Overview

The Negro Spirituals predate the USA, as do the Work Songs. Imagine what has been lost is how the NEgro Spirituals plus work songs changed from the early 1500s to circa 1865, when the war between the states ended. I don't even know how that knowledge can be obtained as written records for black art were not allowed by the white enslavers..... NEGRO SPIRITUALS The Project Gutenberg eBook of Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes Author: Howard Washington Odum Release date: March 8, 2012 [eBook #39078] Language: English Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS FOLK-SONGS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES *** Religious Folk-Songs OF THE Southern Negroes By HOWARD W. ODUM Fellow in Psychology, Clark University A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, AND ACCEPTED ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF G. STANLEY HALL Reprinted from the Am. Jour. of Religious Psy. and Ed. July, 1909. Vol. 3, pp. 265-365. [Pg 1] RELIGIOUS FOLK-SONGS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES[1] By HOWARD W. ODUM Fellow in Psychology, Clark University. To know the soul of a people and to find the source from which flows the expression of folk-thought is to comprehend in a large measure the capabilities of that people. To obtain the truest expression of the folk-mind and feeling is to reveal much of the inner-consciousness of a race. And the knowledge of those evidences which are most representative of race life constitutes the groundwork of a knowledge of social and moral tendencies, hence of social and moral needs. The student of race traits and tendencies must accept testimony from within the race, and in the study of race character the value of true expressions of the feelings and mental imagery cannot be overestimated. Thus it is possible to approximate knowledge of a race. To bring a people face to face with themselves and to place them fairly before the world is the first service that can be rendered in the solution of race problems. To preserve and interpret the contributions of a people to civilization is [Pg 2]to add to the science of folk-history. Posterity has often judged peoples without having so much as a passing knowledge of their inner life, while treasures of folk-lore and song, the psychic, religious, and social expression of the race, have been permitted to remain in complete obscurity. Likewise peoples have lived contemporaneously side by side, but ignorant of the treasures of folk-gems that lay hidden and wasting all about them. The heart and soul of the real people are unknown, science is deprived of a needed contribution, and the world is hindered in its effort to discover the full significance of the psychological, religious, social and political history of mankind. That which is distinctly the product of racial life and development deserves a better fate than to be blown away with changing environment, and not even remain to enrich the soil from which it sprang. Justice to the race and the scientific spirit demand the preservation of all interesting and valuable additions to the knowledge of folk-life. The successful study of the common development of the human intellect in primitive thought is thus advanced. The exact form of expression itself constitutes a contribution to knowledge and literature. The value and importance of folk-lore are gladly recognized. Its successful study and a more comprehensive recognition of its worth have revealed new problems and new phases of thought. Not only its relation to civilization as an historical science and as it bears definitely upon peoples of modern cultural areas is recognized, but its essential value in the study of psychological, anthropological, and sociological conditions has called forth the most careful study that has been possible to give it. On the scientist’s part, knowledge has been increased, while on the other hand, the peoples of the world have become more united in the appreciation of the kindred development of human thought. The vast contributions to folk-science and their relation to scientific interest, bear testimony to this truth. And perhaps even more with folk-song, a greater work is to be done. As a part of folk-lore it represents less of the traditional and more of the spontaneous. Its collection and study is now being pursued with more zeal and with marked success. And the hope may well be expressed that with the growing interest in folk-song may come an increased knowledge of all that is nearest and truest to the phyletic as well as the genetic concept of a people, and that with this knowledge may come effective efforts toward race adjustment and new aids in the solution of race problems. [Pg 3]The situation of the Southern negro is unique. His problems are peculiarly intricate. The problem of the relations between the whites and blacks is far-reaching. Social conditions are changing and it is of paramount importance that every step taken shall be well founded and in the right direction. The political, the social, and the economical position of the negro, his education, his religion, his tendencies—these are themes that demand definite and accurate comprehension above all else. Truths have too often been assumed. Passion and prejudice have often hindered the attainment of noble ends which were earnestly sought. A true knowledge of actual conditions, if properly set forth, must convince the sincere observer as to the proper relations which should exist between the two races. Nothing else should do it; nothing else can do it. And any evidences that will assist in fixing the real status of the negro should be welcomed by both the whites and the blacks; progress may then be encouraged from the proper starting point. In revealing much of what he is rather than what he appears to be, the folk-songs of the Southern negro are superior to any superficial study made from partial observations. The insight into negro character gained from their folk-songs and poetry accompanied by careful and exhaustive concrete social studies may be accepted as impartial testimony. And on the other hand, the changing economic and educational conditions, the increasing influence of the white man upon the negro, and the rapid progress that is being made on every hand in the South indicate that if the present-day folk-songs of the negro are to be preserved, they must be collected now. Should they be permitted to become a lost record of the race? In the present work some of the popular songs that are current among the negroes of the Southern States are given. They are highly representative. They may be classified into two general divisions: The religious songs or spirituals, and the secular songs. The secular songs are again divided into two classes, the general social songs, and work-songs, phrases and “shanties”. For the most part collections of negro folk-songs in the past have been limited to the old spirituals. The present-day religious songs and the social productions are equally interesting and valuable. The particular nature and characteristics of these songs are discussed in connection with the examples. They are flexible and have various forms, they consist of broken and unbroken melodies, they have stately and rapid minor cadences. Musical notes[Pg 4] can give only a skeleton of the real melody that accompanies the words; the peculiar qualification of the negro singers to render their melodies defies art to exactly symbolize it. The words of the songs are given as they are sung, and the reader must needs employ an imagination kindred in vividness to that which is reflected in the songs themselves if he would comprehend their essential qualities. The characteristic quality is often found in an improvised arrangement of words which makes the dominant feeling that of mingling words and cadencies successfully. The meaningless phrases and refrains do not hinder the expression of feeling through the minor chords. Simple emotion, inherent melody, and colloquial language are combined with fine and differentiating imagery and humor in an under-meaning common to the folk-song. An element of melancholia may be felt underlying many of the songs. But with all alike, vigor of expression, concreteness and naturalness of mental imagery, and simplicity of language and thought are combined with striking folk-art. The negro’s projective mental imagery assumes that the hearer’s comprehension can easily grasp the full picture of description, moral maxims, and dramatic dialogues, all combined in a single verse, and that he can do it without confusion. Here may be seen much of the naked essence of poetry with unrefined language which reaches for the negro a power of expression far beyond that which any modern refinement of language and thought may approach. Rhythm, rhyme, and the feeling of satisfaction are accompanying inherent qualities. The natural poetic spirit and the power of the imagination in the negro are worthy of study. In addition to these general qualities of the negro folk-songs, it need only be suggested here that the best conception of his religious, moral, mental and social tendencies is reflected in them. That which the negro will not reveal concerning his religion, his religious songs tell better than he could possibly do. His social nature and unconscious ideals bubble out from his spontaneous social songs. In the expression of his natural feelings and emotions he gives us the reactions of his primitive thought with environment. That which is subsequently treated at length may be anticipated in the approach to a careful consideration of the fullest spirit of the negro folk-songs, namely, that it is important to note that the faculty of the negro to think, not exactly as the white man, or to think in terms of modern[Pg 5] science and literature, but in terms of his own psychological conditions, is pronounced. The negro is a part of a nation at the same time that he is a distinct people; he, perhaps, has more anthropological importance than historical standing. His present status is an essential consideration of each of these relations to the civilization of to-day. The emotions, the religion, social aspirations and ideals—in fine, the character of a people is accustomed to be expressed in their literature. The negro has no literature save that of his folk-song and story. May these not speak for him, both the good and the bad, in the following chapters? The work here presented is not exhaustive but representative. The songs are not those of a single plantation, community or section of the Southern States. They are not the songs of the coast negroes or of the river type. But they are sung popularly as much in Georgia as in Mississippi, as much in Florida as in Tennessee. They are distinctly the representative average songs that are current among the common mass of negroes of the present generation. They belong to the negroes who have been constantly in contact with the whites and to those who have had less association with the refinement and culture of the white man. They have been collected carefully and patiently under many difficulties. Many of them are sung only when the white man does not hear; they are the folk-song of the negro, and the negro is very secretive. Not only are they not commonly known by the whites but their existence is only recognized in general. They are as distinct from the white man’s song and the popular “coon songs” as are the two races. The scope of investigation is large and the field is a broad one; the supply of songs seems inexhaustible. Yet the student may not collect them hurriedly. He who has not learned by long observation and daily contact with Southern conditions the exact situation will make little progress in gathering valuable data. While all contributions to the total of negro folk-songs have been very valuable, still it is true that they have been too long neglected and the studies made have been too partial. The nature of the negro’s songs is constantly changing; the number is continually increasing. They should be studied as the conditions of the negroes are investigated. They are the product of our soil and are worthy of a distinct place in literature. In the following work the effort is made to present the best of the negro’s[Pg 6] songs and to interpret impartially the exact spirit of their essential qualities. In the following pages the effort is made to note many of the negro’s mental characteristics as studied in the interpretation of the scope, meaning and origin of his songs, and the essential qualities of his religion as found in the analysis of his Religious Songs and Spirituals. The religious songs of the negro have commonly been accepted as characteristic music of the race. The name “spirituals” given them long years ago is still current, while these songs, composed by the negroes, and passing from generation to generation with numerous modifications, retain many of their former characteristics. In former days the spirituals were judged to be the most beautiful production of the race and the truest representation of the negro’s real self. Some of these songs have been published, and for a time their emotional beauty and simplicity of expression won for the negro a definite place in the hearts of those who had not hitherto known him. He was often judged by these songs alone, reported only imperfectly and superficially, and forthwith came many expressions of delight and enthusiasm for the future possibilities of the negro. These expressions indicate not only the power of the singing of negro spirituals upon those who heard them, but also many of the characteristics of the old and present-day spirituals. The following expressions represent a summary of past judgments and criticism of negro spirituals.[2] The hymns of a congregation of “impassioned and impressible worshippers” have been “full of unpremeditated and irresistible dramatic power.” Sung “with the weirdest intonations”, they have indeed appeared “weird and intensely sad”—“such music, touching and pathetic, as I have never heard elsewhere”, “with a mystical effect and passionate striving throughout the whole.” And again, “Never, it seems to me, since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing and suffering uttered more plaintively.” Besides being a relaxation to the negroes these quaint religious songs were “a stimulus to courage and a tie to[Pg 7] heaven.” Or again, “I remember that this minor-keyed pathos used to seem to me almost too sad to dwell upon, while slavery seemed destined to last for generations; but now that their patience has had its perfect work, history cannot afford to lose this portion of the record. There is no parallel instance of an oppressed race thus sustained by the religious sentiment alone. These songs are but the vocal expression of the simplicity of their faith and the sublimity of their long resignation.” Such songs “are all valuable as an expression of the character and life of the race which is playing such a conspicuous part in our history. The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hope, keen sorrow and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand the words breathe a trusting faith in rest for the future to which their eyes seem constantly turned. The attitude is always the same, and, as a comment on the life of the race, is pathetic. Nothing but patience for this life—nothing but triumph for the next.” “One can but feel that these quaint old spirituals with their peculiar melodies, having served their time with effectiveness, deserve a better fate than to sink into oblivion as unvalued and unrecorded examples of a bygone civilization.” Many have thought that these songs would pass away immediately with the passing of slavery and that the old system of words and songs “could not be perpetuated without perpetuating slavery as it existed and with the fall of slavery its days were numbered.” And “if they be found neither touching in sentiment, graceful in expression, nor well balanced in rhythm, they may at least possess interest as peculiarities of a system now no more forever in this country.” The negro found satisfaction in singing not only at church but perhaps even more while he performed his daily tasks. Those who heard the old slaves sing will never forget the scenes that accompanied the songs. After the lighter songs and brisk melodies of the day were over the negroes turned toward eventide to more weird and plaintive notes. The impressions of such singing have been expressed: “Then the melancholy that tinges every negro’s soul would begin to assert itself in dreamy, sad and plaintive airs, and in words that described the most sorrowful pictures of slave life—the parting of loved ones, the separation of mother and child or husband and wife, or the death of those whom the heart cherishes. As he drove his lumbering ox-cart[Pg 8] homeward, sitting listlessly upon the heavy tongue behind the patient brutes, the creaking wheels and rough-hewn yokes exhibiting perhaps his own rude handiwork, the negro slave rarely failed to sing his song of longing. What if his words were rude and its music ill-constructed? Great poets like Schiller have essayed the same theme, and mighty musicians like Beethoven have striven to give it musical form. What their splendid genius failed adequately to express, the humble slave could scarce accomplish; yet they but wrought in the same direction as the poor negro, whose eyes unwittingly swam in tears, and whose heart, he scarce knew why, dissolved in tenderness as he sang in plaintive minor key one or another of his songs.” The above quotations have been given promiscuously, and while others might be added, these suffice to give the general attitude toward the songs of the negroes in the ante-bellum days and since. One other will be added, giving the expression of a present-day negro leader toward the songs of the slave, as the best interpretation that has come from within the race. In his introduction to Twenty-four Negro Melodies by Coleridge-Taylor in The Musicians Library, Booker Washington says: “The negro folk-song has for the negro race the same value that the folk-song of any other people has for that people. It reminds the race of the ‘rock whence it was hewn,’ it fosters race pride, and in the days of slavery it furnished an outlet for the anguish of smitten hearts. The plantation song in America, although an outgrowth of oppression and bondage, contains surprisingly few references to slavery. No race has ever sung so sweetly or with such perfect charity, while looking forward to the ‘year of Jubilee.’ The songs abound in scriptural allusions, and in many instances are unique interpretations of standard hymns. The plantation songs known as the ‘Spirituals’ are the spontaneous outbursts of intense religious fervor, and had their origin chiefly in the campmeetings, the revivals and in other religious exercises. They breathe a child-like faith in a personal father, and glow with the hope that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness of slavery into the land of freedom. In singing of a deliverance which they believed would surely come, with bodies swaying, with enthusiasm born of a common experience and of a common hope, they lost sight for the moment of the auction-block, of the separation of mother and child, of sister and brother. There is in the plantation songs a[Pg 9] pathos and a beauty that appeals to a wide range of tastes, and their harmony makes abiding impression upon persons of the highest culture. The music of these songs goes to the heart because it comes from the heart.” It will thus be seen that emphasis has been placed almost entirely upon the emotional beauty of the negro songs. They have been portrayed as the exponents of sadness in the race, and the feelings of the black folk have been described with no little skill. Observation for the most part has been made by those who have heard the negro songs but have not studied them. No careful analysis has been attempted. Perhaps casual observers have been mistaken as to the intensity of the emotions expressed and have given undue emphasis to its practical relation and effect upon the individual and upon the race. The judgment of those who have not known the negro, and to whom his singing is a revelation, leads to sweeping generalizations. On the other hand, those who have known the negroes in many walks of life, and have come to know him better than any others, have often emphasized a single phase of the negro folk-song. There can be no doubt as to the beauty and weirdness of the negro singing, but a careful analysis of the general emotional feeling predominating, together with careful interpretation of all things concerned, make comparisons less dangerous and expressions less extravagant. Slavery has passed, four decades of liberty for the slave people have signalized the better civilization, and there still remains among the negroes the same emotional nature, the same sad, plaintive, beautiful, rhythmic sorrow-feeling in their songs. Some of the qualities of the negro’s emotions as seen in his singing will be noted subsequently. Omitting for the present this feature of his songs, and qualifying the statement by interpreting his nature and environment, it may be affirmed that all that has been said of the spirituals is true. They are beautiful, childlike, simple and plaintive. They are the negro’s own songs and are the peculiar expression of his own being; much may be said concerning them. Many of the spirituals are still popular among the negroes, and often take the place of the regular church hymns. The less intelligent negroes sing them, and they are sung freely by the more intelligent class. Ministers of all denominations take advantage of their peculiar power to sway the feelings of the negroes into accustomed channels. Many of the old[Pg 10] spirituals that were common in slavery are still current and are sung with but little modification; others are greatly modified and enlarged or shortened. Traces of the slave songs may be found in the more modern spirituals that have sprung up since the war. The majority of the songs have several versions, differing according to localities, and affected by continual modification as they have been used for many years. Some have been so blended with other songs, and filled with new ideas, as to be scarcely recognizable, but clearly the product of the negro singers. Besides the old and the mixed songs, there are many that are entirely new, arising out of various circumstances and developing with successive renditions. The spirituals current among the Southern negroes to-day are very much like those that were sung three or four decades ago. The differences may be seen in the comparisons that follow in the examples given: There are more rhymed words in the present-day negro song than there was in the earlier ones; consequently there is often less meaning in a line or stanza. The tendency seems to be more toward satisfactory sound impression than for spontaneous feeling expression as in the older spirituals. Meaning and words in general are often sacrificed in the effort to make rhyme, to make the song fit into a desired tune, to bring about a satisfying rhythm, or to give prominent place to a single well-sounding word or phrase. It would thus seem that the religious songs composed in the usual way by the negroes of the present generation have less conviction, and more purposive features in their composition. The dialect of the older songs is purer than those of the present-day negro. One finds little consistency in the use of dialect in the songs that are sung now; rarely does one hear the lines repeated in exactly the same form. Dialect or the common form of the word, it would seem, is used according as feeling, the occasion, or the necessity for rhyme or rhythm permits or demands. Many of the negro songs that are the most beautiful in their expression would appear expressionless were they robbed of their dialect and vividness of word portrayal. The imagery and dialect give the songs their peculiar charm; the more mechanical production that is apparently on the increase may be sung to the same melody, but the song itself has little beauty. However, the negroes themselves prefer the old songs and almost invariably return to the singing of the more primitive ones that have become a part of their heritage.