelligence, to an education, and afterwards through their influence he wuz placed at Hampton School, and at their death, which occurred very suddenly in a scourge of yeller fever, they left him a little money.

At Hampton School he got a good education, and learned the carpenter’s trade. And it wuz at Seybert Court, which wuz bein’ repaired, and he wuz one of the workmen, that Victor and he become such close friends.

Victor had come on to superintend some of the work that wuz bein’ done there to fit the place for the reception of his master’s family, who wuz at that time in New Orleans. And these two young men wuz together several months and become close friends. They wuz related on their mother’s side, and they wuz joined together in that closer, subtler relationship of kindred tastes, feelings, and aspirations.

He finally bought a little carpenter’s shop and settled down to work at his trade in the little hamlet of Eden Centre, where he soon after married a pretty mulatto girl, the particular friend of Genieve.

With the remains of the money his mistress had left him he bought a little cottage—or, that is, this money partly paid for it, and he thought that with his good health and good trade he could soon finish up the payment and own his own home.

It wuz a pretty cottage, but fallen into disorder and ruinous looks, through poor tenants; but his skilful hands and his labor of love soon made it over into a perfect gem of a cottage.

And there he and his pretty young wife Hester had spent two most happy years, when Col. Seybert come into the neighborhood to live, and his roamin’ fancy soon singled out Hester for a victim.

She had been lady’s maid in a wealthy, refined family, and her ladylike manners and pretty ways wuz as attractive as her face. She loved her husband, and wuz constant to him with all the fidelity of a lovin’ woman’s heart, and Col. Seybert she detested with all the force of her nature; but Col. Seybert wuz not one to give way to such a slight obstacle as a lawful husband.

He thought if Felix wuz out of the way the course of his untrue love would run comparatively smooth. Why, it seemed to him to be the height of absurdity that a “nigger” should stand in the way of his wishes.

Why, it wuz aginst all the traditions of his race and the entire Southern Aristocracy that so slight things as a husband’s honor and wife’s loyalty should dare oppose the lawless passions of a white gentleman.

Of course, so reasoned Col. Seybert; the war had made a difference in terms and enactments, but that wuz about all. The white race wuz still unconquered in their passion and their arrogance, and the black race wuz still under their feet; he could testify to the truth of this by his own lawless life full of deeds of unbridled license and cruelty.

So, wantin’ Victor out of the way, and bein’ exceedingly wroth aginst him, it wuz easy to persuade certain ignorant poor whites, and the dispensers of what they called law, that Felix wuz altogether too successful for a nigger.

He owned a horse, too, an almost capital offence in some parts of the South.

He had worked overhours to buy this pet animal for Hester’s use as well as his own. Many a hundred hard hours’ labor, when he wuz already tired out, had he given for the purchase money of this little animal.

It wuz a pretty, cream-colored creeter, so gentle that it would come up to the palin’ and eat little bits that Hester would carry out to it after every meal, with little Ned toddlin’ along by her side; and it wuz one of the baby boy’s choicest rewards for good behavior to be lifted up by the side of the kind-faced creeter and pat the glossy skin with his little fat hands.

This horse seemed to Felix and Hester to be endowed with an almost human intelligence, and come next to little Ned, their only child, in their hearts.

And Hester had herself taken in work and helped to pay for the plain buggy in which she rode out with her boy, and carried Felix to and from his work when he wuz employed some distance from his home.

But no matter how honestly he had earned this added comfort, no matter how hard they had both worked for it and how they enjoyed it—

“It wuz puttin’ on too much damned style for a nigger!”

This wuz Col. Seybert’s decree, echoed by many a low, brutal, envious mind about him, encased in black and white bodies.

And one mornin’, when Hester went out in the bright May sunshine to carry Posy its mornin’ bit of food from the breakfast-table, with little Ned followin’ behind with his bit of sugar for it, the pretty creeter had jest enough strength to drag itself up to its mistress and fix its pitiful eyes on her in helpless appeal, and dropped dead at her feet.

They found the remains of a poisoned cake in the pasture, and on the fence wuz pinned a placard bearin’ the inscription—

“No damned niggers can ride wile wit foaks wak afut—so good buy an’ take warnin’.”

“LOW, BRUTAL, ENVIOUS MIND”

They did not try to keep a horse after this. Felix took his long mornin’ and evenin’ walks with a sore, indignant heart that dragged down his tired limbs still more.

And Hester wiped away the tears of little Ned, and tried to explain to his bewildered mind why his pretty favorite could not come up to him when he called it so long and patiently, holdin’ out the temptin’ lump of sugar that had always hastened its fleet step.

And she wiped away her own tears, and tried to find poor comfort in the thought that so many wuz worse off than herself.

She had Felix and Ned left, and her pretty home.