[Pg 11] In those cases where the tunes differ from the old melodies, the song has assumed a characteristic nature, either from its origin and composition, from constant usage by the negroes, from local qualities, or from unusual combinations. And in these original creations of the negro religion are found the truest expression of nature and life as it is reflected in the negro of to-day; it is not the expression of complex life, but of simple longing. In the outbursts of joyous song and melody the note of victory is predominant; in the sadder-toned songs, sung in “plaintive, rhythmic melody”, the prevailing note is that of appeal. In either case there is some sort of conviction back of the song, and it becomes the expression of primitive human life. They set forth the more simple thoughts of an emotional and imaginative worship. They magnify the personal and the spectacular in religion. They satisfy the love of melody, rude poetry, and sonorous language. Simple thought is expressed in simple rhyming phrases. Repetition of similar thoughts and a single chorus, with simple and pleasing music which lends itself easily to harmonious expression, are characteristic. The music is specially adapted to the chorus-like singing which is produced by the clever and informal carrying of many parts by the singers. The song often requires a single leader, and a swelling chorus of voices take up the refrain. It is but natural that these songs should be suited to protracted services as good “shoutin’ songs” or “runnin’ speerichils.” The same rhythm makes them pleasing to the toilers who are disposed to sing religious songs while they work and promotes a spirit of good fellowship as well as being conducive to general “good feelin’.” The united singing of children is also beautiful. Throughout these characteristic songs of the negro, the narrative style, the inconsequential, disjointed statements, the simple thought and the fastidious rhymes are all expressive of the negro’s mental operations. All of the negro’s church music tends to take into it the qualities of his native expression—strains minor and sad in their general character. The religious “tone” is a part of the song, and both words and music conform to the minor key. The negroes delight in song that gives stress and swell to special words or phrases that for one reason or another have peculiar meanings to them. For the most part, all religious songs are “spirituals” and easily merge into satisfying melodies when occasion demands. With the idea gained from[Pg 12] the music of the songs must be joined the church scenes and its personalities freely mingled with the music. The preaching, praying, singing and with it shouting and unity of negro worship—perfection of rhythmic sing-song, these with the throbbing instinct of the people make the negro music what it is. The negroes sing their regular denominational hymns with the same feeling, often, as they do the spirituals, and while mention must be made of their church hymns as such, they often reach in singing them a climax similar to their most fervent outbursts, and freely mingle them with the old songs. In addition to the tune in which the hymn is written the negro puts his own music into the singing, and his own interpretation into the words. This together with the “feeling-attitude” which is unconsciously his, and the satisfaction which he gets from his singing, places negro church music in a class of its own. A glance at the part which singing plays in the negro’s church services will aid in the interpretation of his songs. Church services are opened with song; a leader may occupy his place at a central table or chair, select a song and begin to sing. Or they may wait for the “speerit” and a leader from the pews may begin to sing, others join in the song, while the congregation begins to gather in the church. The leader often lines his song aloud, reading sometimes one, sometimes two lines, then singing. He often puts as much music-appeal into the lining of the song as he does in the singing. The rhythmical, swinging tone of the reader adds zest to the singing which follows. Most of the negroes who sing know a great many songs—in fact, all of their regular songs—if they are given a start by the leader. On the other hand, the congregation often gives the leader a start when he lags, and both together keep the song going until they are ready to stop singing or to begin another song. If the service is prayer meeting or a class meeting the leader usually continues the songs throughout the singing part of the exercises; at regular preaching services the preacher reads the regular hymns and leaves the beginning and the final songs to the leaders. In the class meeting, the general congregation led by song-leaders sing, as a rule, while the class leaders are engaged with their classes. Now a woman on this side, now a man or woman on the other side of the church begins the song and others join in the doleful tunes; so too, while collections are being made the singing is kept up continuously. The[Pg 13] process is the same: a leader begins to sing, another joins in the singing, then another and another until the majority of those present are singing. Most negroes who attend church participate in the singing, although many will not do so regularly, preferring to remain quiet for a time, then to burst out into song. The negroes have been proverbial for their good singing, and undoubtedly they have won a deserved reputation. A group of five or ten negroes singing at a mid-week prayer meeting will often appear the volume of song equivalent to that of many times their number of white people singing. The comparison, however, is not a fair one, for the music is entirely different. One can scarcely appreciate the singing of the negroes until he has heard them on various occasions and in different capacities. Let him listen on a quiet Sunday evening from a position on a hill to the singing of four negro congregations, each clearly audible. It would appear to be the rhythmical expression of deep human feeling and longing in an unrestrained outburst of ten thousand souls. Inside the church one may watch the leaders as they line the songs and listen to their rich, tremulous voices; he may see the others respond and listen to the music of each peculiar voice. The voice of the leader seems to betray great emotions as he reads the lines and begins to sing. He appears literally to drink in inspiration from the songs while his soul seems to be overflowing as he sings the words telling of grace and redemption. However, he manifests the same kind of emotion when he sings one song as when singing another, the same emotion when he reads the words wrongly as when he has read them correctly; it makes little difference to him. He is consumed with the music and with the state of feeling which singing brings to him. After all, perhaps one feeling dominates his whole being while he sings, and there can be no song to him which does not accord with this. A complete analysis of the negro church music in its detail is worthy of the efforts of any one who could describe it. And while the folk-song is of more importance in the present work than the music of these same songs, a few further details that are apparently characteristic of the negroes will not be amiss. The singing begins slowly and with time-honored regularity but is followed by the agreeable and satisfying effect made by the joining in of varied voices. Many times the singers begin as if they would sing a simple subdued song, or a hymn with its written music. But in a short while, apparently not[Pg 14] being able to resist the impulse to give their feelings full sway, their voices fall into that rhythmical swing peculiar in a large degree to the negroes; all measures alike become stately. The average negro is proud of his stylish choir because it represents a step towards a model which the negroes wish to follow: but they do not like the choir’s singing as well as their own informal song. In general the negro’s song will characterize his natural self wherever he sings or hears it sung; he is loath to give it up. And while some pastors have testified that there were no members in their church who would not sing the church songs, it is very evident that many of the younger negroes do not enter fully into the spirit of the old songs and they must necessarily undergo radical changes and rapidly pass away. Before coming to the further study of the negro spirituals, it will be well to inquire into the nature of the favorite standard church hymns commonly used by the negroes in their church services. A comparison may then be made with the popular folk-songs. The favorite songs and most common themes sung by the negroes may best be seen at their prayer meetings or class meetings, or at such gatherings as require no formality. One may attend week after week and hear the same songs and feel the same pathos emanating from the songs which the worshippers have learned to sing and love. They enjoy singing of heaven and rest and luxury where ease abounds and where Sabbaths have no end. They love to sing the praises of the Deliverer who shall free them from life’s toils. They have chosen the “good old” songs that have vividness and concrete imagery in them; they have placed a new feeling into them and a different interpretation. The meaning of the words and the sentiment of the song are transcended by the expression in the singing. The accustomed manner, together with their responsive feeling, absorb whatever of pure devotion might have existed in their attitude—the sinking itself becoming devotion. The negro looks always to some future state for happiness and sings often: This earth, he cries, is not my place; I seek my place in heaven. The negroes sing with a peculiar faith the common stanzas of their hymns: “We’ve seen our foes before us flee,” “We’ve seen the timid lose their fears”, “We’ve seen the prisoners burst their chains”,[Pg 15] “We’ve seen the guilty lose their stains.” So, too, they conceive, as of old, of the eternal rest and sing, with its full stanzas: How sweet a Sabbath thus to spend, In hope of one that ne’er shall end. The singing of these hymns is beautiful and impressive, testifying to the truth that their favorites appeal to the fitness of worship and accord with the ideal of rhythmical perfection as expressed in the feeling of the worshipper. The general state of feeling which accompanies the song thus has much to do with the song itself. The singing with its results is the most satisfying and agreeable part of the worship to the negro’s nature. It satisfies his social wants and relieves to some extent his child-like psychophysical cravings. His worship is music to his soul, whether it be in the word-music of the sermon and prayer, or in the natural outburst of his song, or in the rhythm of all combined. It is all freedom from restraint and the gratification of impulse and the experience of sustained languor. Although the negro expends a great deal of energy in his singing, it is nevertheless rest for him as he feels it. Unrestrained expression goes far toward relieving him of his troubles, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary. What the negro imagines to be total confession and contrite submission has a very soothing effect upon him; the songs reach the climax of this state of feeling. Many negroes may be seen, with their heads resting backward and eyes closed, singing vigorously their favorite songs; often they lean forward, sway back and forth, apparently in a complete state of passivity. Tears and shouts of joy are not inconsistent with the saddest strains of pathos. Their senses are all turned toward the perception of one attitude, and besides a wonderful tranquility of feeling, they also feel and see visions. At such a time the negro is at ease and is at liberty to give full expression to his feelings among his own people, without incentive to action and without interruption. Is it surprising that after a day’s work, while he has passed the hours away in emptiness of thought or in misguided thinking and with perverted notions, he finds sweet rest in some melodious songs and rhythmic verses as he rests his body in the pew? Is it surprising that he is unwilling to leave the church until a late hour or that he does not tire of singing? For what has he to attract him at home where he[Pg 16] unwillingly begins to think of work again? It is little surprising that after the outburst of song and shouts which reveals so much of the negro’s nature that his attitude is one of listlessness and apathy when he has finished. This revelation of emotions which the negro shows in his singing but manifests the reality of his religion. And although the greater part of his feeling in religion is pleasurable excitement, it is, nevertheless, for this very reason the one reality in life to him. A study of the emotional element does not, then, detract from the beauty and value of the negro’s song; it does aid in interpreting that part of his songs that arise spontaneously and also shows something of their origin and growth. Indeed without a knowledge of the negro’s nature and environment, one would scarcely realize the fullest appreciation of his folk-songs. In proportion as the investigator becomes acquainted with the people and circumstances which have furnished unique folk-songs, to that degree will he be eager to search out their origin and be able to interpret them intelligently as they are fundamentally related to the race. The negro has found much material upon which to base his songs and many sources from which he has selected a wide range of subject-matter. His religion is often synonymous with his song, and he has sung with little restraint the various religious experiences common to such a religion. The sermon and prayers, even the songs themselves suggest new themes for an imaginative and religious being to sing. So, too, the Church, the Christians and the “world” have furnished themes for his song. Sin, evil and the devil are ever-present subjects for religious thought. The scenes of everyday life form continuous allegories to be imaged with the assistance of the negro’s definite self-feeling. But perhaps nowhere has the negro found more acceptable subject-matter for his song than in the Scriptures; his songs abound in references to scriptural characters and often portray individuals and scenes with unusual concreteness. A perusal of the negro’s songs thus reveals the most common themes, but it is more difficult to locate the accidental circumstances which gave rise to particular forms of a song, or to ascertain the temperamental nature which originated many of the best known spirituals. In general, it may be said that the folk-song of the negroes has found its rise in every phase of negro life. It is scarcely possible to trace the origin of the first spirituals and plantation songs.[Pg 17] The American negroes appear to have had their own songs from the earliest days of slavery. And while their first songs were undoubtedly founded upon the African songs as a basis, both in form and meaning, little trace of them can be found in the present songs: negro folks produce spontaneous song. The linguist and the anthropologists are able to find the parallel and apparent origin of many words, that have been used by the Southern negroes in their lore and song, among the peoples of Africa, but there is now no practical relation between these words and the meaning of the words in their present usage. The origin of folk-song has always been an interesting theme, proving full of fascination for him who finds it, nymph-like, vanishing from his grasp. Still the song of a people is ever present and appear, almost like myths, to have sprung into life in some way and at some time which no one can exactly tell. Many a bard of the common life has intensified their meaning and made them a part of that life. However, many of the negro folk-songs may be explained when one has observed the negro in many walks of life, or has found the origin from which they arose. Many of the old spirituals were composed in their first forms by the negro preachers for their congregations; others were composed by the leaders of the church singing: others were composed by the slaves in the various walks of life, while still others were first sung by the “mammies” as they passed the time in imaginative melody-making and sought harmony of words and music. A great many of these songs never became current because they lacked the pleasurable features that appealed most to the negroes. Those that proved satisfactory were seized upon and their growth and popularity dated from the moment they were heard. With the negroes of to-day songs have arisen in much the same way. The difference of environment must necessarily make a difference in the nature of the songs; at the same time the coloring of present-day life is much in evidence in some of the old songs composed by the slaves but sung by the negroes of the present generation. Some suggestions as to the natural origin and growth of negro songs may be both interesting and valuable. The negroes have always been known as full of feeling and very expressive. Their natures demand not only some expression of their emotions but this expression must be easy and rhythmic, at the same time that it is intense and continuous. The negro’s musical nature[Pg 18] easily turns these expressions into melody, and a word, phrase or exclamation becomes a song in itself. The song is completed by the imaginative mind and the sense of fitness in sound. Worshippers often follow the preacher through his sermon in a mental state of song and when he has finished they burst out into song, singing no other than an elaborate sentence which the preacher has used in his sermon. When this is joined to a familiar chorus and tune, and then varied, a song has originated. Sometimes the song is remembered and sung again; sometimes, like the words of the preacher, it simply becomes a part of the satisfaction of the hour and is forgotten. A negro preacher recently reached a climax in his discourse in the phrase, “Oh, with the wings of the morning, I’d fly to that heavenly land.” He repeated this a number of times and made gestures with his arms suggestive of flying. His black robe added to the forcefulness of the suggestion and the impression became a part of the song of that church. So with praying, the pathetic appeal and word-music of a p-l-e-a-s-e My Lo-rd is often the inspiration for a song when a happy phrase from the prayer becomes an addition to a song that follows. Even more than preaching and praying, shouting gives rise to song among the negroes; during exciting times in worship the negroes often sing unheard of songs nor do they ever recall them again. It is indeed a mixed scene of song and motion, each contributing largely to the other, while the spectator looks on in wonderment at the astonishing inventiveness of the worshippers. The general motion, expressions of the face, words and harmonies, rests and rhythm, sense of fitness and even of humor, repetition—these make an occasion that defies limitation to its expression. If a single personality dominates the whole in an expression that appeals to the present sense of fitness, he is the author of a new song. Such a personality in the person of a visiting minister recently shouted out during such a scene: “Oh, the hearse-wheel a-rollin’ an’ the graveyard opening—h-a, ha,” but got no further for his refrain was taken up by the chorus and the next day was a new version of the well-known song. Such occasions might be cited in great numbers. Not infrequently a negro who has assumed the position of song leader sings a line while the others join in with a chorus of singing and shouting. When the leader has given all the lines that he knows, he will often continue in the simplest manner possible, as if he had known them for a long[Pg 19] time, to improvise lines, which often have little meaning, but which fit into the tune and sound well. This process may be continued indefinitely, sometimes with repetition of lines already uttered but slightly varied and the emphasis placed on the differing particular. It thus happens that the songs need not have a limit. The necessity of the occasion becomes the cause for the invention of the song. Itinerant worshippers are often thus gratified to sing to new congregations. As a rule the negroes always give attention and respect to strangers so that the man or woman who comes to them is at liberty to sing old or new songs, and they often become skilled in improvising songs. The new songs are then learned and begin their history as folk-song. Again, negroes often feel themselves called upon to introduce new features into some of their songs and conceive of various novelties. The negro’s feeling toward leadership puts a premium upon such a practice. In this effort, a song that is little known among the negroes will be changed in some particulars, printed on a sheet of paper and distributed as the song of brother or sister So and So. The song may be found in a hymn book. However, songs entirely new and the efforts of their own poetic attempts are often thus circulated. This gives rise to a new class of negro spirituals, examples of which may be seen in the following pages. A number of popular spirituals apparently had their rise in the effort of the church to satisfy the physical cravings of the negroes. The church deemed the fiddle and the dance instruments of the devil, and although the negro was and is passionately fond of dancing, he was forbidden by the church to do so. The church needed some kind of substitute for the rhythm and excitement of the dance that would satisfy and still be “in the Lord.” Consequently marching services were often instituted. The benches were piled up together and marching room left for the worshippers. They had various orders for this service and many forms of it have been known to exist. Sometimes they marched two by two, a “sister and brother in the Lord”, sometimes they marched singly, and at other times they marched in a general “mix-up.” At first they followed a leader to a simple melody, keeping step and working into a rhythmic swing. Then as they became more excited they became more expressive and with the elaboration of the march into a dance their songs became marching songs. Often they thus marched, with intervals for rest, until the hours of[Pg 20] the morning. Sometimes they all sang; sometimes the leader sang the leading part and all joined in the chorus with more satisfactory effect. In the march the negroes swayed back and forth, to and fro, and found the usual satisfaction that comes from absolute lack of restraint. As the songs given in the following pages indicate, the negroes often imagined themselves to be the children of Israel, while their marching songs represented Moses leading them out from under the bondage of Pharaoh, or they considered themselves as marching around the wall of some besieged city. Victory would be theirs sooner or later. This is not confined to the songs composed by the slavery negroes, but is common in the later songs. Such scenes are often portrayed by negro preachers of the present day and very appropriate applications, as they think, are made. The march songs that have been found current to-day were composed since the war. Often the negroes enacted similar scenes without the formal putting away of the benches in the church, and the same general results were the outcome. Shouting scenes in negro worship to-day are very much similar to the old marches except that they are more promiscuous. The “strange, sweet harmonies and melodies” of the old songs are still good shouting songs. Individuals have composed spirituals while at work or while wandering from place to place, as a simple outgrowth of the circumstances. The expression, so common in negro songs, “O my Lord”, seems to have been introduced into a number of songs in this way. The single expression repeated itself forms a favorite melody that is often sung. A group of negroes sing while working; one sings a new verse of the song: “Where you git dat?” “I made hit maself, didn’t you know I’m a songster?” And he did make it, and thus gratified, tries other attempts; with him others begin and they have become “songsters”. Negroes, in order to verify a boast that they know a certain song to exist, have been known to compose on the moment just such a song, mixing all sorts of songs together with the ideas that arise. Others who have been offered an attractive price for songs have composed them without scruples of conscience and when asked to sing them, have done so with perfect ease. They were paid for the songs, thinking that they had “fooled that white man”, who valued his song thus composed as much perhaps as an old spiritual that was still current. What the negro composed accidentally he learned to sing, and thus[Pg 21] introduced a real song in his community, which was to be soon carried to other localities. The negro is going to sing whether he has a formal song or not. The following song originated with two negro laborers, apparently in a dialogue. The lines may be sung to any tune and put to any chorus. The church bell a ringin’, how sweet I do declar’. Why don’t you go to meetin’ an’ pray all day long? I’m goin’ to church an’ pray all day long. Of course I’m a sinner but prayin’ might do me good An’ if I do succeed I sure will tell the news. Another song that was composed spontaneously in the effort to dignify his conversation is the following. It will be seen that for the most part it is composed of phrases common to other songs, and it is only the combination that is new. Walk right and do right an’ trust in the Lord— Lay down all yo’ sinful ways an’ trust in the Lord. I am goin’ to trust in the Lord, I am goin’ to trust in the Lord, I’m goin’ to trust in the Lord till I die. My God he’s a wonderful God an’ trust in the Lord, He will answer yo’ prayers don’t care wher’ you are, An’ trust in the Lord. The next example was composed by a negro man after he had recently “come through.” He always loved to talk of what he had seen, what he knew would happen and how he could get out of difficulties. Along with this he had an unusually imaginative mind and told many ingenious stories. Here is the song: The devil come down to the worl’ one day An’ I heard him holler, hoo-ray, hoo-ray! Come out, I’m havin’ a holiday. That was the word I heard him say, But I knowed if I danced to his holiday, There’d be something doing an’ the devil to play. The above song is difficult to classify. It would seem to be very much like some rhymes that the negro had seen published in a newspaper but for all his purposes it was a good song and it mattered little where he had obtained the ideas. It was indeed his own song. One[Pg 22] other example of an effort to compose a new song shows the tendency of the negro to mix his serious themes with ridiculous expressions. There was a man by the name of Cy, He never prayed an’ he never try, So when ole Cy was come to die, He hollow out, “in hell I’ll cry.” In hell ole Cy did cry, In hell ole Cy did cry, In hell ole Cy did cry, Now don’t you die like ole Cy die. The song is a variation of two or three secular songs and becomes a religious song because of its chorus. It is actually sung in the churches. The “author” continued, Ole Cy did lead a mighty bad life, He was always after some other man’s wife, which clearly showed the trace of the secular element; this phrase is applied to many of the notorious characters in the negro secular songs. Still there was an opportunity for the moral and the song represents the peculiar gratification which the negroes find in having composed something more or less original. Enough has been said to give a definite idea concerning the actual and possible origin of some of the negro folk-songs. Further examples will be given when the discussion of the negro’s secular song has been reached. The psychology of negro music and song is not difficult to explain in the light of the facts already suggested. His plaintive appeals in prayer, his emotional and religious nature, his primitive expression, his love of rhythm and melody, his feelings and misguided imagination, his interpretation of life and Scripture, his faith in dreams and visions quickly exaggerated into fabrications, his whole nature but reveals within him what we call the musical nature of the race. With the negro, motion and song instinctively go together. Systematic movement is more conducive to singing than a careless, haphazard motion. Movement and song give rhythm that is not to be found under other circumstances. Regularity and rhythm in movement, emphasis and rhythm in music, these give the negro songs essential pleasure-giving qualities that appeal strongly to the negro’s entire being. If his music is primitive and if it has much of the sensuous in it; if his songs and verse are full of primitive art having[Pg 23] many qualities of possible worth, nevertheless they are not thereby rendered less distinct. In no way can a better insight into the negro’s religion be obtained than by a careful study of his songs. An analysis of those songs that have been preserved will give us at once a better conception of his folk-songs and his religion. The references are reproduced in their exact forms in order that they may serve as an aid in the study of the verse contained in the common songs of the negroes from the time of slavery to the present day. Only the chief conceptions which have been portrayed in negro song are here given; further analysis may be made in connection with the songs themselves. The devil is prominent in the religious songs of the negroes. He is the constant terror and proverbial enemy of the race. He is alive, alert, and concrete. He represents the demon trickster incarnate in the form of a man. He is the opposite of God but always less powerful. He is the enemy against whom the battle is always on; it is a personal battle, but he is usually outwitted or disappointed. Here are some pictures of “Old Satan” as found in the songs of the slave and the negro of to-day:[3] Ef you want to see ole satan run, Jes’ fire off dat gospel gun. Ole satan is a liar an’ conjurer, too, An’ if you don’t mind he’ll conjure you. Other forms are An’ if you don’t mind he’ll cut you in two, An’ if you don’t mind he’ll cut you through. Ole satan lak a snake in the grass, Always in some Christian’s path, or If you don’t mind he’ll git you at las’. Ole satan weahs a mighty loose ole shoe, If you don’t min’ gwine a slip it on you. Ole satan like dat hunting dog, He hunt dem Christians home to God. O shout, shout, de debbil is about, O shut yo’ do’ an’ keep him out. [Pg 24] All de debbils in hell can’t pluck me out, An’ I wonder what satan’s a grumblin’ erbout, He’s boun’ in hell an’ can’t get out, But he shall be loose an’ hab his way, Yonder at de great reserection day. I went down de hillside to make a one prayer, An’ when I get dere ole satan wus dere, O what you think he said to me? Said, “Off frum here you better be.” Old satan tole me to my face, “I’ll git you when a you leave this place;” O brother dat scere me to my heart, I was ’feared to walk a when it wus dark. I started home but I did pray, An’ I met ole satan on de way; Ole satan made a one grab at me, But he missed my soul an’ I went free. I tell you brother you better not laugh, Ole satan’ll run you down his path, If he runs you lak he run me, You’ll be glad to fall upon yo’ knee. We shout so fas’ de debbil look, An’ he gits away wid his cluven foot. Ole satan is mad an’ I am glad, He missed the soul he thought he had. What make ole satan hate me so? ’Cause he got me once an’ let me go. Ole satan tole me not to pray; He want my soul at jedgement day. I wrestle wid satan and wrestle wid sin, Stepped over hell an’ come back agin. Ole satan tremble when he sees, The weakest saint upon his knees. Go ’way satan I doan min’ you; You wonder, too, you can’t come through? Oh brother, breth’ren, you better be engaged, For de debbil he’s out on a big rampage. I plucked one block out o’ satan’s wall, I heard him stumble an’ saw him fall. Ole satan thought he had me fas’, Broke his chain an I’m free at las’. I met ole satan in my way; He say, young man, you too young to pray. [Pg 25] The devil tries to throw down everything that’s good, He’d fix a way to confuse the righteous if he could, Thanks be to God-er-mighty he can’t be beguiled, Ole satan will be done fighting after awhile. The negroes have many other phrases which they apply to satan and picture him in other relations. “Ole satan is a mighty busy ole man, an’ throw rocks in my way.” “What makes ole satan follow me so? Satan ain’t got nothin’ fer to do with me.” As a busy man he also has his “shield and sword”, not only gives trouble but gets into trouble. Says the negro: “I heard de debbil howlin’ when I come out’n de wilderness an’ I gib de debbil battle.” “Now stan’ back, satan, an’ let me go by ... why doan de debbil let a me be?” “Ole satan mighty busy, he follow me night an’ day. Ole satan toss ball at me, he think the ball hit my soul, the ball for hell an’ me for heaven.” “Ole satan gettin’ in mighty rage”, for “satan’s camp’s afier.” “Satan mount de iron gray hoss an’ ride half way to pilot bar.” But “We’ll shout ole satan’s kingdom down, gwine a pull down satan’s kingdom, gwine a win ag’in de debbil.” Victory is the negro’s for he exclaims: “I saw dem bindin’ satan”, and “I saw ole satan’s kingdom fallin’.” But while satan is a great schemer and is very busy and “wash his face in ashes”, “put on leather apron”, his greatest attribute is the liar. The negro cannot give too insistent warning: When I got dere Cap’n satan wus dere. Sayin’ “Young man, dere’s no use to pray, For Jesus is daid an’ God gone away.” An’ I made ’im out a liar an’ went on my way. With these pictures and warnings the negro song gives a final bit of advice. “If you ain’t got de grace ob God in yo’ heart, den de debbil will git you sho’”, then the singer rests securely in the knowledge that he is filled with the grace that holds against the devil. “King Jesus” was the original name most commonly given to Christ in the spirituals. Besides this He was the bosom friend of the negro. He comes in to intercept satan and to save the individual from hell. He is very real and no one is more vividly described than He. He bears many relations to his people. Now my Jesus bein’ so good an’ kind, [Pg 26]My Jesus lowered his mercy down, An’ snatch me from de doors of hell, An’ took me in with him to dwell. Oh, Jesus tole you once befo’ To go in peace and sin no mo’. I heard o’ my Jesus many one say, Could move po’ sinner’s sins away. Den Jesus he come ridin’ by, Gib me wings to ride an’ fly. Jesus Christ the first and las’, No man wuks lak him; He built a platform in de air, He meets de saints from eve’where. Virgin Mary had one son, The cruel Jews had him hung. Me an’ my Jesus goin’ live at ease, Me an’ my Jesus goin’ do as we please. If you want er die like Jesus died, Fold yo’ arms an’ clasp yo’ eyes. I tell you breth’ren an’ I tell you twist, My soul done anchored in Jesus Christ. Up on de hillside King Jesus spoke, Out of his mouth come fire an’ smoke. Yer say yo’ Jesus set you free; Why don’t you let yo’ neighbors be? Other shorter lines give equally concrete pictures and mention equally definite attributes. You’ll see my Jesus come to wake up de nations underground. King Jesus died for every man. An’ de son He set me free. I got my Jesus as well as you. If you want to see Jesus go in de wilderness. Gwine serve my Jesus till I die. I call my Jesus king Emanuel. He pluck my feet out’n de miry clay. He sot dem on de firm rock of age. Christ hab bought yo’ liberty. King Jesus’ settin’ in de kingdom. De win’ blow eas’ an’ de win’ blow wes’ from Jesus. Oh yonder comes my Jesus, I know him by his shinin’. Hear my Jesus when he call you? Hear my Jesus callin’? I’m goin’ to hebben where my Jesus dwell. O I walk and talk with Jesus. [Pg 27]Jesus loosen de man frum under de groun’. Jesus ain’t comin’ here to die no mo’. The son of man he dunno where to lay his weary head. See what wonder Jesus done: Jesus make dumb to speak. Jesus make de cripple walk. Jesus gib de blin’ deir sight. Jesus do mos’ anything. I want to do (or die) like Jesus. Jesus stan’ on de udder side Jordan. Jesus settin’ on de water side. Jesus is our captain, Jesus got de hellum. Jesus mount (ride) a milk-white hoss. You had better follow Jesus. Daddy Peter set out for Jesus. Jesus will bring you milk an’ honey. Mas’ Jesus is my bosom friend. Gwine follow King Jesus, I really do believe. King Jesus he was so strong, my Lord, till he jar down de walls ob hell. Gwine to write to my Jesus. King Jesus settin’ in de heaven. King Jesus on de mountain top. O Jesus is a mighty man. Ride in kind Jesus, who set po’ sinner free. For Jesus came an’ lock de do’. De Jews kill po’ Jesus. Jesus call you—Jesus waitin’. I wus los’ in de wilderness; Jesus hand me de candle down. Mas’ Jesus gib me little broom fer to sweep my heart clean. Jesus fed me when I was hungry, he clothed me when I was naked, he gave me drink when I was dry. Jesus rose an’ flew away on Sunday morning. Christ was there four thousand years ago, drinking of the wine. Jesus he wore the starry crown. Did you see Jesus when he wore the starry crown? Jesus he wore long white robe. King Jesus speaks an’ de chariot stops. King Jesus is the Rock. Well did you say you love Jesus? Jesus done bless my soul an’ gone to glory. Won’t you ride on Jesus? O yes. I look fer Jesus all o’ my days. Jesus is a listening all the day long. The scenes of the crucifixion seem to impress the negroes very forcibly and their songs abound in references to His suffering. Some of these expressions are full of feeling, and are touching in their sentiment. They nail my Jesus down [Pg 28]They put him on the crown of thorn (thorny crown). O see my Jesus hangin’ high! He look so pale an’ bleed so free: O don’t you think it was a shame, He hung three hours in dreadful pain? Next to Jesus and often synonymous with Him is God. He is “My Lord”, “My God”, “Lord God-er-mighty”, and “king Jehobah”, and represents the personal God and the ruler of the world. Upon de mountain Jehobah spoke, Out o’ his mouth come fire an’ smoke. My God a walkin’ down hebbenly road, Out o’ his mouth come two edged sword. If yo’ find yo’ way to God, The gospel highway mus’ be trod. De father he look upon de Son an’ smile, De Son he look on me, De Father redeem my soul from hell, De Son he set me free. I’m a chile of God wid my soul set free. For Christ hab bought my liberty. I’m goin’ home fer to see my Lord. My Lord did give me ease. Ever since my Lord set me free. I believe it for God he tole me so. O my Lord’s comin’ ag’in, It may be las’ time. I don’t know. I goin’ to do all I can fer my Lord; I goin’ to mourn, pray, weep all I can fer my Lord. The Lord is a listenin’ all the day long. My Lord is a talkin (preachin’) at de jedgement day. De Lord goin’ to wake up the dead. My Lord come down wid de key an’ unlock de jail house do’. O, my Lord’s a doctor in a weary lan’; My Lord’s a preachin’ and teachin’, and walkin’ in a weary lan’. My Lord calls me by the thunder; by the lightning. Dat mus’ be my Lord in the cloud. My Lord says there’s room enough. I’m goin’ to tell God ’bout my trials. Thank God-a-mighty, My God’s been here. When I talk I talk wid God. Gwine to chatter wid de Fadder. My Fadder call an’ I mus’ go. My righteous Lord shall fin’ you out. Look to de Lord wid a tender heart. [Pg 29]O de Lord He plant de garden dere and raise de fruit for you to eat. O de Lord He comfort sinner. God did go to Moses house an’ tell him who He wus. God an’ Moses walked and talked an’ God did sho’ him who He wus. God sits in Heaven an’ answers prayer. I gwine tell God how you sarved me. Look in my God’s right hand. His chariot wheels roll round. God’s goin’ call dem chilluns frum de distant lan’. My Lord’s a-ridin’ all the time. De Lord has been here an’ de love come tricklin’ down. Me an’ my God goin’ to walk an’ talk. O God don’t talk lak a nat’ral man. My Lord God-ermighty come a steppin’ down, come a steppin’ down on a sea ob glass. Heaven for the negro is an eternal resting place where he shall occupy the best place. It is a place of glory and splendor in the material sense. Nor does he think that he will fail to miss his home when he dies. Hell is a place for thieves and sinners and liars, but such persons are far removed from him. His religion is the panacea for all evils and all sins, and when he has the “love of God in his heart” nothing can doom him, for has he not been “washed in the blood of the lamb?” and had not the “blood done sign his name”? His ideas of heaven are those which his mind naturally conceives of as applying to a home; his conclusions from the Scriptures are not unusual. A few of the references to heaven will give a better conception of the negro’s reality and vividness of interpretation. I want to go to heaven when I die, To shout salvation as I fly. You say yer aiming fer de skies, Why don’t yer quit yer tellin’ lies. I hope I git dere bye an’ bye, To jine de number in de sky. When I git to heaven gwine to ease, ease, Me an’ my God goin’ do as we please, Settin’ down side o’ de holy Lamb. When I git to heaven goin set right down, Gwin-er ask my Lord fer starry crown. Now wait till I gits my gospel shoes, Gwin-er walk ’bout heaven an’ carry de news. We’ll walk up an’ down dem golden streets, We’ll walk about Zion. [Pg 30] Gwine sit in de kingdom, I raly do believe, where sabbaths have no end. Look way in de heaven—hope I’ll jine de band—Sittin’ in de kingdom. I done bin to heaven an’ I done bin’ tried. Dere’s a long white robe in de heaven for me, Dere’s a golden crown, golden harp, starry crown, silver slippers in heaven for me I know. O yes I’m gwine up to see my Lord; gwine all de way up to see my robe; O de heaven is shinin’, shinin’. Gwine shout in hebben, gwine hab a big meetin’. If you want to go to heaven come along wid me. Take my flight up to de skies in de mornin’. O de heaven gates are open. Gwine up to heaven where my Jesus dwells. My Jesus walkin’ de hebbenly road. De bell is ringin’ in odder bright worl’. If you touch one strin’ de whole hebben ring. De sun gib light in de hebben all round. I wish I wus in de kingdom settin’ side o’ my Lord. No more hard trial in de kingdom; no more tribulation, no more parting, no more quarreling, backbiting in de kingdom, No more sunshine fer to bu’n you; no more rain fer to wet you. Ev’y day will be Sunday in heaven. Sweet music in heaven jes beginning to roll. Goin feast off’n milk an’ honey. The negro does not dwell upon thoughts of hell as he does of heaven. Even if he has “stepped over hell an’ come back ’gain,” he does not reveal so much of its character. Some conceptions, however, are definite enough. O hell is deep an’ hell is wide, O hell ain’t got no bottom or side. I’d rather pray myself away, Than live in hell an’ burn one day. O when I git to hebben, I’ll be able to tell, How I shunned dat dismal hell. Ev’y since my Lord done set me free, Dis ole worl’ bin a hell to me. When I come to find out I’s on de road to hell, I fleed to Jesus. The negro song finds little satisfaction in his various ideas of hell. “This ole world’s a hell to me,” says the negro; but “hell is a dark and dismal place,” so that the only immediate conclusion which he[Pg 31] can reach is that he must “shun de gates of hell” and make for the home beyond the Jordan. A rich variety of references to scriptural characters is seen in the majority of the negro spirituals, both of the past and of the present. The negro portrays the conduct of heroes in the past with imaginative skill. Their songs are often running-stories of scripture, in which the effort is made to include as many characters as possible and at the same time draw conclusions which have suitable morals, but these songs may be better studied in the examples that follow. Some of the typical references to the Scriptures will show the average interpretation given them by the negroes. O, sisters, can’t you help me sing, For Moses’ sister did help him. Where wus Ezekiel when de church fell down? Down in de valley wid his head hung down. Ezekiel said he spied de train a comin’, He got on board an’ she never stop runnin’. God made Adam an’ Adam wus first, God made Adam out o’ the dust o’ the earth. Well God show Noah de rainbow sign, No more water but fire nex’ time. Mose live till he got old, Buried in de mountain so I’m told. Mary wept and Martha mourned, Jesus Christ laid de corner stone. Mary wore the golden chain, Every link was in Jesus’ name. Judas was a deceitful man— Well he betrayed the innercent lam’. John wrote a letter an’ he wrote it in haste, If yer want to go to heaven, you better make haste. John declar he saw a man, Wid seben lamps in his right han’. The negroes wonder “wher’s sister Mary, Martha, Brudder Moses, brudder Daniel (and the others) gone.” So, too, “Sister Hannah, Hagar, brudder Moses” and the rest “took dey seat.” And again, “Wondah whar good ole Daniel, doubtin’ Thomas, sinkin’ Peter” and others. Moses “smote de water” and the negro says: I want to go where Moses trod, For Moses gone to de house o’ God. [Pg 32]Peter is commanded again and again to “go ring dem bells”; “Daddy Peter go to Jesus”, “Fisherman Peter out at sea”, the latter perhaps being the origin of “sinkin’ Peter.” Elijah is one of the favorites of the Old Testament. “Elijah gwine ride in de chariot in de mornin’”, and Isaiah who “mounted on de wheel o’ time” is a kindred character to Ezekiel and Elijah. Jacob’s ladder and struggle is vivid enough to be sung. “I’m gwine climb up Jacob’s ladder”; “Rastlin’ Jacob, let me go.” “Jacob tremblin’ on a limb.” Noah’s victory is the common theme. “Dey call Brudder Noah a foolish man”, but that makes no difference for “de Lord tole Noah fer to build him ark”, and “de ole ark a moverin.” The negro remarks characteristically: “God placed Adam in de garden, ’was ’bout de cool o’ day.” Gabriel is proverbial and the attitude of the singer is always ready “fer to hear Gabriel blow his horn.” “Don’t you hear Gabriel’s trumpet in de mornin’”? “Little David play on de harp” has been a shining example for many another “David” who loved to blow on his harp. “Father Abraham sittin’ down side o’ de holy Lamb”, is almost synonymous with Christ. Prominent among the clear impressions made by the Scriptures is that of the delivery of Daniel, the Hebrew children and Jonah. However, one must read the songs in order to get the full significance of the references. Although the negro bases everything in his religion upon the Bible, and his songs and sermons and exhortations abound in quotations from the “Holy word”, he has comparatively little to say of the Bible itself as a book. He thinks sometimes that it is a “cumpass” and also bases his convictions on the truth of the Bible. He asks “How do you know? For my Bible hit tell me so.” For in dat Bible you will see. Jesus died fer you an’ me. Matthew, Mark, Luke an’ John Tell me where my Master’s gone. Go read de fifth of Matthew An’ read de chapter through, It is de guide to Christians An’ tell ’em what to do. Now take yo’ Bible an’ read it through, An’ ev’y word you fin’ is true. As the Bible is the compass, so sometimes the Holy Ghost is thought[Pg 33] of as the pilot. The Holy Ghost is too vague for the negroes to fathom and is not tangible enough for their imaginations. But he says: “If this ain’t de holy Ghost I don’t know”, but goes little further. Just as the negro expects to talk and walk with God and Jesus, so he looks forward to seeing the angels in Heaven. He wants to see them with their white robes and hear them sing; he even says they mourn. “Bright angels hoverin’ on de water by de light”, are but a part of the angel band which he hopes to join. “Join de hebben wid de angels” is his watchword and by it he sees in his child-like fancy all the beauties of ideal creatures. I’m gwine to keep a climbin’ high, Till I meet dem angels in de sky. Dem pooty angels I shall see— Why doan de debbil let a me be? O when I git to heaven goin’ sit an’ tell, Three archangels gwine er ring dem bells. Two white angels come a walkin’ down, Long white robes an’ starry crown. What’s dat yonder dat I see? Big tall angel comin’ after me. The negro makes a terrible picture of the day of judgment. For him it means everything that could possibly happen at the end of the world. It is the destruction of the sinner and the glory of the righteous. Nor does he hesitate to affirm that the Christian in heaven will shout amen to the sinner’s damnation. The sinner will see his mother and friends in heaven while he is doomed to hell. It serves as a warning theme for the song more than it indicates reality of thought. But here is a part of his picture: My Lord what a morning when de stars begin to fall, You’ll see de worl’ on fire, You’ll see de moon a bleedin’ an’ De moon will turn to blood, Den you’ll see de elements a meltin’, You’ll see de stars a fallin’, O yes, de stars in de elements a fallin’, An’ de moon drips way in blood, When God goin’ call dem childuns from de distant lan’, Den you see de coffins bustin’, [Pg 34]Den you see de bones a creepin’, Den you see po’ sinner risin’, Den you hear de tombstones crackin’, An’ you see de graves a bustin’, Hell an’ seas gwine give up their daid, Den you see de forked lightenin’, Den you hear de rollin’ thunder, Earth shall reel an’ totter, Hell shall be uncapped, De dragon be loosed, Don’t you hear them sinners cryin’? Such a scene vividly told of at a revival and sung to the associations of the moment is too much for the average negro; the sinner cries for mercy and turns to a Christian; the latter sings: “Fare you well po’ sinner” and A mighty sea of glass mingled wid fier, Good-bye, brother, I’m goin’ higher. Along with the scenes which are associated with the resurrection and judgment go the sadder strains of the “mourners”; “weepin’ mournin’, cry’n’”—these will be much in evidence. A study of the songs that follow will give some idea of the emotional nature of the themes and music. The negroes sing sympathy. “Weepin’ Mary, weep no mo’”—“Mary wept, Martha cried”, why can’t they too? “Now ain’t dis hard trial and tribulation?” He sings often in his songs of hard times and trials. “When you see me,” he says, “pity me.” “Nobody knows de trubble I seen” but “I boun’ to leave dis worl’; Fare you well, dere’s a better day comin’.” His prayers are more pathetic than his songs; his appeals interpret the spirit of song and of worship. But one would scarcely look for a more pathetic wail than that of the negro who sings Sometimes I hangs my head an’ cries, But Jesus goin’ to wipe my weep’n’ eyes. If the negro loves to mourn and if his songs are full of sadness and pathos, he also loves to shout and vigorously defends the right to shout as much as he pleases. His songs have many “Hallelujahs” in them; many notes of victory may be read in the songs of his choice. They often sing, however, the songs which should be the most joyous in the same sad and plaintive tone of the sadder ones. They forget the words. In many, however, the shouting takes away any sadness and these livelier songs voice the light and sensuous emotions equally[Pg 35] as well as the more serious ones tell of hardships. The negro maintains that always and everywhere, “You’ll hear the Christian shout.” “De richest man I ever seed, his heart was fill wid Jesus an’ Holy Ghost.” “I got de glory in my soul” he says and I real’y do b’lieve widout a doubt, Dat de church hab a mighty right to shout. I tell you what I lak de bes’, It is dem shoutin’ Mefodes’. If the negro’s mother and sister and father and preacher and the others, as the songs put it, “died a shoutin’,” why he is “goin’ die shoutin’ too.” Gwine hab happy meetin’, Gwine shout in hebben, Gwine shout an’ nebber tire, O slap yo’ han’s chilluns, O pat yo’ feets chilluns, I feels de spirit movin’ O now I’m gittin’ happy. Of true love and devotion to God one finds little definite and concrete expressions as compared with other themes. The negro is constantly affirming his love for “his Jesus” and offering his eternal allegiance in a general way. But in the average instance the testimony is subordinated to some special word or phrase which receives the greater part of the significance in the song. What does he mean when he asks: “Does yo’ love continue true?” or when he insists: “I wants to know, does you love yo’ Jesus?” The negroes are often heard to say that they want to do something “for the Lord”. In the same way they sing “I goin’ to weep all I can for my Lord, I goin’ pray all I can for my Lord, I goin’ do all I can for my Lord.” In each case the relation of the negro and his God are ideal and he conceives of his own deeds as being, not the practical every-day life, but as coming in the future when there will be nothing unpleasant about them. It was doubted if the negro’s ideas of God and Heaven and his relation to them were truly expressed in his songs. A series of experiments were made with negro children, wherein questions were answered by them at the time they were given, others being carried to their homes or teachers. Their ideas of hell and heaven, God and the angels are almost identical. Perhaps some of them were gained from[Pg 36] the songs; some of them were certainly not; all seemed to agree with each other and with those of the race in a remarkable way. Nature contributes something to the negro spirituals. Certain parts of nature are symbolic and serve to convey the picture of a vivid imagination as nothing else can do. The wonders of God and the terrors of the judgment must be seen in their relation and effect upon the forces of nature. Certain natural phenomena inspire awe and reverence; they add thus to the conception of his religious fear. Other references to nature convey, as they only could, pleasing features of life, hence of heaven and God. The negro refers to the “break o’ day”, the “settin’ o’ the sun”, the “cool o’ de evenin’” and each is very expressive. Morning and evening are common; he prays in the evening perhaps; in the morning he is going to heaven. The hillside, the mountain and mountain top, the valley, signify and typify the experiences of the Christian of the past and present; the heavenly breeze comes from the valley. The negro sees a paradise and a wilderness, a sunshine and a storm. But Dere’s a tree in paradise, Christians call de tree ob life, and he faithfully believes “I specs to eat de fruit off’n dat tree”. The earth trembles and is jarred; the sky is “shook.” The river is “chilly an’ cold, wide an’ deep.” The “rock” is better than the miry clay and “nebber mind de sun—see how she run.” The stars, moon, and world fall, bleed, and burn. The thunder and the lightning are in the stormy cloud; Jesus may be, too. Satan is a snake in the grass and a hunting dog. Young lambs and “de sheep done know de road.” The summer, spring, flowers and the field are mentioned. The negro wishes he had wings like Noah’s dove. He is sometimes awed: I looked toward dat northern pole, I seed black clouds of fire roll. With his vivid imagination the negro feels much of the thought expressed in the folk-song. Thus sin and the sinner are intimately connected with life and death, religion and repentance. How skillfully the songs express the folk-feeling may better be inferred in the further analysis of the following [Pg 37] Types of Negro Spirituals. An exact classification of negro songs, either as to subject-matter or as to form, is scarcely possible. There is little unity of thought in their content; their metres conform to no consistent standards. A single favorite stanza, regardless of its meaning, is constantly being sung in a dozen different songs. It is a distinct folk-song; and it matters little to which one it belongs; it serves its purpose in any