But in the little black settlement of Cedar Hill, not fur away, where her mother’s relations lived, destitution wuz reignin’.

For on one pretext or another their crops that they worked so hard for wuz taken from them. The most infamous laws wuz made whereby the white man could take the black man’s earnings.

The negro had the name of bein’ a freedman, but in reality he wuz a worse slave than ever, for in the old times he had but one master who did in most cases take tolerable care of him, for selfishness’ sake, if no other, and protected him from the selfishness of other people.

But now every one who could take advantage of his ignorance of law did so, and on one pretext or another robbed him of his hard-earned savings.

And it wuz not considered lawful and right by these higher powers for a nigger to get much property. It wuz looked upon as an insult to the superior race about him who had nuthin’, and it wuz considered dangerous to the old-established law of Might over Right.

It wuz a dangerous precedent, and not to be condoned. So it wuz nuthin’ oncommon if a colored man succeeded by hard work and economy in gettin’ a better house, and had good crops and stock, for a band of masked men to surround the house at midnight and order its inhabitants, on pain of death, to leave it all and flee out of the country before daylight.

And if they appealed to the law, it wuz a slender reed indeed to lean upon, and would break under the slightest pressure.

Indeed, what good could law do, what would decrees and enactments avail in the face of this terrible armed power, secret but invincible, that closed round this helpless race like the waves of the treacherous whirlpool about a twig that wuz cast into its seethin’ waters?

The reign of Terrorism, of Lynch Law, of Might aginst Right wuz rampant, and if they wanted to save even their poor hunted bodies they had learned to submit.

So, poor old men and wimmen would rise up from the ruins of their homes, the homes they had built with so much hard toil. Feeble wimmen and children, as well as youth and strength, would rise up and move on, often with sharp, stingin’ lashes to hasten their footsteps.

Move on to another place to have the same scenes enacted over and over agin.

The crops and stock that wuz left fell as a reward to the victors in the fray.

And if there wuz a pretty girl amongst the fugitives she too wuz often and often bound to the conqueror’s chariot wheels till the chariot got tired of this added ornament, then she fell down before it and the heavy wheels passed over her. And so exit pretty girl.

But the world wuz full of them; what mattered one more or less? It wuz no more than if a fly should be brushed away by a too heavy hand, and have its wings broken. There are plenty more, and of what account is one poor insect?

Many a poor aged one died broken-hearted in the toilsome exodus from their homes and treasures.

But there wuz plenty more white-headed old negroes—why, one could hardly tell one from another—of what use wuz it to mention the failure of one or two?

Many a young and eager one with white blood throbbin’ in his insulted and tortured breast stood up and fought for home, and dear ones, and liberty, all that makes life sweet to prince or peasant.

What became of them? Let the dark forests reveal if they can what took place in their shadows.

Let the calm heavens speak out and tell of the anguished cries that swept up on the midnight air from tortured ones. How the stingin’ whip-lash mingled with vain cries for mercy. How frenzied appeals wuz cut short by the sharp crack of a rifle or the swing of a noose let down from some tree-branch.

How often Death come as a friend to hush the lips of intolerable pain and torture!

Sometimes this tyrannical foe felt the vengeance he had called forth by his cowardly deeds, and a white man or woman fell a victim to the vengeance of the black race.

Then the Associated Press sent the tidings through an appalled and horrified country—

“Terrible deed of a black brute—the justly incensed citizens hung the wretch up to the nearest tree—so perish all the enemies of law and order.”

And the hull country applauded the deed.

The black man had no reporters in the daily papers; if he had, their pens would have been worn down to the stump by a tithe of the unrecorded deeds that are yet, we believe, put down on a record that is onbought and as free to the poorest class as to the highest, and is not influenced by political bias.

But these accounts are not open yet, and the full history of these tragedies are as yet unread by the public.

More awful tragedies than ever took place or ever could take place under any other circumstances, only where one alien and hated race wuz pitted aginst the other.

Ignorance on both sides, inherited prejudices, and personal spite, and animosities blossomin’ out in its fruit of horror.

“They were burnt at the stake; they were sawed asunder; they were destitute, afflicted, tormented.”

DEFENDING HIS HOME.

Your soul burns within you as you read of these deeds that took place in Jerusalem; your heart aches for them who wandered about tormented, hunted down on every side; you lavish your sympathy upon them; but then you think it wuz a savage age, this wuz one of its brutalities, and you congratulate yourself upon livin’ in an age of Christian enlightenment.

You think such deeds are impossible in a land over which the Star of Bethlehem has shone for eighteen hundred years.

Down in many a Southern bayou, in the depths of many a cypress swamp, near the remains of a violated home, lies a heap of ashes—all that remains of a man who died fightin’ for his home and his loved ones.