one of them. So in the form of the verse, a single tune is adapted to lines that differ widely in length; likewise a single line is not infrequently made to fit into any tune that is desired. Again, no final version of any song can be given. The lines are rarely sung in exactly the same form. There are ordinarily as many versions of a line as there are combinations of the words without spoiling the effect of the rhyme or emphatic word. The stanzas have no order of sequence, but are sung as they occur in the mind of the singer; a song does not have a standard number of stanzas, but the length depends upon the time in which it is wanted to sing that particular song. In the songs that follow the most common versions are given. In giving the dialect no attempt is made at consistency; for the negro of the present generation has no consistency of speech. He uses “the” and “de”, “them” and “dem”, “gwine” and “goin’”, “and” and “an’”, together with many other varied forms, which will be noted in a later chapter; nor does it matter that each of the forms is used in the same line or stanza. In the old songs that are here quoted for comparisons, the exact form of speech in which they have been published is used. In the miscellaneous songs gathered here and there, what may be called the average dialect is used. The songs that form the basis of this work are those that are found among the present-day negroes of the South; in many cases the corresponding song of earlier days is given in order that a better study of the folk-songs may be made and the many points of resemblance noted. In all instances the basis of the chapter is the present-day song, and these should not be confused with those that have already been published. The words of the chorus and refrain are italicized. Further particulars will be pointed out in connection with the several songs. Perhaps no better beginning can be made towards general classification of the religious songs of the negroes than by introducing some[Pg 38] that combine several characteristics, but still have a general theme predominating. Sin is an important factor in the religious life of the negro and his songs refer to it in many forms. The three general tones which pervade the theme are: A note of victory over sin and the conception of it as being in the past or belonging to some other person; the conception of sin as being present and the singer as being in its grasp; and thirdly, the “sinner-man” himself and warnings given him. The very popular song, “All my Sins Done Taken Away” is typical of the first class mentioned above. There is no reason why the stanzas given below should come in the order presented, except that they are heard in this arrangement as much as in any other. The stanzas consist of two rhymed lines with the refrain. These, however, are usually extended to four, the first two and refrain being sung slowly and in a more or less plaintive tone, while the repetition of the same lines with the rhymed line and refrain are rapid and joyous. The common version follows. I’m goin’ to heaven an’ I don’t want ter stop, Yes, I’m goin’ to heaven an’ I don’t want ter stop, All o’ my sins done taken away, taken away; I’m goin’ to heaven an’ I don’t want ter stop, An’ I don’t want ter be no stumblin’ block, All my sins done taken away, taken away. Instead of repeating the chorus line at the end of the first two lines that are sung, the negroes often vary the song by repeating the last half of the line, as in the following stanza: Well “M” for Mary, an’ “P” for Paul, Well “M” for Mary, an’ “P” for Paul, An’ “P” for Paul; Well “M” for Mary an’ “P” for Paul. “C” for Chris’ who died for us all, All o’ my sins done taken away, taken away. The chorus is again varied from “all my sins” to “all o’ my sins” or “all of my sins,” “done taken away,” or “bin taken away,” while the entire line is sometimes changed in a single stanza. Sometimes it is sung as given above; at other times the line goes: “All my sins done taken away, bin’ taken away,” or omitting either “done” or “bin” it is sung equally well as “All my sins taken away, taken away,” while in the grand chorus at the climax of song the chorus goes: [Pg 39]Yes all o’ my sins bin taken away, Yes all my sins done taken away, Yes all o’ my sins done taken away, Yes all my sins done taken away, Glory, glory to His name-e, All my sins done taken away, taken away. This last chorus may be repeated whenever the singers do not think of words to fit in with the songs, although this is rarely necessary. The following stanzas are sung in the same manner as those just given. If I had er died when I wus young, I never would a had dis rist to run, All o’ my sins done taken away, taken away. Well you oughter bin dere to see de sight, The peoples come runnin’ both cullud an’ white. My feet got wet in de midnight dew, An’ de mornin’ star was a witness, too. If you doan b’leave I bin redeem, Jes follow me down to Jordan stream. When a sinner see me it make him laugh, Thank God-a-mighty, I’m free at las’. Mary wept an’ Martha mourned, Mary wept all ’round the throne. Mary wept an’ Martha mourned, All because deir brother done daid an’ gone. Mary wept an’ Martha cried, All ’cause dey brother done gone an’ died. I’m goin’ to ride on de mornin’ train, All don’t see me goin’ ter hear me sing. I’m gwine to heaven on eagle’s wing, All don’t see me goin’ ter hear me sing. My mother’s sick an’ my father’s daid, Got nowhere to lay my weary head. I went down in de valley to pray, My soul got happy an’ I stayed all day. A number of other versions are common. Instead of “Mary wept all ’round the throne” is sung “all ’round God’s hebbenly throne.” Instead of the morning star as a witness the old songs have it “angels witness too.” Instead of in the valley, the old songs also had “on de mountain” and also inserted “I didn’t go dere to stay.” This[Pg 40] version is sung in some of the songs still. “The Sabbath has no End” is the name of a favorite somewhat similar to “All my sins done taken away.” It has a number of forms for the chorus. I went down in de valley, I didn’t go ter stay, My little soul got happy An’ I like to a stayed all day. I thought I had religion, I b’lieve I thought I had religion, I b’lieve. I thought I had religion, I b’lieve, Dat Sabbath hath no end. I wouldn’t be a sinner, Tell you de reason why— Feard de good Lord might call me, An I wouldn’t be ready ter die. Gwine rock trubbel over, I b’lieve, Rock trubbel over, I b’lieve, Rock trubbel over, I b’lieve, Dat Sabbath has no end. Ole Satan’s mighty busy, Fixin’ up his snares, He’ll ketch all dem mourners, If dey don’t keep deir prayers. Yer better get ready, I b’lieve Yer better get ready, I b’lieve, Yer better get ready, I b’lieve, Dat Sabbath has no end. The singer is a little more definite in his convictions in “I am de light uv de Worl’”. He is no longer a sinner and looks forward to the time when he will “cross de ribber.” Hallaluyer, good Lord, I am de light uv de worl’, Halleluyer, good Lord, I am de light uv de worl’. Ever since my Lord done sot me free, Dis ole worl’ bin a hell to me, I am de light uv de worl’. I looked toward dat Northern pole, I seed black clouds of fier roll, I am de light uv de worl’. [Pg 41] I gwine ’clare de word, I am de light uv de worl’, I’m gwine ’clar de word, I am de light uv de worl’. Der ain’t but one train on dis track, Goes straight to heaven an’ run right back. I am de light uv de worl’. Ever since I bin in de worl’, I am de light uv de worl’, Ever since I been in de worl’, I am de light uv de worl’. When I cross Jordan I’ll be free, Gwine a slip an’ slide dem golden streets, I am de light uv de worl’. ’Way up in de kingdom, Lord, I am de light uv de worl’, ’Way up in de kingdom, Lord, I am de light uv de worl’. The negro is not troubled because he cannot see his Lord; he has heard Him speak and believes that He has gone “on to glory.” His personal relation with Jesus is satisfactory and he sings His praises often as he tells of his own experiences. Says he: One day, one day, while walkin’ along, Jesus done bless my soul; I heard a voice an’ saw no one, Jesus done bless my soul. O go an’ tell it on de mountain, Jesus done bless my soul; O go an’ tell it in de valley, Jesus done bless my soul. He done bless my soul an’ gone on to glory, Good Lord, Jesus done bless my soul; Done bin here an’ bless my soul an’ gone on to glory. Jesus done bless my soul. In one of the old plantation songs a similar idea is given of the blessing, but in a different version. One day when I wus walkin’ along, Oh yes, Lord, De element opened, an’ de Love came down, Oh yes, Lord, I never shall forget dat day, Oh yes, Lord, When Jesus washed my sins away, Oh yes, Lord. Another chorus inquired: “O brothers where were you? O sisters[Pg 42] where were you? O sinners, O Christians, O mourners, etc., where were you?” for “My good Lord’s bin here, bin here, bin here; My good Lord’s bin here, An’ he blessed my soul an’ gone.” So the negro exhorters often conclude their services, saying that the Lord has been to the meeting and gone. Said one deacon who was exhorting for a large collection: “De good Lord’s done bin with us to-night—I knows he has, done been here an’ gone, an’ now we wants to git down to bizness, I wants some money.” Again, the negro fresh and enthusiastic from his religious experience and having “come through” sings with some relief: I have been tryin a great long while, Lord, I jus’ got over on yo’ side. Lord, I jus’ got over-er, Lord, I jus’ got over, Lord, I jus’ got over-er, I jus’ got over on yo’ side. I pray’d an’ I pray till I come over, Lord, I jus’ got over on yo’ side. So also he “weeps” and he “mourns” and “cries” till he “gets over on the Lawd’s side.” Then he sings “O de sunshine,” O the sunshine, O the sunshine, O sunshine in my soul this mornin’, Yes the sunshine, the sunshine, Yes sun shine in my soul. Down in the valley, down on my knees, Sunshine in my soul, There I met that heavenly breeze, Sunshine in my soul. Ole devil like a snake in the grass, Sunshine in my soul, He’s always in some sister’s path, Sunshine in my soul. While the song is also sung at times with more dialect, it lends itself more readily to the above form. Very much mixed and somewhat similar to those already given is “Bless the Name.” I’ve got to go to judgment, I don’t know how soon, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name, I’ve got to go to judgment to hear my sins, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name. [Pg 43] My Jesus fed me when I’s hungry, gave me drink when I’s dry, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name, My Jesus clothed me when I was naked, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name. In the same song and with the same tune are sung the shorter lines that follow. The chorus is often sung “Lor’ bless the name”, and is a form of the phrase “Bless the name of the Lord.” It is used as a refrain after each line or it may be omitted. Mary wept and Martha mourned, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name, Jesus Chris’ laid the corner of stone, Lord bless the name, Lord bless the name. Mary wore the golden chain, Every link was in Jesus’ name. You may talk about me just as you please, I’ll talk about you when I git on my knees. God made man an’ man was sure, There was no sin an’ his heart was pure. God made Adam an’ Adam was first, God made Adam out o’ the dust o’ the earth. The old slave songs also had other interpretations of man’s creation which differ slightly in particular from the last stanza quoted. One form occurs in God made man an’ he made him out o’ clay, Settin’ on de golden altar, An’ he put him on de earth but he did not stay, Settin’ on de golden altar. A favorite chorus for the old spiritual was: “What you gwine do when de lamp burns down?” So there was also another version of the weeping of Mary and Martha: Mary wept an’ Martha cried, To see deir Saviour crucified, Weepin’ Mary weep no mo’, Jesus say he gone befo’. It proves an interesting task to follow the development and changes in a song that has survived from slavery days. In “Free, free my Lord”, one of the verses was quite a puzzle. During the recent summer the following stanza was heard: [Pg 44]The moon come down like a piper’s stem, The sun ’fuse to shine, An’ ev’y star disappear, King Jesus set me free. Inquiry was made in order to see if the words had not been misunderstood. The older negroes gave this version and insisted that it was correct, but none of them could explain what it meant. It was thought that perhaps it was a figure applied to the moon’s rays or that the loss of the sun might have meant the peculiar appearance of the moon. Anyway, they maintained, this was the “way we got de song an’ guess it must be right.” The words of the original song were, The moon run down in purple stream, The sun forbear to shine, An’ ev’y star disappear, King Jesus shall be mine, of which there seemed to be several versions. Other verses that are found to-day are: As I went down in de valley one day, I fell upon my knees, I begged and cried fer pardon, The Lord did give me ease. Free, free, my Lord, Free, free, my Lord, Free, free, my Lord, To march de heaven’s highway. The Lord called Moses, Moses refuse to answer, Free, free, etc. My mother look at de son an’ smile, My Father look at me, My mother turn my soul from hell, King Jesus set me free, is an unusual variation and interpretation of the old song; just how and when the negro inserted the idea of mother would be difficult to ascertain; perhaps it came from “master,” or more likely it was introduced by them while they interpreted father and son as names of the ordinary members of a human family. The original form seems to have been, De Father, he looked on de Son and smiled, [Pg 45]De Son, he looked on me; De Father, he redeemed my soul from hell; An’ de Son, he set me free. The chorus, too, has been much confused and is given as “Children light on dat cross, God bless you forever mo’.” The song is not a common one among the negroes and is not known, apparently, among the younger ones. In contrast with this favorite of the older negroes may be given a favorite of the younger generation, “Glad I got religion.” The repetition represents pretty well the relative depth of the feeling which the convert feels. But he loves to sing it for its pleasing sound and for the faith it gives him in his own religious state. The song is a long and continued chorus and may well be taken as a type of the song which reflects the negro’s feeling of immunity from sin. I’m so glad, so glad; I’m so glad, so glad, Glad I got religion, so glad, Glad I got religion, so glad. I’m so glad, so glad; I’m so glad, so glad, I’m glad all over, so glad, I’m glad all over, so glad. I’m so glad, so glad; I’m so glad, so glad, Glad I bin’ changed, so glad. Glad I bin’ changed, so glad. And so he continues singing; he is glad that he is goin’ to heaven, he is glad that he is not a sinner, glad he has been set free, and many other such states. Then when he has finished he begins all over again, if he wishes and sings: “Sister, ain’t you glad? Brother, ain’t you glad?” and goes through with as many of these as he wishes, preacher, mourner, auntie, and the others. The “sinner-man” is the theme for many verses of the negro favorites. Directed at him are warnings and admonitions. He is told what he must do and when; how he must do and why. He is told of the experiences of the Christians and he is told of the doom of the damned. The negro rejoices over his own safety and boasts of the sinner’s destruction; at the same time he constantly refers to the “po’ sinner” in a sympathetic way. But the sinner must be warned: God knows it’s time, it’s time, it’s time, That a sinner was makin’ up his min’ It’s time, it’s time he was makin’ up his min’ to die. A sinner was walkin’ off his time, his time, An’ when my God call him he did not have the time, God know it was time, it was time, it was time for him to die. [Pg 46]Again the words of the righteous to the sinner are driven home by repetition, and, by a dark and dismal picture, O hell is deep an’ hell is wide, O hell is deep an’ hell is wide, O hell is deep an’ hell is wide, O hell ain’t got no bottom or side. Well before I lay in hell all day, hell all day, Well before I lay in hell all day, hell all day, Well before I lay in hell all day, hell all day, I goin’ to sing an’ pray myself away, self away. O sinner don’t you let this harves’ pass, harves’ pass, O sinner don’t you let this harves’ pass, harves’ pass, O sinner don’t you let this harves’ pass, harves’ pass, Do you die an’ got to hell at las’, hell at las’. The sinner may be a gambler or a dancer or a rogue or a drunkard. But each name has the same signification in the religious phraseology of the negro song. There are various ways of repenting and of serving the Lord just as there are as many ways of offending and sinning against him. “Workin’ on the Building” appeals to the average negro. If I wus a sinner man, I tell you what I’d do, I’d lay down all my sinful ways an’ work on the building, too. I’m workin’ on the building fer my Lord, Fer my Lord, fer my Lord, I’m workin’ on the building fer my Lord, I’m workin’ on the building, too. If I wus a gamblin’ man, I tell you what I’d do, I’d lay down all my gamblin’, an’ work on the building, too. If I was a ho-munger, I tell you what I’d do, I’d lay down all my munglin’ and work on the building, too. And so he sings for the dancer and the drunkard and the “cussin’ man.” So in another song the negro sings of the sinners and mourners. If I wus a mourner jus’ like you, ‘u-m-u’, I’d go to church an’ try to come thru’, ‘um-u’. When I was a mourner, um-u’, jus’ lak you, I prayed an’ prayed till I come thru, um-u’. Upon de mountain King Jesus spoke, um-u’, Out of his mouth come fier an smoke, um-u’. Now mourner won’t you please come on, um-u’, An’ join us in that heavenly lan’, um-u’. [Pg 47]In the “Downward road is crowded” a mournful picture is given of the sinner who failed to repent. His example is held up for the contemplation of those who are following in his steps. Young people who delight in sin, I tell you what I lately seen, A po’ godless sinner die, An’ he said: “In hell I soon’ll lie.” Hark, the downward road is crowded, crowded, crowded, Yes the downward road is crowded with onbelievin’ souls. He call his mother to his bed, An’ these is the dyin’ words he said, Mother, mother, I long farewell, Your wicked son is damned in hell. He dance an’ play hisself away, An’ still put off his dyin’ day, Until at las’ ole death was sent, An’ it ’us too late fer him to repent. They also sing of mother and sister being called to the bedside. The old plantation song of the same name had a similar chorus but the stanzas were quite different. When I wus a sinner, I loved my distance well, But when I come to fin’ myself, I was hangin’ over hell. Ole Satan’s might busy, He follers me night an’ day, An’ every where I ’pinted, Dere’s something in my way. The Lord will come to judge the world and wake up the dead. It is the supreme ambition of the singer to be ready to meet his Lord when He comes. Just what form the Lord will take the negro does not say; perhaps it will be in a cloud or fire or He will come as in the days of Moses. “My Lord’s comin’ again” gives a general conception. O my Lord’s comin’ again, O my Lord’s comin’ again, (Talk about it:) Yes my Lord’s comin’ again, It may be las’ time, I don’t know. Well he’s comin’ to judge the worl’, Well he’s comin’ to judge the worl’, [Pg 48](Talk about it:) Yes my Lord’s comin’ to judge the worl’, It may be las’ time, I don’t know. Well you had better put off lyin’ shoes, Well you better put off lyin’ shoes, (Talk about it:) Better put off lyin’ shoes, For it may be las’ time, I don’t know. And so he sings “Better put off dancin’ shoes”, “better put off gamblin’ shoes”. For the sinner’s shoes will not be suitable to “walk on the cross”. He sings: “God’s goin’ to wake up the Dead” and makes a beautiful melody out of the simple repetition. Goin’ to wake up the dead, Goin’ to wake up the dead, God goin’ to wake up the dead, Who’s a sleepin’ in the grave, God is goin’ to wake up the dead. You had better min’ my brother how you walk on the cross, God’s goin’ to wake up the dead; If yo’ right foot slip, then yo’ soul be los’ God goin’ wake up the dead. Then “you better min’ my sister, my brother, my mother, my preacher” are sung. The old song contained words similar to the lines just given, with the chorus: “De young lambs mus’ fin’ de way”: My brudder better mind how you walk on de cross, For yo’ foot might slip an’ yo’ soul git lost, Better mind dat sun, and see how she run, An’ mind don’t let her catch ye wid yer works undone. But the sinner sometimes gets confused, it would seem; sometimes he heeds the preacher’s warnings, sometimes he scoffs at them. Often he does not hear them. More rarely he inquires into conditions. In the lines which follow the negroes make each a stanza, repeating three times. It perhaps represents the retort of the “sinner man.” Some goin’ thru’ Jordan, some tryin’ to go ’round. The Mef’dis’ they say sprinklin’, de Baptis say’ baptize. Now Lord the sinner man so hard to believe, Now Lord sinner man want you to show him de way But the sinner gets little reply to his inquiries. “Time is comin’ when sinner mus’ die” and there is none so pitiable as the lost sinner. [Pg 49]Sinner, die, sinner die, Sinner dies wid his head hung down, Sinner die, sinner die, Sinner die in de midnight dew. Sinner die, sinner die, Sinner die, with achin’ heart, Sinner die, sinner die, Sinner die with weary min’. Stump’ty up an’ stump’ty down, Time is comin’ when sinner mus’ die, Hurry home, hurry home; Time is a comin’ sinner mus’ die. Don’t you let that sinner change yo’ min’, Time is comin’ sinner mus’ die. Hurry home, hurry home; Time is comin’ sinner mus’ die. The plantation song of some years ago, sometimes called “O sinner, you better get ready”, had the same line refrain, “Time is a comin’ dat sinner mus’ die.” The repetition of “sinner die”, is a new addition. In the old song were lines similar to those quoted: O sinner man you better pray, For it look a like judgment every day. I heard a lumb’ring in de sky, Dat make a me tink my time was nigh. I heard of my Jesus a many one say, Could ’move poor sinner’s sins away. Yes, I’d rather pray myself away, Dan to lie in hell an’ burn a one day. I think I heard my mother say— ’Twas a pretty thing to serve the Lord. O when I git to heaven I’ll be able fer to tell, O how I shun dat dismal hell. In addition to the line-refrain which was sung after each line of the song, an additional chorus followed at intervals; this chorus had “ready my Lord” where the new one has a short line, “Hurry home”. Oh, sinner, you’d better get ready, ready my Lord, Oh, sinner, you’d better get ready. An interesting type of song is that in which an imaginary conversation is carried on between two parties. If the song is correctly[Pg 50] rendered the leader or one part of the chorus sing the first part or take the words of one of the speakers, while the other chorus take up the other speaker’s words. Both then join in the grand refrain, which in the following song is “Lord, I’m on my way”. Sinner, what you goin’ to do When de devil git you? What you goin’ do When de devil git you? What you goin’ do When de devil git you? Lord, I’m on my way. I’m goin’ run to the rocks. Well, they can’t hide you. Goin’ run to the rocks— They can’t hide you; Run to the rocks, Well, they can’t hide you, Lord, I’m on my way. I’m goin’ to run to the water; An’ water goin’ to cry “fire”, Goin’ to run to the water, An’ water cry “fire”, Run to the water, An’ water cry “fire”, Lord, I’m on my way. And so the sinner will then “run to the mountain,” and “De mountain fly open” or “De mountain cry mercy.” The sinner must needs be hopeless at his death and there is neither mercy nor pity for him. It is the idea of the negro that at the great day “we won’t be bothered with them any mo’”. A sad picture he makes of the poor, and forsaken man who dies “with achin’ heart”, with “weary min’”, and with his “head hung down”. Consequently it is not surprising to find appeals of all sorts made to the sinner man; now he is told of his doom, now of possible salvation, now of the joys of being saved, now of immediate satisfaction. Sung like the above song is “Come, sinner, come”. Won’t you come, won’t you come? Come, sinner, come; Great day of wrath is comin’, Come, sinner, come. Look over yonder what I see; Come, sinner, come; Two tall angels comin’ after me, Come, sinner, come. [Pg 51]In the same manner he sings, “Won’t you come an’ see yo’ Lord?” and “Ole Satan like a snake in de grass, Always in some sister’s path,” “Ole Satan weahs mighty loose ole shoe, Ef you don’t min’ gwine slip it on you”. “Up on hill side King Jesus spoke, Out of his mouth come fier an’ smoke”, “Down in de valley, down on my knees, Ask de Lord to save me if He please”, and others. The plantation song asked, O whar you runnin’, sinner? I do love de Lord; De Judgment day is comin’, I do love de Lord; You’ll see de worl’ on fire, I do love de Lord; You’ll see de element a meltin’, I do love de Lord. Besides these stanzas there were sung the various other warnings such as have been given in the idea of Judgment and Resurrection already noted. In the old slave song the sinner asks: My Lord, My Lord, what shall I do? An’ heaven bell ring an’ praise God. What shall I do for hiding place? I run to de sea but de sea run dry. I run to de gate but de gate shut fast. No hiding place for sinner dere. For I am gone an’ sent to hell. Instead of the regular refrain which is sung by the chorus of voices in response to a line by the leader, the negroes often respond with “um-m’” in a general mingling of chant, humming, and “amens”. For the most part they do this with closed lips; the volume is surprisingly strong, however, and makes a stirring effect. The meaning of the expression is something like “Yes?” or “Of course, we know it is true” or “Sure, you talkin’ brother”. The singer says: “I look for Jesus all my days”, and the chorus answers, “um-u’” and he then continues, An’ when I found him this is what he said, um-u’ Yo’ sin forgiven an’ you soul set free, um-u’ I pray all night, an’ I pray all day, um-u’ um-u’, Then my Lord taken my sins away, um-u’, um-u’. [Pg 52] Nex’ day, nex’ day while walkin’ along, um-u’, um-u’, I heard a voice an’ saw no one, um-u’, um-u’, It said, sinner man, you better come home, um-u’, um-u’. One day I was walkin’ long dat lonesome road, um-u’, um-u’, King Jesus spoke unto me an’ lifted off dat load, um-u’. Again, “Brother, you’d Better be a Prayin’”, while mostly repetition makes a long song when sung to its limit. “Sister”, “Sinner”, “Backslider”, “Mourner”, “Children”, each serves to make a complete stanza of eight lines: Brother you’d better be a prayin’, Brother, you’d better be a prayin’, My brother, you’d better be a prayin’, An’ I’ll be carried above, An’ I’ll be carried above, An’ I’ll be carried above, I’ll see king Jesus in his reign, An’ I’ll be carried above. The chorus song, “Wheel in middle of Wheel” is most likely a variation of the old song “Wheel in a wheel” which was “run by love, by faith,” and was sometimes conceived as a chariot wheel upon which “gwine take a ride, On de chariot wheel”, for “de chariot’s comin’, O my Lord”. Sometimes the wheel was conceived as being a “Little wheel a-turnin’ in my heart”, in which case it signified some sort of feeling. The phrase means nothing more than a chorus in the present-day song. O sinner man, how can it be? Wheel in de middle of wheel, If you don’t serve God, you can’t serve me, Wheel in de middle of wheel. In the wheel, in the wheel, Wheel in de middle of wheel, In the wheel, in the wheel, Wheel in the middle of wheel. Well don’t you know it’s prayin’ time? Wheel in middle of wheel; Lay down yo’ way an’ go to God, Wheel in middle of wheel. Well don’t you know it’s mournin’ time? Wheel in middle of wheel; He’ll hear yo’ prayers an’ sanctify, Wheel in middle of wheel. [Pg 53]Jesus and God are represented as “Listenin’ all the day long”, and the sinner is directed to pray. The plantation songs called to him: “Where you goin’ sinner? O come back, don’t go dat way.” And one of the singers affirmed that “about the break o’ day” his sins were forgiven and “his soul set free.” The song “Jesus is a listenin’” seems at some time to have been considerably corrupted. The negroes have sung it: “I’ve been a listenin’ all day long, and all night long, to hear some sinner pray.” However, the correct version now seems to be: Jesus is a listenin’ all the day long, He keep listenin’ all the day long, He keep listenin’ all the day long, For to hear some sinner pray. If I was a sinner I would please him, I would pray an’ pray a day, An’ when I got to heaven, So he could say he heard me pray. But in “Bear yo’ Burden, sinner”, another version is given of the same idea. This song is a popular one, while the figures used give a definite conviction. The Lord is a listenin’ all the day long, Bear yo’ burden sinner, If you will only pray, he will bear you on, Bear yo’ burden in the heat o’ the day. Bear yo’ burden, sinner, Bear yo’ burden, sinner, Bear yo’ burden in the heat o’ the day. I’m goin’ home fer to see my Lord, Bear yo’ burden, sinner, An’ don’t you wish you could go ’long, Bear yo’ burden, let in the heat. The way to bear yo’ burden is to get down on yo’ knees, Bear yo’ burden, sinner, let in the heat, Ask God to forgive you if you please, Bear yo’ burden in the heat of the day. This last stanza is an improvisation made by a young negro of some twenty-five years, although he claimed that it belonged to the song that was regularly sung, maintaining that they only forgot to sing it in the church on that special occasion. “True Religion” gives one view of the requisites of him who will be saved. The song[Pg 54] is based in form on a current secular song, and belongs to the class of colloquies. Well you must have that true religion, You must have true religion an’ yo’ soul converted, You must have that true religion. Or you can’t cross there. Where are you goin’, sinner, Where are you goin’, I say? I goin’ down to de river of Jorden, An’ you can’t cross dere. He continues, “Where are you goin’ gambler, backslider, drunkard, liar, hypocrite?” and answers each with, “An’ you can’t cross there,” while the entire chorus, “You must have that true religion,” is often repeated after each. The sinner is asked still other questions, one of which is given in the song “Waitin’”. Why does you tarry, sinner, Why does you wait so long? For my Lord is a waitin’, Why don’t you come to His call? He is waitin’, Lord, He is waitin’, Lord, He is a-waitin’ fer the good Lord, To come, My Lord. But when my Lord get here, You want have time to pray at all, For he is goin’ to judge you, An’ hell you be bound. The negro preacher often rebukes his flock for talking about each other in uncomplimentary terms. Sometimes the “sisters” who do not like the preacher retort variously, “I heard you talkin ’bout So and So, you know I did” or “We gwine talk ’bout you,” or “Yes, you knows it.” Slander and gossip are fast runners and the average negro assumes that somebody is talking about him or something which he has done. Out of this has grown the song “Talk about me” and others. Yes, I know you goin’ talk ’bout me, Yes, I know you goin’ talk ’bout me, For you talk ’bout my father when he’s on his knees a prayin’, An’ I know you goin’ talk ’bout me. So likewise he sings “I know you’re goin talk about me” because[Pg 55] “you talk about my mother when she’s on her bed a-dyin’”; he actually sings father, brother, mother, sister, mourner, preacher, to both “on his knees a prayin’”, and “on bed a dyin’.” A very popular stanza which is regularly sung in a number of songs goes: “You may talk about me just as you please, I’m goin’ to talk about you when I git on my knees.” The old slave and plantation song asked: “Who’ll jine de Union?” saying, “Say, ef you belong to de union ban’, den here’s my heart an’ here’s my hand.” There have been societies known as “The Union” or “Union Band” both in the church and outside. The name “Union” itself is a favorite one among the negro societies and organizations. It was thought in the old days that a union band would march to heaven and that these only would be enabled to reach the destination. It is almost certain that a number of references in their songs referred to the Union army in and after the war. However, the exact origin of the song as it is now sung has not been found, but appears to be a general corruption of several old songs. Get in the Union, Jesus is a listenin’, Get in the Union, Jesus die. Well, won’t you get in the Union? Jesus is a listenin’, Jesus die. Where was Ezekiel when the church fell down? Down in de valley wid his head hung down. Hypocrite, hypocrite, God do despise, Tongue so keen till he will tell lies. Upon the mountain Jehober spoke, Out of his mouth come fier an’ smoke. With this chorus are sung also as already given, “Satan, the snake in the grass”, “Ole satan weah mighty loose ole shoe”, etc. The “Hallelujah” so common among the old songs is less frequently heard now: it will be found to some degree in the shouting songs and songs of heaven. Not the least among the warnings to the sinner were to be reckoned the times when “Gable” should blow his horn. “Gable” has been proverbial among the negroes; Gabriel and the trumpet are, however, significant in the same way among the whites in vulgar reference. Many ideas of “Gable’s” trumpet have appeared in the negro songs. Sometimes it is “blow louder, Gable.” “How loud mus’ I blow?”[Pg 56] Reference has already been made to these lines. The song “Blow, Gable, blow” has changed considerably from the old plantation songs of the same name. Blow Gable, at the judgment, Blow Gable, at the judgment bar. For my God is a talkin’ at the judgment, For my God is a talkin’ at the judgment bar. Now won’t you blow Gable at the judgment? For my God is a preachin’ at the judgment bar. Now won’t you blow Gable at the judgment bar? Well, I’m goin’ to meet my preacher at the judgment bar. In the same manner, making a four-line stanza of each one, are sung, “Goin’ to meet brother, mother, sister, etc.”, and also “My God is a walkin’, tryin’, etc.,” at the judgment bar. So, too, it is “prayin’ time, mournin’ time, singin’ time, shoutin’ time, tryin’ time, etc., at the judgment bar.” This song may be given as the last one of the class peculiar to warnings and admonitions to sinners. It closes with still other verses that give vivid pictures of the judgment bar. Well, sinners, keep a prayin’ at the judgment bar. Well, it’s too late to pray at the judgment bar. Why didn’t you take heed at the judgment? Some come crippled at judgment. Oh, I look fer my mother, brother, sister, at de judgment. Both the sinner and the seeker has a “hard time” during some time in his experience. The duties of everyday life, too, often seem hard. Now on his knees, now shouting, now sorrowful and now glad, the negro comes from “hanging over hell” to die and “set by de Fadder’s side.” The average negro appears to pity himself, and his song intensifies the feeling. The songs that follow may be classed as those that give the state of uncertainty and doubt, together with pity mingled now and then with the note of triumph. In “Oh, what a hard time”, sisters, brothers, children, preachers, seekers—all have the same difficulties. Oh, what a hard time, Oh, what a hard time, Oh, what a hard time—All God’s children have a hard time. Oh, what a hard time, oh, what a hard time, Oh, what a hard time, my Lord had a hard time, too. So in another division will be given the song “My Trouble is Hard”,[Pg 57] the idea of which seems to be derived from the old plantation songs, though the new song is entirely different from the old ones. The plantation negroes used to sing “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen”, in which they were “sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes almost to de groun’.” Others sung it “Nobody knows the trouble I see, or I’ve had”, and asked: “Brother, sister, preacher, will you pray for me?” In the same pathetic tone the “Sinner man” gives another phase of the feeling. My mother’ n yo’ mother both daid an’ gone, My mother’ n yo’ mother both daid an’ gone, My mother’ n yo’ mother both daid an’ gone, Po’ sinner man he so hard to believe. My folks an’ yo’ folks both daid an’ gone, Po’ sinner man he so hard to believe. My brother ’n yo’ brother both daid an’ gone, Po’ sinner man he so hard to believe. In the same way “my sister”, etc., completes the song, with favorite lines, “Down in de valley”, “Upon mountain Jehober spoke”, etc., being inserted as often as they desire. “Hanging over hell” gives more intensity to the feeling of the sinner. He says: When I wus hangin’ over hell, over hell, When I wus hangin’ over hell, over hell, Well, I had no one to pity poor me, poor me. Well, my mother sick an’ my father daid, father daid, Well, my mother sick an’ my father daid, father daid, Well, I ain’t got no one to pity poor me, poor me. Well, I ain’t got no one to pray for me, to pray for me. I ain’t got no one to feel for me, feel for me. Likewise he has no one to “cry” for him, to “mourn” or to “care” for him. It will be noticed that the negroes insert the word “well” frequently. There is no regularity or rule for its use; it apparently gives the song a more plastic turn and makes it seem more conversational. In some of their songs they insert in the same way, “says”, and “er”, “a”, “an”, at will. The struggle is well represented by the song “Keep inchin’ along”, which was also common in the old plantation melodies; the chorus is the same, while the words are entirely different from the older song. [Pg 58]Keep er-inchin’ erlong, keep er-inchin erlong, Jesus’ll come bye’m bye, Keep er-inchin’, keep er-inchin erlong, Jesus’ll come bye’m bye. De road is rocky here below, But Jesus’ll come bye’m bye, But Jesus leads me as I go, Jesus’ll come bye’m bye. Sometimes I hangs my head an’ cries, But Jesus’ll come bye’m bye. An’ He gwi’ wipe mer weepin’ eyes, But Jesus’ll come bye’m bye. Uh, run ’long mourner an’ git yo’ crown, By yo’ Father’s side set down. I’m glad that I’m bo’n ter die, Frum trouble here my soul gwi’ fly. In the same hopeful strain the negro sings “Boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat Mornin’,” which has a large number of stanzas, none of which have any similarity of meaning to the general theme. Yonder come er sister all dressed in black, She look lak er hipercrit jes’ got back, I’m boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat mornin’. Cross me over, Great Jehover, My Lord, I’m boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat mornin’. See dat Christian on his knees, He’s gwin’ ter cross dem jasper seas, I’m boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat mornin’. Swing low chariots in er line, Carry me ter glory in due time, I’m boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat mornin’. Ain’t but the one thing grieve my min’ Sister goin’ to heaven an’ leave me behin’, I’m boun’ ter cross Jord’n in dat mornin’. It is a favorite theme of the negroes to sing much of their “Lord” and “God”. Much has been noted of the names and attributes which Deity holds in the negro’s songs. As his friend the negro believes that God is always true; consequently he sings his loyalty to Him. The old plantation song “Tell Jesus” had as its chorus: “Tell Jesus done done all I can, Tell Jesus done done all I can, Tell Jesus done done all I can, I can’t do no more”. Very much like it is the song[Pg 59] “For my Lord” that is much in demand among the present-day negroes. I goin’ to do all I can fer my Lord, I goin’ to do all I can fer my Lord, I goin’ to do all I can fer my Lord, I goin’ to do all I can fer my Lord, I do all I can till I can’t do no more, I goin’ do all I can fer my Lord. In the same way he sings “I goin’ weep all I can till I can’t weep no more”, “I goin’ pray all I can till I can’t pray no more”, and “sing” and “mourn” and “work” for his Lord. The phrases “till I can’t do no mo’”, and the others are characteristic of the negro’s prayers. He usually closes his church prayers, “Now Lord, when we’s done prayin’ an’ can’t pray no mo’; when we’s done meetin’ an’ can’t meet no mo’”, etc. The closing scene, the final act of life, seems to appeal to the negro with wonderful dramatic power. It is in the end that he himself will be great; it is then that God and Jesus and the angels will be made manifest, and it is there in the new home that his condition will be one of ease and rest, at the same time that it is one of prominence. He sings “Gwi’ lay down my life fer my Lord”. De Lord giv’ me mer trumpet an’ tole me ter blow, He giv’ me mer cummission an’ tole me ter go. Fer my Lord, fer my Lord, Fer my Lord, gwi’ lay down my life fer my Lord. You can hinder me here but you can’t hinder me dere, For de Lord in Heaven gwi’ hear my prayer. De enemy’s great but my Cap’n is strong, U’m fightin’ fer de city an’ de time ain’t long. When I git dar I’ll be able fer to tell, How I whipped ole Satan at de door ob hell. Mer head got wet wid de midnight dew, Dat mornin’ star was shinin’ too. So again the negro magnifies his Lord in “a weary Lan’” and makes both a striking picture and a pleasing song. His Lord is not only “a walkin’ in a weary lan’”, but he is also a “doctor”, a “preacher” and a “shelter”. Thus he pictures him “walkin’” “talkin’” “preachin’”, and “healin’” in the weary land. My Lord’s a walkin’ in the weary lan’, [Pg 60]In a weary lan’, in a weary lan’, Yes, my Lord walkin’ in weary lan’, He’s a shelter in a mighty storm. Likewise he is a healer in a mighty storm or in the time of storm. It is but natural that the negro should call upon the Lord to remember him. The old plantation song “Do Lord remember me” was apparently based upon the idea of being remembered at Christmas times; indeed the negroes always ask to be remembered at such a time by the “whitefolks”. They were always remembered and often their homes were made happy. The song asked: “O do Lord remember me, O do Lord remember me, O do remember me until de year roll round, Do Lord remember me.” The song now current is most likely not the same song but an entirely different one. Do my Lord remember me, Do my Lord remember me, Do my Lord remember me, Do Lord remember me. Upon de housetop an’ can’t come down, Do Lord remember me. Upon de house an’ can’t come down. Do Lord remember me. When I am hungry do feed me Lord, Do Lord remember me. When I am thirsty do give me drink, Do Lord remember me. The negroes sometimes call the following song the “riddle song”, asking “who is the Rock”, while the answer comes back, like the Psalmist, “King Jesus is the Rock”. Lead me to the Rock, lead me to the Rock, Lead me to the Rock that is higher an’ higher. O, Lead me to the Rock, Yes, lead me to the Rock that is higher an’ higher. King Jesus is the Rock, yes, King Jesus is the Rock, King Jesus is the Rock that is higher an’ higher, O King Jesus is the Rock, Yes, King Jesus is the Rock that is higher an’ higher. Standing on the Rock, yes standing on the Rock, Standing on the Rock that is higher an’ higher. O, standing on the Rock, Yes, standing on the Rock that is higher an’ higher. As Jesus is the Rock so the negroes have sung “Dere’s no one[Pg 61] lak’ Jesus”. The chorus-line was common in the old songs; the verses of the song of to-day are different. I think I heard a rumblin’ in de sky, Dar’s no one lac Jesus. It mus’ be mer Lord passin’ by, Dar’s no one lac Jesus. Stan’ still, walk study, keep de faith, Dar’s no one lak’ Jesus. Sister Mary went up on de mount’n top, Dar’s no one lak’ Jesus. She sung a li’l song an’ she never did stop, Dar’s no one lak’ Jesus. She argued wid de Fadder an’ chatter’d wid de Son, Dar’s no one lak’ Jesus. She talk’d erbout the ole worl’ she cum frum, Dar’s no one lak’ Jesus. The song “Gi’ me Jesus” was said to have been the product of “over-free spirit and super-religiousness” just after the war. The negro claims that the white man took him at his word when he sang, “Gi’ me Jesus, You may have all this worl”, and has left him nothing in this world but Jesus. At least this is one view of the song, which is represented as a bargain which the white man wants the negro to keep. The song is a typical and well known one, said to have been first sung by a blind negro preacher. In de mornin’ when I rise, In de mornin’ when I rise, In de mornin’ when I rise, Giv’ me Jesus. Giv’ me Jesus, Giv’ me Jesus, You may hab’ all dis worl’, Giv’ me Jesus. Ef it’s midnight when I rise, Ef it’s midnight when I rise, Ef it’s midnight when I rise, Giv’ me Jesus. Jes’ fore day when I cried, Giv’ me Jesus. When I wade death’s cold stream, Giv’ me Jesus. The negro says that if you love Jesus, it seems to him that you[Pg 62] “can’t keep it”, and that you are duty bound to let the world know it. The custom is a common one of asking “members” at the class meeting and revival services whether or not they “love the Lord”. It is the duty of the class leader to see to the religious welfare of the members. The song “Love the Lord” represents this phase of worship. Well, did you say that you love Jesus? Did you say that you love the Lord? Yes, I say that I love Jesus. Yes, I say I love the Lord. All I wants to know is, “Does you love Jesus?” All I wants to know is, “Does you love the Lord?” Yes, I say that I love Jesus, Yes, I say I love the Lord. If you love Jesus, you can’t keep it, All I want to know is, “Does you love the Lord?” Yes, my mother, I love Jesus, Yes, my mother, I love the Lord. The chorus then varies from “Yes, I say” to “Yes, my mother”, “Yes, my sister”, “Yes, my brother”. In striking contrast to his earthly life, the negro sings of his heavenly home. It will be seen in the study of his social songs that home plays a small part in their subject matter. It is true that the negro has little love of home or devotion to loved ones. Perhaps for this very reason he expects to have a better home in the beyond. He wants that which is ideal and impractical; he wants that which will come without effort. If in slavery days he had no home, it was natural that he should look to Heaven for his home. This conception, intensified by the negro’s emotional nature and self-pity, is still prominent. Not only is his home to be a happy one, but it is to be exclusive; only the fortunate, of whom he is the chiefest, may go there. This class of songs—of Heaven and home—is perhaps as large as any. The negro sings: I got a home where liars can’t go, Don’t you see? Jus’ between the heaven an’ earth, Where my Saviour bled an’ died, I got a home where liars can’t go, Don’t you see? [Pg 63] I got a home where sinners can’t go, Don’t you see? Jus’ between the earth an’ sky, Where my Saviour bleed an’ die, Don’t you see? When the earth begin to shake, Don’t you see? You better get a ticket or you’ll be late, Don’t you see? In the same way the singers repeat, using the words “drunkards,” “hypocrits”, and other sinners. Sometimes instead of saying “I got a home where the drunkards can’t come”, the sinner will say “where the drunkards can’t find me”. Another version of the same song is found in different localities: I got a home in the Rock, Don’t you see? Just between the heaven an’ earth, Well, yes, I got a home in the Rock, Don’t you see? Judas was a deceitful man, Don’t you see? Well he betrayed the innercent Lam’, Well he lost a home in the Rock, Don’t you see? Well the sun refuse to shine, Don’t you see? The sun refuse to shine, An’ the sun refuse to shine, Don’t you see? God don’t talk like a natural man, Don’t you see? God don’t talk like a natural man, He talk so sinners can understan’, Don’t you see? Well I don’t want to stumble, Don’t you see? Well I don’t want to fall, I read that writin’ on de wall, Don’t you see? The “Home in the Rock” and the “Rock of ages” mean little to the negroes; they are suitable terms and appeal to their sense of sound. Like other peoples, the negroes have inserted them into their religion as forceful symbols. Interesting comparisons may be made[Pg 64] in a later chapter. The chorus of “Heaven” hummed in a monotone, with lips sometimes closed, makes a beautiful song, and one that appeals much to both old and young negroes. You got a robe, I got a robe, All God’s children got a robe, Goin’ try on my robe an’ if it fits me, Goin’ to wear it all round God’s heaven. Heaben—heaben, ev’ybody goin’ to heaben An’ I’m goin’ dere, too. Gamblers dere an’ gamblers here, I’m so glad dat God declare, Dere ain’t no gamblers in heaven. This version and wording is rather that of the children, who are very fond of singing it. They continue “Heaven so high you can’t go over it”, “Heaven so low you can’t go under it”, “Heaven so deep you can’t go through it”, and “Heaven so wide you can’t go round it”. The most common form of the song is a variation of the above. Sinners, gamblers, dancers, liars, drunkards are everywhere, but not in Heaven. Well there are sinners here and sinners there, An’ there are sinners everywhere, But I thank God that God declare, That there ain’t no sinners in heaven. Heaven, Heaven, Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven an’ goin’ there, Heaven, Heaven, Goin’ to shine all ’round God’s heaven. Well there are drunkards here an’ drunkards there, An’ there are drunkards everywhere, But I’m so glad that God declare, There ain’t no drunkards in heaven. Heaven, Heaven, Preachers all preachin’ ’bout heaven an’ goin’ there, Heaven, Heaven, Goin’ to shine all ’round God’s heaven. As has been indicated, many of the negro songs consist of single lines repeated in couplets or by fours in order to give length to the singing. The most simple sentences that could be devised may serve as a good song. The negro happens to think of an ordinary truth; he then sings it to his tune and chorus. [Pg 65]I’m goin’ to be a Christian if I keep a prayin’ on, I goin’ to be a Christian if I keep a prayin’ on, I goin’ to be a Christian, I’m goin’ to be a Christian, I goin’ to be a Christian if I keep a prayin’ on. An’ when I git religion, I goin’ to keep a prayin’ on. I goin’ to see my Jesus if I keep a prayin’ on. I goin’ to see my mother if I keep a prayin’ on. In the same way he is “going to see” his father, brother, master, preacher, singing each line four times, altering them as he desires and putting in any chorus that appeals to his fancy. The next song shows a typical variation of a line, and the negro sometimes sings the second version with more determination than the first. Lord, I want to go to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, Lord, I want to go to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, Yes, I want to go to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, Great Judgment day. Well, I’m goin’ to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, An’ I’m goin’ to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, Yes, I’m goin’ to heaven fer to stan’ my trials, Great Judgment day. The darkeys used to sing, “Hail, hail, hail, I’m gwine jine saints above, I’m on my journey home”. So, too, in many of their songs the “promise Lan’” was held out as the goal of future happiness. So it is to-day. “On my journey home” and “Goin’ to Heaven” represent the common conception. Sister when you pray you mus’ pray to de Lord, For I hab some hopes ob glory, I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home, I feel like, I feel like, I’m on my journey home. I’ll away, I’ll away to de promise lan’, My Father calls me, I mus’ go, To meet Him in de promise lan’. I have a father in the promise lan’, Go meet him in de promise lan’, I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home, I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home. So, too, the singer has a mother, a sister, an auntie and others in the “promise lan’”. Likewise he says instead of “sister when you pray,” etc., brother, member, mourner, sinner, preacher, and the others.