That wuz his only crime—he expiated it with his life. But his liberated soul soared upwards jest as joyfully, let us hope, as if his body received the full sacrament of sorrowful respect.

One of the laws enacted of late in the South permits a white man to kill a black man for a crime committed aginst his honor, and if the white man commits the same crime and the black man takes the same revenge, he is killed at once accordin’ to law—one man liberated with rejoicings, the other shot down like a dog. Do you say the black man is more ignorant? That is a bad plea.

And wantin’ to act dretful lawful, a short time ago a gang of white law-makers dug up the dead body of a dark-complexioned husband they had murdered accordin’ to law, and after breakin’ its bones, hung it over agin.

He could find in the law no help to defend his home or protect his honor, no refuge in the grave to which the law had sent him.

I wonder if his freed soul has found some little safe corner in space fenced round by justice and compassion, where it can hide itself forever from the laws and civilization of this 19th Century, in this great and glorious country of the free.

To select this one instance of cruel wrong and injustice from the innumerable ones similar to it is like takin’ up a grain of sand from the seashore and contemplatin’ it—the broad seashore that stretches out on either hand is full of them.

And why should not wrongs, and crimes, and woes be inevitable—why, indeed?

A race but lately slaves, with the responsible gift of freedom dropped too soon into their weak hands—

The race so lately the dominant and all-powerful one through the nation, by the fiction of law dropped down under the legal rule of these so long down-trodden, oppressed, ignorant masses, what could the result be?

And the law-makers who had proclaimed peace and liberty, on paper, sot afar contemplatin’ the great work they had done, and left the Reign of Horror to be enacted by the victors and the victims.

Poor colored man! poor white man! both to be pitied with a pity beyend words.

It wuz not their fault, it wuz but the failin’ hail and lightnin’ and tempest out of clouds that had been gatherin’ for ages.

But after the tempest cometh peace. And the eyes of Faith beholds through the mists and the darkness the sunshine of a calmer time, the peace and the rest of a fair country, and a free one.

God grant more wisdom to the great commonwealth of this nation, those whose wills are spoken out by their ballots, to the makers and the doers of law.

But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom, and continue on.

Felix and Hester, by some good chance, or by the grace of God, had not been obliged yet to leave their pretty home, so they worked on, tryin’ to be so peaceable and friendly that no fault could be found with them.

Col. Seybert’s attention when he wuz at Seybert Court wuz very annoyin’ to Hester, but she dared not tell Felix, fearin’ that he would avenge himself on the Colonel, and bloodshed would result.

So she tried to be very careful. She had an old negro woman stay with her; she took in work all she could at home, and when she went out to work she wuz prudent and watchful, and, fortunately for her peace of mind, the Colonel made short stays at his home—he found more potent attractions elsewhere.

So stood matters when Felix wuz appointed Justice of the Peace at Eden Centre.

He wuz honestly appointed and honestly elected.

Victor had always declined any office, and had Felix taken his advice he would also have refused the office.

But perhaps Felix had some ambition. And maybe he had some curiosity to see what honesty and a pure purpose could accomplish in political matters, to see what such a marvellous thing could amount to.

Anyway, he accepted the nomination and received the office.

And the night after he wuz elected he and Hester talked the matter over with some pardonable pride as they sot in the door of their pretty little parlor in the warm moonlight.

The creepin’ vines on the trellis cast pleasant shadows of leaf and blossom down over their heads and on the pretty carpet at their feet.

This carpet Hester had bought with her own money and wuz proud of.

The moonlight lay there warm and bright, weavin’ its magic tapestry of rose leaf and swingin’ vine tendrils long after they wuz asleep in their little white-draped room near by.

Baby Ned lay fast asleep, with a smile on his moist, flushed face, in his love-guarded cradle near them.

The little boy did not dream of anything less sweet and peaceful than his mother’s good-night kiss that had been his last wakin’ remembrance.

But about midnight other shadows, black and terrible ones, trod out and defaced the swayin’, tremblin’ rose images and silvery moonlight on the floor.

Tall men in black masks, a rough, brutal gang, surrounded the place and crashed in the door of the little cottage.

Amongst the foremost wuz Nick Burley, a low, brutal fellow, one of Col. Seybert’s overseers and boon companions.

He had wanted the office, and his friends greatly desired it for him, thinkin’ no doubt it would prove many times a great convenience to them.

But Felix won it honorably. He got the majority of votes and wuz honestly elected.

But Burley and his choice crew of secret Regulators could not brook such an insult as to have one of a race of slaves preferred to him, so they proceeded to mete out the punishment to him fit for such offenders.

THE LEADER.

They tore Felix from his bed, leavin’ Hester in a faintin’ fit, and the little child screamin’ with fright. Took him out in the swamp, bound him to a tree, and whipped him till he had only a breath of life left in him; then they put him into a crazy old boat, and launched him out on the river, tellin’ him “if he ever dared to step his foot into his native State agin they would burn him alive.”