[Pg 66] As a rule morning signified to the negroes the time for going to heaven and for the resurrection. The morning star shining as a witness to his conversion, and the midnight dew typified the early morning time of his religion. “In the morning” is sung as of old. I have been tempted, O yes, An’ I have been tried, O yes, I have been to the river an’ been baptize, An’ I want to go to heaven in the morning. Won’t you ride on Jesus? Ride on Jesus, ride on crowning King, For I want to go to heaven in the morning. If you see my mother, O yes, Please tell her for me, O yes, That the angels in heaven done change my name, An’ I want to go to heaven in the morning. So if you see “brother John, sister Nancy,” and others makes the song complete. The song once so popular, “Yes, I’ll be dere, When gen’ral roll call” is still heard occasionally. Many of these songs have been corrupted and changed, consolidated and revised into new songs. Such a song is “Study war no mo’”, which combines the old camp meeting, “down by the river side”, and a new element of peace, the origin of which is not known. Well there’s goin’ to be a big camp meetin’, Well there’s goin’ to be a big camp meetin’, Well there’s goin’ to be a big camp meetin’, Down by the river side. Well, I ain’t goin’ to study war no mo’, Well, I ain’t goin’ to study war no mo’, Well, I ain’t goin’ to study war no mo’. Well such a shoutin’ an’ prayin’ Down by the riverside. Well I goin’ to meet my sister, Down by the riverside. Well the brothers got to shoutin’, Down by the riverside. Said the old singers: “Some o’ dese mornin’s, hope I’ll see my mother, hope I’ll jine de ban’, hope I’ll walk bout Zion, Talk wid de angels, Talk my trouble over” while they looked “away to hebben”. Now the negro sings: [Pg 67]Gwine to weep, gwine to mourn, Gwine to git up early in de morn, Fo’ my soul’s goin’ to heaven jes’ sho’s you born, Brother Gabriel goin’ to blow his horn. Goin’ to sing, goin’ to pray, Goin’ to pack all my things away, Fo’ my soul’s goin’ to heaven jes’ sho’s you born, Brother Gabriel gwine ter blow his horn. “Pray come an’ go wid me” sings the Christian, for “I’m on my journey home to the New Jerusalem”. If refused he says, “Now don’t let me beg you to follow me, for I’m on my journey home”, and finally he sings, “Well, brother come an’ go wid me.” If the sinner needs other exhortation he may listen to the mixed song “Dry bones goin’ to rise ergain”, in which there is first warning, then hope of glory. Some go ter meetin’ to sing an’ shout, Dry bones goin’ ter rise again; Fore six month deys all turned out, Dry bones goin’ ter rise again. O little chillun, O little childun, O lit’le childun, dry bones goin’ rise ergin. Talk erbout me but taint my fault, Dry bones goin ter rise ergin; But me an’ Godermighty goin’ walk an’ talk, Dry bones goin’ ter rise ergin. Ef you want ter go to heaven when you die, Dry bones goin’ rise ergin; Jes’ stop yo’ tongue from tellin’ lies, Dry bones goin’ ter rise ergin. In the old plantation song Ezekiel was represented down in a valley “full of bones as dry as dust” and He gib de bone a mighty shake, Fin’ de ole sinners too dry to quake, Death for the Christian is shouting: death for the sinner is doom. “When I git to heaven, goin’ shout on my knees” gives an accurate picture of what the negro conceives to be happiness. But he not only expects to shout while on earth and when he gets home, but even when he dies. For says he, My mother dies a shoutin’, an’ I goin’ die shoutin’, too, Yes, my mother died a shoutin’ an’ I goin’ die shoutin’, too. [Pg 68] My mother died a shoutin’, my mother died a shoutin’, Yes, my mother died a shoutin’ an’ I goin’ die shoutin’, too. Still his mother is not the only one who has died shouting; he sings in the same way of father, preacher, brother, sister and others; the slave song included “Missus” and “Marster” or “Massa”. But shouting must not be all. The negro and his brothers, sisters, mother are all to die “mournin’”, and “prayin’”. In “Join de Heaven wid de Angels” the rich voice of one or two leaders and the swelling chorus produce an effect scarcely surpassed. O join on, join my Lord, Join de heaven wid de angels; O join on, join my Lord, Join de heaven wid de angels. What kin’ er shoes is dem you wear? Join de heaven wid de angels; Dat you kin’ walk upon de air, Join de heaven wid de angels. Oh, God don’t talk like a nat’al man, Join de heaven wid de angels; He talk to de sinner, he understan’, Join de heaven wid de angels. I’m Baptis’ bred an’ I’m Baptis’ bo’n, Join de heaven wid de angels; An’ when I die dey’s a Baptis’ gone, Join de heaven wid de angels. Jes’ so de tree fall jes’ so it lie, Join de heaven wid de angels; Jes so de sinner lib’ jes’ so he die, Join de heaven wid de angels. The song has been found in several forms among which one has it that John is to be in de heavens with the angels. In fact the probable origin of “join on” seems to have been “John saw de heaven wid de angels”. In one of the old songs the singer answers, Dem shoes I wears is gospel shoes, View de lan’, view de lan’; An’ you can wear dem if you choose, View de lan’, view de lan’. There are other references, too, besides the above, to the denominations of the negro churchmen. It has already been seen that the negro likes “bes’” the “shoutin’ Mefodes’”. So he says “There’s fire in de[Pg 69] eas’ an’ fire in de wes; An’ fire among de Methodes’”. He is loyal and proclaims: “Methodist, Methodist is my name, Methodist till I die, I’ll be baptize in the Methodist name, An’ I’ll lib’ on the Methodist side”. In the same way he is Baptist and Presbyterian; the Baptist is the favorite church of the negro, however, and there are more Baptists than all other denominations combined. The “Angel Band”, while a very simple song in which the chorus constitutes the greater part, is one of the most beautiful that the negroes sing. The tune is a variation of a well-known hymn used by the whites. The power of the song seems to lie in the tender interest which centres about the vivid portrayal of the little angels in the heavenly band. The chorus is repeated after each stanza, while each stanza itself is the repetition of a single line. From one to ten; from ten to twenty and so on to one hundred is ordinarily sung, thus making a lengthy song. The children love to sing the chorus; two forms are ordinarily found, varying the monotony enough to please the negro. Dere’s one little, two little, three little angels, Dere’s four little, five little, six little angels. Dere’s seven little, eight little, nine little angels, Dere’s ten little angels in de band. Dere’s leben, dere’s twelve, dere’s thir’een little angels, Dere’s fourteen, dere’s fifteen, dere’s sixteen little angels. Dere’s seventeen, dere’s eighteen, dere’s nineteen little angels, Dere’s twenty little angels in de band. The “little” in the chorus is preferred to the “dere’s” as a rule, apparently serving to describe the angels. The stanzas of the song are equally as unlimited and as simple as the chorus. “Sunday morning” is the common factor to all of the verses; sometimes it is omitted. Jesus rose on Sunday mornin’, Jesus rose on Sunday mornin’, Jesus rose on Sunday mornin’, On Sunday mornin’ so soon. He rose an’ flew away on Sunday mornin’. My mother died on Sunday mornin’. Oh wasn’t that sad on Sunday mornin’? Dere’s goin’ to be a big camp meetin’ on Sunday mornin’. Dere’s goin’ to be a mournin’ on Sunday mornin’. [Pg 70] Mourners got to shoutin’ on Sunday mornin’. I’m goin’ away to leave you on Sunday mornin’. Well, my sister’s goin’ to heaven on Sunday mornin’. While this form of the song may be continued indefinitely, other verses may also be inserted. Instead of the “On Sunday mornin’” is often substituted “Fer to see my Lord”. Well, my sister’s goin’ to heaven fer to see my Lord, To see my Lord, to see my Lord; Well, my sister’s goin’ to heaven fer to see my Lord, What’s de onbelievin’ soul? And so he continues with preacher, brother, mother, auntie and any others that he wishes to enumerate. As a shouting song or as a “collection” song, it is not surpassed. The negro’s fancies of the “Heaven’s bright home” are not exceeded by the world’s fairy tales. There are silver and golden slippers; there are crowns of stars and jewels and belts of gold. There are robes of spotless white and wings all bejewelled with heavenly gems. Beyond the jasper seas he will outshine the sun; the golden streets and the fruit of the tree of life are far superior to any golden apples or silver pears of a Mother Goose. In fact the negro’s fairy stories centre on heaven; the children’s definitions of heaven consisted entirely of pictures of splendor and glory. To this place the negro imagines he will go and who knows but that he may fly there? Some o’ dese mornin’s bright an’ fair, Way in de middle of de air; Gwi’ hitch on my wings an’ try de air, Way in de middle of de air. Come over, den, John saw de holy number, Way in de middle of de air; John saw de holy number, Way in de middle of de air; If yer wanter dream dem heavenly dreams, Way in de middle of de air; Lay yo’ head on Jord’n’s stream, Way in de middle of de air. I got a book goin’ read it thru’, Way in de middle of de air, I got my Jesus well as you, Way in de middle of de air. [Pg 71]With a golden “band all round his waist, An’ de palms ob victory in a-his hands”, the negro sings in reality: “Pray come an’ go wid me”, for so vivid is his picture that he has been known to start up a post or pillar in the church, saying, “Good bye brothers, I’m gone”. His songs make much of flying; different from that just quoted he repeats: One mornin’ soon, One mornin’ soon, my Lord, One mornin’ soon, I goin’ try the air, I goin’ try the air, Pray come an’ go wid me. Well I got on my travellin’ shoes, Well I got on my travellin’ shoes, Well I got on my travellin’ shoes, Pray come an’ go wid me. He sings, too, “I goin’ to put on my long white robe”, “We’ll try on de slippah shoe an’ wear de golden belt”. Again he sings of his doings in the morning, noontime, and midnight. In the morning—um-u’, In the morning—um-u’, In the morning—um-u’, I goin’ put on my golden shoes. In the midnight—um-u’, In the midnight—um-u’, In the midnight—um-u’, I goin’ put on my long white robe. Talk about it—um-u’, Talk about it—um-u’, Talk about it—um-u’, I goin’ wear that starry crown. The angels and Jesus wear the starry crown and long white robes; there will be no separating line between us and God in the new world. “Oh how I long to go dere, too”, sang the old negroes. Now he pictures again the appearance of Jesus. Jesus, he wore the starry crown, Jesus he wore the starry crown, Jesus he wore the starry crown, starry crown. How does you know he wore the crown? How does you know he wore the crown? How does you know he wore the crown? wore the crown? [Pg 72] For the Bible it tell me so, For the Bible it tell me so, For the Bible it tell me so, tell me so. Then, too, Jesus “he wore the long white robe, for the Bible it tell me so.” More than the world or riches or dress the singer claims he values the treasures of heaven. In this assertion he is doubtless sincere, both because he is thinking only of his religious state while he sings, and because he has little opportunity for obtaining these earthly riches. Says he: I don’t care fur riches, Neither dress so fine, Jes’ giv’ me my long white robe, An’ I want my starry crown. For my Lord done bin here, Done bless my soul an’ gone away. Po’ man goin’ to heaven, Rich man goin’ to hell, For po’ man got his starry crown, Rich man got his wealth. This “ole worl’ bin a hell to me” indicates the contrast between the everyday life of the world and that which the negro will enjoy after death. In his eagerness and impatience to rest in the “promise lan’,” the negro does not always think kindly of the world and he does not care even though “Death is in dis lan’.” Ever since my Lord has set me free, Death is in dis lan’, This ole worl’ bin a hell to me, Death is in dis lan’. I’m so glad death is in dis lan’, I’m so glad death is in dis lan’. O run ’long mourner ’n git yo’ crown, Death is in dis lan’, By yo’ father’s side set down, Death is in dis lan’. Some er dese mornin’s bright and fair, Death is in dis lan’, Gwin’r hitch on my wings an’ try de air, Death is in dis lan’. If the negro expects to go to heaven and there mingle with God, the angels and his loved ones, he also expects to sing in all the glory[Pg 73] and splendor imaginable. The negroes used to sing of “jinin’ de association, climbin’ Jacob’s ladder, climbin’ higher an’ higher, sittin’ down at de welcome table, feastin’ off’n milk an’ honey, tell God how you served me, jine de big baptizin”, after which “den my little soul gwine shine.” So they sang of a mother, father, brother in heaven who “outshines de sun”, and ended by declaring that when they got to heaven “we will outshine de sun.” In very much the same way the negroes sing to-day in one of their favorites, “Goin’ to Outshine de Sun.” Well, my mother’s goin’ to heaven, She’s goin’ to outshine the sun, O Lord, Well, my mother’s goin’ to heaven, She’s goin’ to outshine the sun, Yes, my mother’s goin’ to heaven to outshine the sun, An’ it’s way beyon’ the moon. You got a home in the promise lan’, Goin’ to outshine the sun, O Lord, An’ it’s way beyon’ the moon. The crown that my Jesus give me, Goin’ to outshine the sun, my Lord, An’ it’s way beyond the moon. Goin’ to put on my crown in glory, An’ outshine the sun, O Lord. ’Way beyon’ de moon. Other verses sing of putting on slippers, long white robe, in each case the singer is to “outshine the sun.” The dazzling splendor of it all makes anticipation full of staying qualities; it makes the picture one of reality because of the vigor of an imaginative power. Who knows if the negroes often dream of the grandeurs of the sky? The negro uses many figures and symbols in his religion. He can see the chariot wheel and the chariot of fire taking him to heaven as easily as Elijah. He can imagine that he, too, can ascend even as Christ and the angels. Besides these methods he has the Gospel Train and the Ship of Zion. The train has much fascination for the negro: much will be seen of this in his social songs. It is but natural that he should bring it into his religious songs. The negro often goes to meet the train at the station, even when sick. It is a great social event of a Sunday. So again, he wishes to go on an excursion; few things can hinder him. Very much in the same strain is the religious song, “When the train come along.” [Pg 74]Well, I may be sick an’ cannot rise, But I meet you at de station when de train come along. When de train come along, When de train come along, I’ll meet you at de station when de train come along. Well, I may be blind an’ cannot see, But I’ll meet you at de station when de train come along. Well, I may be lame and cannot walk, But I’ll meet you at de station when de train come along. While no mention is made of the exact kind of train, it is generally understood to mean the Gospel train. This song also has a popular variant which is used in a secular way. In either case it expresses in a very forceful way the importance of meeting the train. In proportion as a picture resembles real life or magnifies that which has been imaged, to that degree does it bring home its truth to the negro’s mind. The negro continues to sing of the train on which he is to ride into the Kingdom. Says he: I am talkin’ ’bout the same train, Same train that carried my father, Same train. Same train that carried my mother, Same train, Same train will be back to-morrow, Same train. Same train will be here to-morrow, Same train, Well you better be ready, It’s the same train. The “same train” also carried his brother, sister, preacher and others. But the train which will come back to-morrow will not wait always. One must not only be at the station but must also have a ticket. There is plenty of room, according to the negro’s conception, but there is not plenty of time. It would be a wistful negro that looked upon the train pulling out for heaven and he all alone is left behind. He sings, Well you better git yo’ ticket, Well you better git yo’ ticket, Well you better git yo’ ticket, Bye and bye. [Pg 75] There’s a great day er comin’, There’s a great day er comin’, There’s a great day er comin’, Bye and bye. For the train it’s er comin’, For the train it’s er comin’, For the train it’s er comin’, Bye and bye. I am sure God is ready, I am sure God is ready, I am sure God is ready, Bye and bye. Instead of the chorus just given he often sings: “I sure God am ready,” and “I sho’ God is ready.” With this in view he is willing and glad for the train to come along. If he is ready, all the better for him to be on his journey. So he continues in another song and at another time: If God was to call me I would not care—um-u’, For he done move away my fears—um-u’. I’m goin’ to heaven, an’ I’m goin’ fo’ long—um-u’, All don’t see me will hear my song—um-u’. When de gospel train come ’long—um-u’, That’s the train carry me home—um-u’. Wake up, sinner, you will be too late—um-u’, Gospel train done pass yo’ gate—um-u’. In the old plantation songs the exhortation was given to “Git on board little children, dere’s room for many a mo’.” So also they sang: De gospel train’s a comin’, I hear it jus’ at hand, I hear de car wheels rumblin’, An’ rollin’ thru de land. I hear de train a comin’, She’s comin’ round de curve, She’s loosened all her steam an’ brakes, An’ strainin’ eb’ry nerve. De fare is cheap an’ all can go, De rich an’ pore are dere, No second class abord dis train, No difference in de fare. In addition to the above stanzas the Jubilee singers added others. They heard the bell and whistle and “she’s playin’ all her steam an’[Pg 76] power.” The rhyme and imagery of the old song struck a more responsive chord than the present song; this is due to the fact that the negro of to-day sings his railroad songs and enjoys them in his secular music. There he pictures the train with such vividness that the train may be easily heard and seen in his imagination. Other verses of the Gospel Train as it was sung by the Jubilee singers are: There’s Moses and Noah and Abraham, And all the prophets, too, Our friends in Christ are all on board, O what a heavenly crew. We soon shall reach the station, O how we then shall sing, With all the heavenly army, We’ll make the welkin ring. She’s nearing now the station, O sinner, don’t be vain, But come an’ get your ticket, And be ready for the train. No signal for the other train, To follow on the line, O sinner, you’re forever lost, If once you’re left behind. While the song as reported by the Jubilee singers does not possess the mere characteristics of form and dialect, it nevertheless appeals to the negroes and it is sometimes sung. One of the fears of the negro is that others may go to heaven and he be left behind. This, as has been indicated, constitutes the sum total of misery. So he has a number of songs in which he expresses this feeling and prays that he may not be left behind in the race of life for the eternal goal. One of the most touching of these songs represents the negro as an orphan who is unwilling to stay alone in the world: My muther an’ my father both are daid, both are daid, My muther an’ my father both are dead, My mother an’ my father both are dead, Good Lord, I cannot stay here by merself. I’m er pore little orphan chile in de worl’, chile in de worl’, I’m er pore little orphan chile in the worl’, I’m a pore little orphan chile in de worl’, Good Lord, I cannot stay here by merself. [Pg 77] De train done whistled an’ de cars done gone, cars done gone, De train done whistled an’ de cars ere gone, De train done whistled an’ de cars ere gone, Ezekiel, I cannot stay here by merself. My brothers an’ my sisters are all gone, all gone, My brothers an’ my sister’re all gone, all gone, My brothers an’ sisters all are gone, Mer Jesus, I cannot stay here by merself. Git me ticket fer de train, fer de train, Git me ticket fer de train, I got mer ticket fer de train, Thank God, I ain’t gwine stay here by merself. Very much like the song just given the negroes used to sing: “Dar’s room in dar, room in dar, room in de heaven, Lord, I can’t stay behin’”. So, too, “I can’t or don’t want to stay here no longer” are common and classic verses of negro song. Again they sang the “good news” because “De chariot’s comin’, I doan want her to leave a-me behind, Gwine get upon dat chariot, Carry me home”. In a prayer the negro sang: “Jesus, don’t leave me behind”. In his songs to-day the negro says: Dear brother, don’t you leave, Dear brother, don’t you leave, This ole world’s a hell to me. This ole world’s a hell to me, This ole world’s a hell to me. Yes, I bleedzed to leave this world, Yes, I bleedzed to leave this world, Sister, I’s bleedzed to leave this world, For it’s a hell to me. While the old negroes used to sing “Oh brother, sisters, mourners, don’t stay away, For my Lord says there’s room enough”, the modern negro sings “You can’t stay away”. Sister, you can’t stay away, Sister, you can’t stay away, Sister, you can’t stay away, stay away. My Lord is a callin’ an’ you can’t stay away, My Lord is a callin’ an’ you can’t stay away, Yes, my Lord is a callin’ an’ you can’t stay away, An’ you can’t stay away. King Jesus is a ridin’ an’ you can’t stay away, O preacher, you can’t stay away. [Pg 78]There have been a great many versions of the song “Ole Ship of Zion”, none of which differ materially. The four or five versions most common in the slave and plantation song represented the Ship of Zion somewhat as follows: “She has landed many a thousand, She can land as many more, Do you think she will be able, For to take us all home? You can tell ’em I’m comin’ home”, “Dis de good ole ship of Zion, An’ she’s maken’ fer de promise lan’. She hab angels fer de sailors. An’ how you know dey’s angels? Dat ship is out a sailin’ she’s a sailin’ mighty steady. She’ll neither reel nor totter, She’s a sailin’ ’way cold Jordan. King Jesus is de captain, captain”. “De gospel ship is sailin’, O Jesus is de captain, De angels are de sailors, O is yo’ bundle ready? O have you got yo’ ticket!” Another version has “her loaded down with angels”; Another “wid a-bright angels”. Another asks what ship is that “you’re enlisted upon”? and answers that it is the “Good ship of Zion”, which “sails like she’s heavy loaded”, and “has King Jesus for the captain”, and “the Holy Ghost is de pilot” The coast negroes had many songs that originated in ideas suggested by the boats. To-day the river negroes have songs of their own, but they do not go into the church songs. The Old Ship of Zion, however, is sung, but only as a remnant of the former song, less elaborate. This ole ship is a reelin’ an’ a rockin’, This ole ship is a reelin’ an’ a rockin’ rockin’ rockin’ Makin’ fer de promise lan’. While the negro sings, he sees the ship reelin’ an’ rockin’, and repeats these phrases enough and in a rhythmic manner, so that he imitates the imagined motion of the ship. The other stanzas of the song are practically the same as those of the earlier days. O my Lord, shall I be the one? O my Lord, shall I be the one? O my Lord, shall I be the one? Makin’ for the promise lan’? Yes, ’tis that good ole ship of Zion, of Zion, Yes, ’tis that good ole ship of Zion, of Zion, Yes, ’tis that good ole ship of Zion, Makin’ for the promise lan’. O the ship is heavy loaded, loaded, loaded, Makin’ for the promise lan’. It’s loaded with many er thousand, thousand, thousand, Makin’ fer the promise lan’. [Pg 79]“This ole worl’s a rollin’” is most likely a figure of the ship and modelled on the same song. However, it conveys a different idea, one of judgment and the end of the world. The negro sings: Well the ole worl’ is a rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, Yes, the ole worl’ is rollin’, rollin’ away. Well ain’t you goin’ to get ready? Yes, ain’t you goin’ to get ready? for it’s rollin’ away. Well get on board little children, children, children, Well get on board, for this ole worl’s rollin’ away. He sings for the sinner, mourner, and all his friends and relatives to get on board the world as she rolls away. It reminds one somewhat of the song once current among the negroes: “O de ole ferry boat stan’ a-waitin’ at de landin’, Chilluns we’se all gwine home”. The same feeling of motion and the end of the world as is indicated in the moving of the train, ship, and the world itself is also reflected in the opening of the graveyards and the rolling of the hearse wheel. The same rhythmic effect of motion and words give a strikingly appropriate attitude to the singer. O the lightening flashin’ an’ the thunder rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, O the lightening flashin’ an’ thunder rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, O the light’ning flashin’ an’ thunder rollin’, Lawd, I know my time ain’t long; Lawd, I know my time ain’t long. The hearse wheel rollin’ an’ graveyard openin’, openin’, openin’, The hearse wheel rollin’ an’ graveyard openin’, openin’, openin’, The hearse wheel rollin’ an’ the graveyard openin’, Lawd, I know my time ain’t long, my time ain’t long. And very much like the above song is “Every Day”. However, it is so similar to other songs that one concludes that it is only a putting together of what the singer already knew. The Bahama negroes have a song, “If hev’ry day was judgment day”, that is almost exactly the same in meaning as this one. The song, however, is a powerful one and seems to be gaining in popularity. Well the hearse wheel rollin’, Every day, every day, Carryin’ yo’ brother to the graveyard, Every day, every day—move, Zion, move. Well ain’t it a pity, pity? [Pg 80]Every day, every day, Well ain’t it a pity, ain’t it a pity? Every day, every day, move, Zion, move. Well they’re carryin’ a sinner, sinner, Every day, every day, Yes, they’re carryin’ a sinner, Every day, every day, move, Zion, move. Move, Zion, move, for you got to go to judgment, Every day, every day, Move, Zion, move, for you got to go to judgment, Every day, every day, move, Zion, move. The getting of mail, and especially of letters, usually means much to the negroes; perhaps simply because they receive little mail. To have a letter from a distinguished person is superlative honor and the recipient usually makes the fact known generally. Just how the negro conceived of receiving letters from God, or why he imagined the angels and apostles as writing letters does not appear clear. One gets a letter, another reads it; one writes a letter and all know its contents. Such a reference is found in a number of songs, that serve as a warning or admonition. Well my mother got a letter, O yes, Well she could not read it, O yes, What you reckon that letter said? That she didn’t have long to stay here. Won’t you come, won’t you come? Won’t you come an’ get ready to die? Won’t you come, for my Lord is callin’ you? How do you know that my Lord is callin’, O yes? If you look at this letter, O yes, You see it come from the Hebrews, O yes, Won’t you come, for my Lord is callin’ you. Perhaps the idea of the letter came from the epistles of the New Testament. John and Peter wrote letters; Mary and Martha read them. The letters of the Hebrews and Ephesians are spoken of. The idea “It just suits me” seems to have sprung up from satisfaction in reading the “word” or in hearing the sermon and praying in the usual way. John wrote a letter and he wrote it in haste, An’ it jus’ suit me: John wrote a letter and he wrote it in haste, An’ it jus’ suit me. [Pg 81] John wrote a letter and he wrote it in haste, If yer want to go to heaven yer better make haste, An’ it jus’ suit me. I’ll tell you a little thing that was in that letter, An’ it jus’ suit me. I’ll tell you a little thing that was in John’s letter, The Holy Ghost came to make us better, An’ it jus’ suit me. In the same form and repetition are sung other stanzas, all of which “suit” the negroes pretty well. If this isn’t the Holy Ghost I don’t know, I never felt such a love befo’, But it jus’ suit me. O my brother, you oughter been at de pool, To see me put on my gospel shoes, An’ it jus’ suit me. Ezekiel