And this happened in our free country, in a country where impassioned oritors, on the day set apart to celebrate our nation’s freedom, make their voices heard even above the roar of blatant cannons, so full of eloquence and patriotism are they, as they eulogize our country’s liberty, justice, and independence.

“The only clime under God’s free sky,” they say, “where the law protects all classes alike, and the vote of the poorest man is as potent as the loftiest, in moulding our perfect institutions. Where the lowest and the highest have full and equal civil and political rights.”

Oh, it would have been a goodly sight for our American eagle, proud emblem of liberty, to have witnessed this midnight scene we have been describin’; methinks such a spectacle would almost have magnetism to draw him from his lofty lair on Capitol Hill to swoop down into this cypress swamp, and perchin’ upon some lofty tree-top, look down and witness this administration of justice and equal rights, to mark how these beneficent free laws enwrap all the people and protect them from foreign invasion and home foes, to see how this nation loves its children, its black children, who dumbly endured generations of unexampled wrongs and indignities at its hands, and then in its peril bared their patient breasts and risked their lives to save it.

How this bird of freedom must laugh in a parrot-like glee, if so grave and dignified a fowl wuz ever known to indulge in unseemly mirth, to see the play go on, the masquerade of Folly and Brutality in the garb of Wisdom and Order, holding such high carnival.

After thus sendin’ Felix half dead from his brutal usage adrift on the turbid river waves that they felt assured would float him down to a sure and swift death, the gang of ruffians returned to the cottage to complete their night’s work.

Col. Seybert had dealt out plenty of bad whiskey to them to keep up their courage; and Nick Burley, besides satisfying his own vengeance upon Felix, had been offered a very handsome reward by his master for gettin’ him out of the way and takin’ Hester to a lonely old cabin of his in the depths of the big forest.

But they found the pretty cottage empty, and they could only show their disapprobation of the fact by despoilin’ and ruinin’ the cozy nest from which the bird had flown.

Hester had recovered from her faintin’ fit jest as they wuz takin’ Felix to the river; she discovered by their shouts which way they had gone, followed them at a safe distance, and when they had disappeared she by almost a miracle swam out to the boat which had drifted into a bayou, brought it to shore, and nursed him back to life agin.

And for weeks they remained in hidin’, not darin’ to return to their dear old home that they had earned so hardly, and Felix not dreamin’ of claimin’ his honest rights as a duly elected Justice of the Peace.

No, he felt that he had had enough of political honors and preferments—if he could only escape with his life and keep his wife and boy wuz all he asked.

At last he got a note to Victor, who aided him in his flight to another State, where he patiently commenced life agin with what courage and ambition he might bring to bear on it, with his mind forever dwellin’ on his bitter wrongs and humiliation, and on memories of the old home left forever behind him—that pretty home with the few acres of orchard and garden about it. And remembered how he and Hester delighted in every dollar they paid towards it, and how they had a little feast, and invited in their friends that sunny June day when the last dollar wuz paid, and it wuz their own.

And remembered how proudly they had labored to finish and furnish the little home. How Hester had worked at washin’ and ironin’ and bought the paper and paint, and pretty curtains and carpet, and how infinitely happy they had been in it.

How after his hard day’s work he would work in the little sunshiny garden and orchard settin’ out fruit trees, plantin’ berry bushes and grape-vines, and how they had together gloried over all their small successes, and thought that they had the very coziest and happiest home in the world.

Wall, they had lost it all. The honor of bein’ an American citizen bore down pretty heavy on him, and he had to give it up.

Wall, twice did Felix try to get a home for himself and his wife in the Southern States.

But both times, on one pretext or another, did the dominant power deprive him of his earnings, and take his home from him.

Felix had a good heart; and once, the last time he tried to make a home under Southern skies, this good heart wuz the cause of his overthrow.

He barely escaped with his life for darin’ to harbor a white teacher who had left his home and gone down South, followin’ the Bible precepts “to seek and save them that was lost, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”

He taught a small colored school week days and preached in an old empty barn on Sundays.

Little Ned went to his school and wuz greatly attached to him.

But when he wuz ordered to leave the State within twenty-four hours, because “he wuz tryin’ to teach them brute cattle jest as if they wuz humans”—

Bein’ frightened and made sick by the violence of his discharge and the stingin’ arguments with which they enforced their orders, Felix opened his poor cabin-door and sheltered him; then agin his home wuz surrounded with a band of armed, masked men, and they only managed to escape with their lives, and Felix agin left all his poor little improvements on his home behind him.

He and his family and the white teacher, bruised but undaunted, got to the railroad by walkin’ almost all night, and so escaped out of their hands.