said he spied the train a comin’, We got on board an’ she never stopped runnin’, An’ it jus’ suit me. This kind er religion is better than gold, It’s better felt than ever told, An’ it jus’ suit me. I tell you a little thing you can’t do, You can’t serve God and the devil, too, But it jus’ suit me. When trouble is done an’ conflict have passed, I rise to reign in peace at last, An’ it jus’ suit me. By this time the singers are happy enough and the preacher joins them in shouting, “Yes, brethren, it just suits me.” It is gratifying to the negroes that their sins have been “washed in the blood of the Lamb”, as indeed it ought to be. Perhaps they give it its undue prominence without thought; for they have no conception of the seriousness of their claims. The negro singers have exhibited a characteristic specimen of their word combinations, concrete pictures, and theological principles in their song, “De blood done sign my name.” O de blood, O de blood, O de blood done sign my name; O Jesus said so, Jesus said so, [Pg 82]O de blood done sign my name. I believe it for God he tole me, That the blood done sign my name, I believe it for God he tole me, That the blood done sign my name, Yes, the blood done sign my name. How do you know so, God he said so That the blood done sign my name. Well it’s written in de Kingdom, That the blood done sign my name. Well in de Lamb’s book it is written, That the blood done sign my name. Well the wheels a turnin’, wheels a turnin’, Blood done sign my name. I’m boun’ for glory, boun’ for glory, The blood done sign my name. On de mountain, on de mountain, The blood done sign my name. In the valley, in the valley, Blood done sign my name. But the Christian does not have an easy time after his conversion. Satan is always at hand and ready to lead him away if there is a chance. The negro’s idea of satan and the devil has been noted. In his march songs the negro imagines that he is marching against his foe; this foe is sometimes satan himself. “The other world is not lak’ dis” is a typical marching song. I er’s walkin’ ’long de oder day, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis, I met ole satan on de way, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis, He said, “Young man, you’re too young to pray”, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis. Tell all dis worl’, Tell all dis worl’, Tell all dis worl’, De odder worl’ is not lak’ dis. As I went down in de valley to pray, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis, I met a little looker on de way, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis, He said: “Look out fer de Judgment day”, De udder worl’ is not lak’ dis. [Pg 83]Another marching song that is a rousing one is “Goin’ down to Jord’n”. It represents, like the one just given, the attributes of satan and his relation to the Christian. The scene as pictured, the army marching on down to Jordan, the imaginary foe, and the rhythm of the song make it a favorite. Halleluyer to the Lam’, Goin’ on down to Jordan, Lord God’s on that givin’ han’, Goin’ on down to Jordan. Goin’ down to Jordan, Goin’ down to Jordan, I got my breas’plate, sword an’ shield, Goin’ down to Jordan, Boldly mar chin’ thru’ the field, Goin’ on down to Jordan. I plucked one block out’n satan’s wall, Goin’ on down to Jordan, I heard him stumble an’ saw him fall, Goin’ on down to Jordan. Ole satan’s a liar an’ a conjurer, too, Goin’ on down to Jordan, If you don’t mind he’ll conjure you, Goin’ down to Jordan. Ole satan mad an’ I am glad, He missed a soul he thought he had. Ole satan thought he had me fast, Broke his chain an’ I’m free at last. I’ve landed my feet on Jordan’s sho’, Now I’m free forever mo’, Goin’ on down to Jordan. Something has been observed about the negro’s attitude toward the crucifixion. The old songs asked: “Wus you dere when dey crucified my Lord? When dey put the crown of thorns on?” and other scenes. In some of the songs the negroes sang “I wus dere when”, etc., while still others only affirm the facts. The songs of the present generation of negroes are less vivid and less full of feeling for the suffering of the Master. Some of the verses are similar to those of the plantation songs. He carried his cross, he carried his cross, [Pg 84]Up Zion hill, up Zion hill, He carried his cross, he carried his cross, Up Zion hill, up Zion hill, He carried his cross up Zion hill, Zion hill, Zion hill. They put on him the thorny crown (3), Then they nail my Jesus down, They nail him down, nail him down, nail him down, They lif’ the cross high in the air (3), To show the worl’ how they nail him there, How they nail him there, nail him there, nail him there. A peculiar corruption of this song represents the prodigal son as being in the place of Christ; now it is the prodigal, now it is the Lord. It indicates the manner of the development of many of these songs, and shows something of the insignificance of the words on the minds of the singers. He sings with his holy laugh: Yes, the prodigal son come home, ha, ha, Yes, the prodigal son come home, ha, ha, The prodigal son come home by hisself. An’ they nail him to the cross, ha, ha, An’ they nail him to the cross, ha, ha, An’ they nail him to the cross on that day. An’ the blood come runnin’ down, ha, ha, The blood come runnin’ down, ha, ha, An’ the blood come runnin’ down, on that day. An’ they kill the fat’nin’ calf, ha, ha, An’ they kill the fat’nin’ calf, ha, ha, They kill the fat’nin’ calf on that day. An’ they carried my Lord away, ha, ha, An’ they carried my Lord away, ha, ha, They carried my Lord away, by hisself. Paul and Silas, Peter and John are models for proper contemplation. One of the old songs represented Peter and Paul as bound in jail. “Togedda dey sung, togedda dey prayed, De Lawd he heard how dey sung an’ prayed. Den humble yo’selves, de bell done rung.” “Paul an’ Silas bound in jail, The Christians pray both night and day,” represented another song, one version of which has survived and is current to-day. Most of the song consists in repetitions. Paul and Silas bound in jail, Paul and Silas bound in jail, Paul and Silas bound in jail, Paul and Silas bound in jail. [Pg 85] Paul did pray one mournful prayer (4). Don’t you wish you could pray like Paul?(4) He prayed an’ the good Lord set him free (4). Another version prays for the angels to come down and unlock the door of the jail. It has a striking parallel among the secular songs and might have been composed with the idea of the negro in jail as being rescued. Come down angel with the key, Come down angel with the key, My Lord, angel, come down with the key. Unlock the door for me-e-e, Unlock the door for me-e-e, My Lord, unlock the door for me. Paul and Silas is in jail, Paul and Silas is in jail, My Lord, Paul and Silas is in jail. Unlock the jail-house door, Unlock the jail-house door-oor, My Lord, unlock the jail house door. Among those of the Bible who have been the special subject of song, Noah has a prominent place. References to him have been made already. He is always the hero of the flood. In most of the songs wherein a special character has an important part, it is in the chorus or refrain. So in “Fohty days an’ nights”, a general mixture of songs and ideas, Noah and the flood make the chorus. Dey calls bro’ Noah a foolish man, Fohty days an’ nights, He built de ark upon de lan’, Fohty days an’ nights. En, ho, ho, didn’t it rain? O yes, you know it did. Ho, ho, didn’t it rain? O yes, you know it did. Ole Satan wears a iron shoe, Hit’s fohty days an’ nights, Ef you don’t mind gwine slip it on you, Fohty days an’ nights. Some go to meetin’ to put on pretense, Fohty days an’ nights, Until de day ob grace is spent, Fohty days an’ nights. [Pg 86] Some go to meetin’ to sing an’ shout, Fohty days an’ nights, Fo’ six months dey’ll be turned out, Fohty days an’ nights. I tell you brother an’ I tell you twice, It’s fohty days an’ nights, My soul done anchored in Jesus Christ, Fohty days an’ nights. If you git dar befo’ I do, Forty days an’ nights, Look out fer me I’se comin’ too, Fohty days an’ nights. You baptize Peter an’ you baptize Paul, It’s fohty days an’ nights, But de Lord-God-er-mighty gwine baptize all, It’s fohty days an’ nights. Another version in one of the old songs says: “Some go to church to laugh and talk, but dey knows nuthin’ ’bout de Christian’s walk”. “De Ole Ark a-moverin’” was the title of a plantation song which gave the story of Noah and the flood. Noah and his sons “went to work upon dry lan’”, and everything went according to the original “plan”. Jes’ wait a little while, I’m gwine tell you ’bout de ole ark, De Lord told Noah for to build him an ole ark, Den Noah and his sons went to work upon dry lan’, Dey built dat ark jes’ accordin’ to comman’, Noah an’ his sons went to work upon de timber, De proud begin to laugh the silly to point de finger, When de ark was finished jes’ accordin’ to plan, Massa Noah took his family both animal an’ man, When de rain begin to fall and de ark begin to rise, De wicked hung round wid der groans and der cries, Fohty days and fohty nights de rain it kep’ a fallin’, De wicked clumb de trees an’ for help dey kep’ callin’, Dat awful rain she stopped at las’, de waters dey subsided, An’ dat ole ark wid all aboard on Ararat rided. This is the picture which the plantation and slave negro has made for his satisfaction. The present-day song that apparently originated in the above song is less elaborate, having only portions of the old song, and not being much in demand. It, too, is called “Didn’t it rain?” God told Noah ’bout de rainbow sign— [Pg 87]Lawd, didn’t it rain? No more water but fier nex’ time— O didn’t it rain? Halleluyer. O didn’t it rain, O didn’t it rain? Halleluyer, didn’t it rain? Some fohty days an’ nights. Well it rain fohty days an’ nights widout stoppin’, Lawd, didn’t it rain? The sinner got mad ’cause the rain kept a droppin’, O didn’t it rain? Halleluyer. Among the most interesting of all the negro spirituals are those which have been composed in recent years. These are significant in their bearing upon the temperament and religion of the present-day negro. These songs are efforts at poetry, while at the same time they unite biblical story with song. How they are often begun and for what purposes they are composed was mentioned in the previous discussion concerning the origin of negro songs. Further analysis of the form may be made in the study of the negro’s mental imagery. The following song, which gets its name from the chorus, is entitled “My Trouble is Hard”, and was composed by “Sister Bowers”. It was printed on a single sheet for distribution; each person who contributed to the collection was entitled to a copy, or a copy could be had for a nickel. She sung her new song to the crowds wherever she went, and then was given a pro-rata of the collections. With the chorus repeated after each stanza, as the negroes always do, it becomes a song of unusual length: I know a man that was here before Christ, His name was Adam and Eve was his wife, I’ll tell you how this man lived a rugged life, Just by taking this woman’s advice. My trouble is hard, O yes, My trouble is hard, O yes, My trouble is hard, O yes, Yes indeed, my trouble is hard. Whilst you are sitting on your seat, Let me tell you something that is sweet, When all God’s people in glory meet, They will slip and slide the golden street. Stop young man, I’ve something to say; You know you’re sinful and why don’t you pray? You’re sinning against a sin-venged God, Who has power to slay us all. [Pg 88] O Lord, aint it a pity—ain’t it a shame— To see how my Lord and Saviour was slain? I hate to call the murderer’s name, I know they are dead but left the stain. Read the Scriptures and be content, You are bound to know what Jesus meant, John was here before his advent; Stood in the wilderness and cried “Repent”. Christ called his apostles two by two, He particularly told them what to do, Preach my gospel as I command you, And I’ll be with you all the way through. Just me tell you what David done, Old man Jesse’s youngest son: He slayed Goliath that mighty one, Ole Saul pursued him but he had to run. Ole Saul pursued poor David’s life— It’s a mighty good thing he had a wife, They went to his house and did surround And she took a rope and let him down. God called Jonah in a powerful way, He told old Jonah just what to say; Tell them people if they don’t pray, I’ll destroy the city of Nineveh. Just let me tell you how this world is fixed, Satan has got it so full of tricks, You can go from place to place, Everybody’s runnin’ down the colored race. Almost equally interesting is “That’s another Witness for my Lord.” It will be noticed in these songs that references and phrases taken from the old songs are often used, but in different combinations. They thus lose their former worth. It will be interesting, too, to compare the negro’s religious conceptions of the Bible and God as expressed in these songs with those expressed in the older productions: Has he advanced in his theology? Read in Genesis, you understand, Methuselah was the oldest man, Lived nine hundred and sixty-nine, Died and went to heaven in due time. Methuselah is a witness for my Lord, Methuselah is a witness for my Lord. You read about Sampson from his birth, [Pg 89]Strongest man that lived on the earth, ’Way back yonder in ancient times, He slayed three thousand of the Philistines. Sampson he went wanderin’ about, For his strength hadn’t been found out, His wife dropped down upon her knees, Said: “Sampson, tell me where your strength lies, please.” Delila’ talked so good and fair; He told her his strength lie in his hair; “Shave my head just as clean as your hands, And my strength’ll be like a nachual man’s.” Wasn’t that a witness for my Lord? Wasn’t that a witness for my Lord? Isaiah mounted on de wheel o’time, Spoke to God-er-mighty way down the line: Said, “O Lord, to me reveal, How can this vile race be healed?” God said: “Tell the sons of men, Unto them’ll be born a king, Them that believe upon his Way, They shall rest in the latter day.” Isaiah was a witness for my Lord, Isaiah was a witness for my Lord. There was a man amongst the Pharisees, Named Nicodemus and he didn’t believe, He went to the Master in the night, And told him to take him out er human sight. “You are the Christ, I’m sure it’s true, For none do de miracles dat you do, But how can a man, now old in sin, Turn back still and be born again?” Christ said, “Man, if you want to be wise, You’d better repent and be baptized; Believe on me, the Son of Man, Then you will be born’d again.” Wasn’t that a witness for my Lord? Wasn’t that a witness for my Lord? “After ’While” gives a slightly different form of verse, but with somewhat the same characteristics in other respects as those just given. There is little regularity in the metrical arrangement, but it makes a good song. The worl’ is full of forms and changes, It’s just now so confuse, [Pg 90]You will find some danger In everything you use: But this is consolation to every blood washed child, God’s goin’ to change our station after while. Afterwhile, afterwhile, God’s goin’ to change our station, afterwhile. The devil tries to throw down Everything that’s good, He’d fix a way to confine The righteous if he could, Thanks be to God almighty, he cannot be beguiled, Ole satan will be done fightin’ afterwhile. Some men and women who help the world along, By constantly complaining of everything that’s done, They want to be called Christians and all their badness hide, God’s goin’ to open the secret afterwhile. Preachers in their sermons stand up and tell the truth, They’ll go about and murmur with slander and abuse; They want the whole arrangement to suit their selfish style, God’s goin’ to rain down fire afterwhile. In a general mixture of old song and new song, of old traits and new traits, the negro sings a beautiful song which he has called: “Whar’ shall I be?” The usual imagery is seen. Moses lived til he got old, Whar’ shall I be? Buried in de mountain, so I’m told, Whar’ shall I be? Whar’ shall I be when de fust trumpet sounds? Whar’ shall I be when it sounds so loud? When it sound so loud that it wake up the dead, Whar’ shall I be when it sounds? Well God showed Noar de rainbow sign, Whar’ shall I be? No more water but fire nex’ time, Whar’ shall I be? Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, Whar’ shall I be? Tole me whar’ my Saviour gone; Whar’ shall I be? John declar’d he saw a man, Whar’ shall I be? Wid seben lamps in his right han’, Whar’ shall I be? [Pg 91]The exact meaning of the following song could not be ascertained. It is apparently derived from some idea of the scriptural invocation and blessing upon the disciples. It is said to have a special message to the preacher, and is sometimes represented as being the words of God; at other times the encouragement of a friend and the reply. Go and I will go with you; Open your mouth and I’ll speak for you; If I go and tell them what you say they won’t believe me. Shout and I shout with you; Throw out your arms and I catch you; If they see you going with me, they won’t believe on you. So it’s go and I go with you; Open your mouth and I speak for you, Shout and I shout with you, Throw out your arms and I catch you, If I go and tell them what you say they won’t believe me. Another song of the modern type seems to appeal to the negroes very strongly. Again he is seeing a vivid picture of the Christ in the long years ago. But just where he gets the exact ideas by which to make the combinations is a little doubtful. Perhaps he gets the central thought from the miracle of Cana. If my mother ask you for me, tell her I gone to Gallerlee, I ought to a been there four thousand years ago, To drink of the wine. Drinkin’ of the wine, drinkin’ of the wine, Drinkin’ of the wine, Drinkin’ of the wine, Christ was there four thousand years ago, Drinkin’ of the wine. You may mourn, sinner, mourn, the Lord help you to mourn, Christ was there four thousand years ago, Drinkin’ of the wine. So, too, you may moan, weep, cry, pray, brother, sister, father, mother, backslider, and any others that the singer happens to think of, and the chorus, “Drinkin’ of the wine,” is the favorite refrain. Again in “The Blind Man” the picture is one of confusing the scriptural scenes with those of the present, and of placing himself in the stead of the central character of the story. Well the blind man stood by the grave and cried, Well the blind man stood by the wave and cried, Yes, the blind man stood by the wave and cried. [Pg 92] He cried, “O Lord, don’t you hear po’ me?” Hark, the blind man stood by the wave and cried, He cried, “O Lord, don’t you hear po’ me?” Brother don’t you hear the blind cries, blind cries? Brother don’t you hear the blind cries, blind cries? O brother, don’t you hear the blind cries? Jesus he give de blind man sight, blind man sight, Jesus he give de blind man sight, blind man sight, Yes, Jesus he give de blind man sight. He also sings “sister, don’t you hear,” etc., brother, father, preacher. A peculiar modification of “Walking in the Light” is the song of the same name among the negroes, which seems to have its origin in the scriptural injunction, “Ye are the light of the world.” Let yo’ light shine all over the world, Walkin’ in the light, beautiful light. Mos’ wonderful light, shine by night, Let yo’ light shine all over the world. I am the light, most pitiful light, Let yo’ light shine all over the world. Follow the light, mos’ beautiful light, Let yo’ light shine all over the world. Sinner, what you gwine do when the lamp stops burnin’, Let yo’ light shine all over the world? The negro prays to be remembered at Calvary; so, too, he asks to remember Calvary and the Lord. A single fragment of the old song remains: O Lord remember me, remember Calvary, For without any doubt and you remember the Lord, I pray thee, Lord, remember me, O Lord, remember me, remember Calvary. The “Pilgrim’s song” that has been considered so beautiful is still a favorite; the words of the stanzas differ little. It may be called a standard hymn of the negroes. There is a story that Bishop Allen, the founder of the A. M. E. church, composed the song on his dying bed. He was very well educated and a man of considerable ability and feeling. While the sadly hopeful words of the song are of a higher type than the average spiritual, and while its metrical form is far above the usual, the song still combines many of the ideas and phrases of the favorite spirituals of the slaves. One of these songs,[Pg 93] “I hope my mother will be there, In that beautiful world on high”, embodies the same sentiment and in similar words. Another, “Give ’way Jordan, I want to go across to see my Lord. I heard sweet music, I wish dat music would come here”, represents the other part of the song. The Pilgrim’s song as it is found is: I am a poor way-faring stranger, While journeying through this world of woe, But there is no sickness, toil, nor danger, In that bright world to which I go. I’m going there to see my classmates, They said they’d meet me when I come, I’m just a going over Jordan, I’m just going over home. I know dark clouds’ll gather round me, I know my road is rough and steep, Yet there bright fields are lying just before me, Where God’s redeemed and vigils keep. I’m going there to see my mother, She said she’d meet me when I come, I’m just going over Jordan, I’m just a going over home. I’ll soon be free, free every trial, My body will sleep in the old churchyard. I’ll quit the cross of self-denial, And enter in my great reward. I’m going there to see my mother, She said she’d meet me when I come, I’m just a going over Jordan, I’m just going over home. The only differences in the versions of the old song and its present form is the substitution of “But” for “yet”, “and” for “their”, and “free” for “from”, “drop” for “quit” in the various lines. Very much in the same class of song is “Steal Away”. The present version is much the same in general as the old, of which there were several, differing only in minor details. There is in some of the church song books a version of the song; however, the most common verses now sung are: O the green trees a-bowin’, An’ po’ sinner stan’ tremblin’, Well the trumpet soun’ in my soul, An’ I ain’t got long to stay here. [Pg 94] O steal away, steal away, O steal away to my Jesus, Steal away, steal away, For I ain’t got long to stay here. My Lord is a callin’, Po’ sinner he can’t answer, Well, the trumpet sound in my soul, An’ I ain’t got long to stay here. One of the most beautiful and at the same time simple and pathetic songs of the negroes is “Heal me, Jesus”. Here the negro is at his typical best in prayer: without pretension, without reserve, claiming nothing, he simply pleads for his desire. O Lord, I’m sick an’ I want to be healed, O Lord, I’m sick an’ I want to be healed, O Lord, I’m sick an’ I want to be healed, O Lord, I’m sick an’ I want to be healed. Heal me Jesus, heal me Jesus, Along the heavenly way, Heal me Jesus, heal me Jesus, Along the heavenly way. O Lord, I’m blind an’ I want to see, O Lord, I’m blin’ an’ I wan’ ter see, O Lord, I’m blin’ an’ I wan’ ’er see, Heal me Jesus along the heavenly way. O Lord, I’m crippl’d an’ I wan’ ’er walk, O Lord, I’m crippl’d an’ I wan’ ’er wa-a-a-l-k, O Lord, I’m cri-p-p-l-e-d an’ I want ’er walk, Heal me Jesus along the heavenly way. O Lord, I’m deaf an’ I want to hear, etc. The negroes are great believers in dress and uniform. Color, too, appeals to them as significant and the more strikingly distinct the color, the stronger impression it makes upon their imaginations. Chief among all others is the white which the angels wear; gold and purple, too, are concerned with the heavens. Among men red and black are strongest. This idea of color dressing has become interwoven in many of their songs. The rhyme helps to give the picture its vividness. The following song, with its variants, is still sung with considerable zest. Who is that yonder all dressed in red? [Pg 95]I heard the angels singing; It look like the children Moses led, I heard the angels singin’. Down on my knees, Down on my knees, I heard the angels singing. Well who that yonder all dressed in black? I heard the angels singing; It look like it’s de mourner jus’ got back, I heard the angels singing. Yes’ who’s that yonder all dressed in blue? It look like the children just come through. Instead of “mourners jus’ got back” the negroes sing “a sister, a sinner, a hypocrite, etc., jus’ got back”. Once the negroes sang: “Who’s that yonder all dressed in black? Must be children of the Israelites”, which is the common version for the answer to “Who’s all them come dressed in white?” The songs almost invariably have a different chorus for the different versions and combinations. In one of the old songs, the above verses were sung to the chorus Oh, what you say, John? Oh, what you say, John? Oh, what you say, John? De ressurection drawin’ nigh. with this last line as a refrain after each line of the song, just as above in “I heard the angels singing”. In another of the old songs the chorus was: Go, Mary, an’ ring de bell, Come, John, and call de roll, I thank God. The negro visualizes with a good deal of satisfaction. He imagines that he can see the things about which he sings. So they have imagined seeing the people dressed in white, black, red and blue; so he imagined that he could see “two tall angels comin’ after me”, or “big tall”, “long tall”, “band of angels” or whatever form the song has taken. So the negroes have told wonderful stories about the whale and the gourd vine; about the “cutter worm” as well as Jonah. The old song, modified and adapted with characteristic phraseology and expression still appeals to the negro. The “Big fish” and “Sherk” represents the terror of the sea to the negro. One old darkey explained this fact by saying that it was because the negroes were terrified[Pg 96] as they were brought over from Africa, and that they saw the whales and “fishes” in “de sea” and that “de race hain’t nebber got ober it yet”. Another ascribes the fear and imagination much to the biblical story of the whale and Jonah. Perhaps neither determines to any marked degree this feeling. However, the song “Big fish swallow Jonah”, which has made such a hit in its paraphrases and in the glee clubs, and variously, is still current in this form: Lord, the big fish, big fish, big fish, swallow ole Jonah whole, The big fish, the big fish, the big fish swallow ole Jonah; The big fish, big fish, big fish, swallow ole Jonah whole. Ole Jonah cried, “Lord save my soul”, Ole Jonah, ole Jonah, ole Jonah cried “save my-save-m-y-y”, Ole Jonah cried “Lord save my soul”. In the same manner are sung other lines: Lord, the gourd vine, gourd vine, gourd vine growed over Jonah. Well, the cutter worm, cutter worm, cutter worm cut that vine down. In addition to Jonah—and the last two stanzas are not common in the old songs—“Peter on the sea”, “Gabriel, blow your trump”, “Daniel in the lion’s den”, are sung. Those who have heard the latest form of this song rendered would scarcely imagine that it was a very appropriate church song. It has been stated that the negro makes a song his own by the simple act of singing it. If he is free and unrestrained at the same time that he is thoroughly wrought up, he adds enough to his song or changes its version sufficiently to make it almost unique. In the common tunes sung by both white and black people, the negro’s rhythm and graceful passing from one line to another, together with the insertions of shouts and “amens” renders them distinct. A number of the favorite “old time” religious songs are thus rendered by the negroes. They are the old “stand-by” hymns. The nature of some of them was indicated in the first chapter. The following songs will serve to illustrate the common practice of singing among the “spiritualists”. In “The old-time Religion” there are as many versions as the singer can make combinations. It is “Gi’ me dat ole-time religion”, or it is “’Tis that ole time religion”, or it is “Was that ole-time, etc.,” or “Will be the old time religion”. In the same way it may[Pg 97] be “good enough”, “It’s good enough”. It is, was, will be good enough for “mother, my mother, my ole mother, father, brother, sister,” and all the list of biblical names, chiefest among whom are Paul and Silas, Peter and John. So again, it is “good when dying, living, mourning, sinking, praying, talking”. It is good “when in trubble, when de worl’s on fier, when the lightening flashes, when the thunder rolls, when the heavens are melting, when the stars are falling, when the moon is bleeding, when the grave yards are opening”, and all other times that are conceived as being a part and factor in destiny. Likewise the chorus or the lines may be sung with additional “Yes”, “sure”, “well”, “Uh”, and various other expressions that are the product of the moment. One who has heard the song “Bye and bye we’ll go and see them”, rendered in an effective way must recognize its power and beauty. It is pre-eminently a song for the emotions, and suggests scenes of the past and of the future; it brings back memories that have been forgotten and forms emotions and conceptions that have not before existed. To the negro it is all this—in so far as he is able to grasp the better emotions—but it is mostly a medium through which he can sing his rhythmic feeling off. And with the additional interpretations and additions both in words and in expression, it is scarcely surpassed by any of his spirituals. The simplest form is exactly the same as that of the regular song: “Bye and bye, we’ll go and see them”, From this the negroes vary to “Bye and bye I’m a goin’ to see him, them, her”. To this chorus they nearly always add in alternate lines “Well it’s”, “Well”, “An’” and such expressions, thus: Bye an’ bye I’m goin’ to see them, Bye an’ bye I’m goin’ to see them, Well, it’s bye an’ bye I’m goin’ to see them, On de oder shore. These expressions inserted or omitted at pleasure, serve to give an additional rhythm to the song that seems otherwise to be lacking. The verses of the song, like many others, are practically unlimited. Each is repeated three or six times as the singers prefer, with the refrain “On the other shore” added at the end of each stanza. The negroes sing not only of a brother, sister, father, mother, auntie, preacher and friends, but they also sing of Paul and Silas and Daniel and Moses; they are at liberty to use any name that comes to mind. And they[Pg 98] manifest as much feeling and emotion about meeting Moses or Noah or Abraham as they do about a dear old mother. Not only will they meet these loved ones but there will be scenes “over yonder.” I’m got a brother over yonder-on the other shore. I’m goin’ to meet my brother over yonder. Tryin’ time will soon be over, on the other shore. Well, it’s mournin’ time will soon be over, on the other shore. Cryin’ time will soon be over. Prayin’ time will soon be over, etc. Shoutin’ time will soon be over, etc. If necessary they then turn to the sinner and sing: “Sinnin’ time, gamblin’ time, etc., will soon be over.” The old plantation song, instead of saying, “Brother Daniel over yonder,” had it, “Wonder where is good ole Daniel? Bye an’ bye we’ll go an’ meet him, ’Way over in de promise lan’. Wonder where’s dem Hebrew children? Wonder where’s doubtin’ Thomas? Wonder where is sinkin’ Peter?” This form is apparently not sung to-day. In the same way the negroes have modified the comparatively new songs that have been successful among the evangelists the country over. One would scarcely recognize even the tunes at first hearing, while the verses are usually entirely different. The chorus, as a rule, remains the same, save for the variations already mentioned. One or two songs may be taken as illustrations. “When the Roll is Called up yonder” appealed to the negroes for many reasons. Most of the churches sing it, and sing it “rousing” well. Their chorus is beautiful and the parts, though carried informally, make a splendid effect. But the negro does not sing the prescribed stanzas. After singing the chorus, with such additions as he feels disposed to make, and after two or three, perhaps one, of the written verses, he sings his own song: When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there. By the grace of God up yonder, I’ll be there. Yes, my home is way up yonder, an’ I’ll be there. I got a mother way up yonder, I’ll be there. I got a sister way up yonder, I’ll be there. And without limitations he sings this new song into his old and favorite themes, often inserting stanzas and words that belong to the oldest existing negro spirituals in the same verse with the evangelist’s best efforts. Another may illustrate further: “Blessed be the Name of the Lord”, has a great many variations, some of which would never[Pg 99] be recognized without considerable study and investigation. At first the searcher is inclined to wonder at the distance the singer has got from his original, but the evolutionary steps make the process quite clear. The negroes love to sing blessing to the Lord; much of the basic principle of their theology is based upon gratitude for the final deliverance of bondage from work and suffering. It is not surprising, then, that this song should become a favorite. One of the present versions, most commonly sung is: If you git there before I do, Blessed be the name of the Lord, Tell my God I’m a comin’ too, Blessed be the name of the Lord. I turn my eyes toward de sky, Blessed be the name of the Lord, I ask the Lord for wings to fly, Blessed be the name of the Lord. And encouraged by the happy putting in to this new song an old verse, the singer proceeds to put in as many as he wishes; then in his desire for rhythm and his habit of repetition, together with the cries of “amen” or “Lord” the chorus often becomes: “My Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord.” The outcome of such a chorus may be seen in the song already cited: “Lor’ bless the Name.” In the effort to make new songs or to appropriate songs themselves, the negroes are thus constantly introducing various songs into their worship. The most common method, that of having the song printed on a single sheet for distribution, has already been mentioned. And as was there suggested, these songs are often verses taken at random from song books or poems, and put into song form. In most cases such songs are varied in such a way that the song may both meet the demand for a song of its kind and at the same time appear original. Some, indeed, are purely original productions, some of which have been cited. Just between the “spirituals” and the standard hymns are these innovation songs. They show well the circumstances which they represent. The effort is often made by members of the younger generation of negroes to substitute the new songs, together with the standard hymns for the old spirituals. They represent a step forward; young educated negroes do not like to be heard singing the simple spirituals. They claim that they are songs of the past, and, as such[Pg 100] only, are they beautiful. The following song, given in the exact form in which it was distributed, will serve to illustrate. BLESSED HOPE. By Rev. W. E. Bailey. Blessed hope that in Jesus is given, All our sorrow to cheer and sustain, That soon in the mansions of heaven We shall meet with our loved ones again. Blessed hope, blessed hope, We shall meet with our loved ones again, Blessed hope, blessed hope, We shall meet with our loved ones again. Blessed hope in the word God has spoken, All our peace by that word we obtain, And as sure as God’s word was never broken, We shall meet with our loved ones again. Blessed hope how it shines in our sorrows, Like the star over Bethlehem’s plain, We will see our Lord ere the morrow, We shall meet with our loved ones again. Blessed hope the bright star of the morning, That shall herald his coming to reign, He will come and reward all the faithful, We shall meet with our loved ones again. (Sung by Rev. J. T. Johnson.) Such a song is neither sung to an old melody nor a new tune; it is not a spiritual; it is scarcely native nor yet borrowed. It represents the general result that comes from a free intermingling of all. To such a song there may be any number of tunes; likewise there are a great many such songs introduced and may be sung alike to simple tunes. A tune is as easily selected and rendered as are the words; words are as easily improvised, or written with some care, as the melodies are natural. But they appeal less strongly to the negroes as a rule for the simple reason that “they don’t put a feelin’ in you like the old songs.” Thus the negro’s religion is dependent upon feeling; song facilitates and intensifies the feelings, and song is the essential joy of much of the negro’s life. Whenever and wherever occasion demands religious manifestation, the song is the prerequisite. Not only at the[Pg 101] church, but at lodge celebrations, funerals and memorial services, the song begins the process of “putting a feelin’” in the congregation. Again, the stress of the negro’s religion is placed upon the supernatural and the life that lies beyond his present sphere. A religious attitude is scarcely conceived by the negro without the fundamental conception of the next world. Thus is life contrasted with heaven and hell; the sinner and the righteous are but temporary; so will the souls of all one day sing with Jehovah the songs that the angels love; and there will be feeling there, too. It is thus that the central themes of the negro’s religious songs reveal both his religious nature and his mental attitude, together with the emotional characteristics that predominate. And it is easily seen that the negro’s imagery and imagination are scarcely surpassed. His religious fervor depends upon the reality of such imagery; the folk-song reflects this imagery as nothing else does. Again, the negro’s sense of sin is ever present in a feeling of guilt in the struggle between himself and the real or the imaginary; consequently he insures himself against a final sense of guilt by strong declarations of his righteousness as opposed to the sinner’s state. His sense of sin thus becomes less practical; it is rather an imaginative expression of a religious feeling. As the clearest exponent of the negro’s real self, the folk song reveals the heart of his psychic nature; it is indeed a witness to the fact that “’Ligion’s so sweet”. Does he not sing well and truthfully? I jus’ got home f’um Jordan, I jus’ got home f’um Jordan, I jus’ got home f’um Jordan, ’Ligion’s so-o-o sweet. My work is done an’ I mus’ go, My work is done an’ I mus’ go, My work is done an’ I mus’ go, ’Ligion’s so-o-o sweet. Footnotes: [1] This paper presents in substance the contents of Chapters I and II of a study on “Negro Folk-Song and Character,” with other chapters as follows: Chapter III, The Negro’s Social and Secular Songs; Chapter IV, Types of Social Songs among the Negroes; Chapter V, Work Songs and Phrases; Chapter VI, The Negro’s Mental Imagery; Chapter VII, Negro Character as Revealed in Folk-Songs and Poetry. [2] See Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XIX, pp. 685 seq., Scribners, Vol. XX, pp. 425 seq., Lippincott’s, Vol. II, 617 seq. [3] For verses not found in the present-day negro spirituals, see Slave Songs in the United States, W. F. Allen, New York, 1867, The Jubilee Singers, New York, 1873, Plantation and Cabin Songs, New York, 1892. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS FOLK-SONGS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Negro workaday songs Author: Howard Washington Odum Guy Benton Johnson Release date: November 18, 2022 [eBook #69378] Language: English Original publication: New Caledonia: University of North Carolina Press, 1926 Credits: Tim Lindell, Harry Lamé, Jude Eylander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS *** Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text. The cover image and music transcriptions have been created for this e-text and are in the public domain. Cover image THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SOCIAL STUDY SERIES NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SOCIAL STUDY SERIES The Negro and His Songs $3.00 Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro 5.00 Negro Workaday Songs 3.00 Southern Pioneers 2.00 Law and Morals 2.00 The Scientific Study of Human Society 2.00 Systems of Public Welfare 2.00 Roads to Social Peace 1.50 The Country Newspaper 1.50 Children’s Interest in Reading 1.50 NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS BY HOWARD W. ODUM, Ph.D. Kenan Professor of Sociology and Director of the School of Public Welfare, University of North Carolina AND GUY B. JOHNSON, A.M. Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina Logo Lux Veritas CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1926 [vii] Copyright, 1926, By The University of North Carolina Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Presses of Edwards & Broughton Company RALEIGH [viii] A vast throng of Negro workaday singers, mirrors of a race Workingmen in the Southern United States from highway, construction camp, from railroad and farm, from city and countryside, a million strong A half million migrants from the South, Eastward, Northward, Westward, and some South again Negro offenders in thousand fold in local jails, county chain gangs, state and federal prisons A horde of Southern casual laborers and wanderers down that lonesome road A brown black army of “bad men”—creepers and ramblers and jamboree breakers, “travelin’ men” de luxe Itinerant full-handed musicianers, music physicianers and songsters, singly, in pairs, quartets, always moving on A host of women workers from field and home and factory at once singers and subjects of the lonesome blues A swelling crescendo, a race vibrato inimitable, descriptive index of group character, folk urge and race power [ix- x] PREFACE Negro Workaday Songs is the third volume of a series of folk background studies of which The Negro and His Songs was the first and Folk-Beliefs of the Southern Negro was the second. The series will include a number of other volumes on the Negro and likewise a number presenting folk aspects of other groups. The reception which the first volumes have received gives evidence that the plan of the series to present scientific, descriptive, and objective studies in as interesting and readable form as possible may be successful in a substantial way. Since the data for background studies are, for the time being, practically unlimited, it is hoped that other volumes, appearing as they become available and timely, may glimpse the whole range—from the Negro “bad man” to the æsthetic in the folk urge. In this volume, as in previous ones, the emphasis is primarily social, although this indicates no lack of appreciation of the inherent literary and artistic values of the specimens presented. Indeed, so far as possible, all examples of folk expression in this volume are left to tell their own story. The type melodies and musical notations are presented separately with the same descriptive purpose as the other chapters, and they are not offered as a substitute for effective harmonies and musical interpretation. For the purposes of this volume, however, the separate chapters on the melodies and phono-photographic records with musical notations are very important. It is also important that they be studied separately, but in the light of the preceding chapters, rather than inserted in the text to detract from both the social and artistic interpretation of the songs enumerated. [xi] The Seashore-Metfessel phono-photographic records and musical notations mark an important contribution to the whole field of interpretation of Negro music. There may be an outstanding contribution both to the musical world and to the whole interpretation of Negro backgrounds in the possible thesis that the Negro, in addition to his distinctive contribution to harmony, excels also in the vibrato quality of the individual voice. These studies were made at Chapel Hill and at Hampton by Dr. Carl E. Seashore and Dr. Milton Metfessel of the University of Iowa, under the auspices of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina through a special grant of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. Full acknowledgment to them is here made. It should be kept constantly in mind that this volume, like The Negro and His Songs, is in no sense an anthology or general collection, but represents the group of songs current in certain areas in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, during the years 1924-25. Of course all of this collection cannot be included in this volume; and no doubt many of the most important or most attractive specimens extant have escaped us at this time. It is also important to note that in this volume, as in the previous one, all specimens listed, except lines or references otherwise designated, were taken directly from Negro singers and do not represent reports from memory of white individuals. So far as we know none of the songs in this collection has been published, although there are countless variations, adaptations and corruptions of the modern blues and jazz songs represented in the group. The songs, however, were all[xii] sung or repeated by actual Negro workers or singers, and much of their value lies in the exact transcription of natural lines, words, and mixtures. The collection is still growing by leaps and bounds. In this volume every type is represented except the “dirty dozen” popular models and the more formal and sophisticated creations. Since this volume presents a series of pictures of the Negro as portrayed through his workaday songs it is important that all chapters be read before any final judgment is made. Even then the picture will not be complete. It has not been possible, of course, to make any complete or accurate classification of the songs. They overlap and repeat. They borrow sentiment and expression and repay freely. Free labor song becomes prison song, and chain gang melody turns to pick-and-shovel accompaniment. The chapter divisions, therefore, are made with the idea of approximating a usable classification and providing such mechanical divisions as will facilitate the best possible presentation. The reader who approaches this volume from the point of view of the technical student of folk song will likely be disappointed at what he considers the lack of discrimination displayed by the authors in admitting so many songs which cannot be classed as strictly folk songs. We have frankly taken the position that these semi-folk songs, crude and fragmentary, and often having only local or individual significance, afford even more accurate pictures of Negro workaday life and art than the conventional folk songs. While we have spared no effort to make the collection valuable for folk song students, we have approached the work primarily as sociologists. [xiii] For assistance in recording the type melodies in Chapter XIV we are specially indebted to Mr. Lee M. Brooks, and for many of the songs of women to Mrs. Henry Odum. We wish to thank Mr. Gerald W. Johnson for his goodness in going over much of the manuscript and making valuable suggestions. To Dr. L. R. Wilson, Director of the University of North Carolina Press, we are much indebted for coöperation and suggestions. Chapel HillH. W. O. January, 1926G. B. J. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Background Resources in Negro Songs and Work 1 II. The Blues: Workaday Sorrow Songs 17 III. Songs of the Lonesome Road 35 IV. Bad Man Ballads and Jamboree 47 V. Songs of Jail, Chain Gang, and Policemen 71 VI. Songs of Construction Camps and Gangs 88 VII. Just Songs to Help With Work 118 VIII. Man’s Song of Woman 135 IX. Woman’s Song of Man 152 X. Folk Minstrel Types 166 XI. Workaday Religious Songs 188 XII. The Annals and Blues of Left Wing Gordon 206 XIII. John Henry: Epic of the Negro Workingman 221 XIV. Types of Negro Melodies 241 XV. Types of Phono-photographic Records of Negro Singers 252 Bibliography 265 Index to Songs 271 NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS [1] CHAPTER I BACKGROUND RESOURCES IN NEGRO SONG AND WORK To discover and present authentic pictures of the Negro’s folk background as found in his workaday songs is a large and promising task of which there are many phases. Here are spontaneous products of the Negro’s workaday experiences and conflicts. Here are reflections of his individual strivings and his group ways. Here are specimens of folk art and creative effort close to the soil. Here are new examples of the Negro’s contributions to the American scene. Here is important material for the newer scientific interest which is taking the place of the old sentimental viewpoint. And here is a mine of descriptive and objective data to substitute for the emotional and subjective attitudes of the older days. It is a day of great promise in the United States when both races, North and South, enter upon a new era of the rediscovery of the Negro and face the future with an enthusiasm for facts, concerning both the newer creative urge and the earlier background sources. Concerning the former, Dr. Alain Locke recently has said:[1] “Whoever wishes to see the Negro in his essential traits, in the full perspective of his achievement and possibilities, must seek the enlightenment of that self-portraiture which the present development of the Negro culture offers.” One of the best examples of that self-portraiture is that of the old spirituals, long neglected, but now happily the subject of a new race dedication and appreciation. Now comes another[2] master index of race temperament and portrayal, as found in some of the Negro’s newer creations. No less important, from the viewpoint of sheer originality and poetic effort as well as of indices of traits and possibilities, are the seemingly unlimited mines of workaday songs, weary blues, and black man ballads. In a previous volume[2] we presented a sort of composite picture from two hundred songs gathered two decades ago and interpreted with something of prophetic evaluation. In this volume of Negro Workaday Songs is presented a deeper mine of source material, rich in self-portraiture and representative of the workaday Negro. [1]The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke. [2]The Negro and His Songs, by Howard W. Odum and Guy B. Johnson. In his Peter the Czar, violent story of “lashed sentences,” perfectly suited to the depiction of primitive character, Klabund pictures vividly a certain Great Enemy about whose “shivering shoulders lay a rainbow like a silken shawl.” Digging to the syncopated rhythm of song and fast-whirling pick, a Negro workman sings of another rainbow, equally vivid and shoulder-draped, more concrete, personal, and real: Ev’ywhere I look this, Ev’ywhere I look this mo’nin’, Looks like rain. I got rainbow Tied ’round my shoulder, Ain’t gonna rain, Lawd, ain’t gonna rain.[3] [3]Musical notation will be found in Chapter XIV. In addition to the poetic imagery in this seemingly unconscious motor-minded product, one may glimpse evidences of simple everyday experience, wishful thought, childlike faith, workaday stolidity, physical[3] satisfaction, and subtle humor. But he can find still more humor and experience, with a good bit of metaphor thrown in for good measure, in the “feet rollin’” stanza of another wanderer’s song of the road: I done walk till, Lawd, I done walk till Feet’s gone to rollin’, Jes’ lak a wheel, Lawd, jes’ lak a wheel. Resourcefulness, humor, defense mechanism, imagination, all might be found in the spectacle of a group of Negroes singing over and over again on a hot July day the refreshing lines, Oh, next winter gonna be so cold, Oh, next winter gonna be so cold, Oh, next winter gonna be so cold, Fire can’t warm you, be so cold. With the thermometer around a hundred, and the work of digging at hand, this song of “parts,” with some of the singers using the words, “be so cold, be so cold” as an echo, undoubtedly had peculiar merit. Perhaps there have been few, if any, lines of poetry more popular than Wordsworth’s “The light that never was on sea or land.” The Negro worker sings of a more earthly yet equally miraculous light to guide his pathway, when he complains, Now ev’y time I, Time I start ’round mountain, My light goes out, Lawd, Lawd, my light goes out. I’m gonna buy me, Buy me magnified lantern, [4] It won’t go out, Lawd, Lawd, it won’t go out. How much of symbolism is to be found in the Negro’s workaday songs? How much subjective imagery, how much unconscious allegory? There are abundant examples of the free use of symbolism in his love songs and popular jazz appeals. But what does he mean when he sings, Ever see wild cat Hug a lion, Lawd, Lawd? My ol’ bear cat Turn to lion, Lawd, Lawd. Ever see lion Run lak hell, Lawd, Lawd? Or contrast this simple individual song, with its humor and easy-going rhythm, with the power and appeal of group singing. Here is a goodly party of two-score white folk, seated at twilight under the trees in a grove, joyous guests at a turkey dinner near the old colonial home. There is merriment. Song and jest, toast and cheer abound. The waiters have gone. Then from the kitchen door comes the song of Negroes, beginning low, rising in volume, telling of the sinking of the Titanic. What is it in that final harmony of “God moved upon the waters,” sung by a Negro group, which silenced the merrymakers into willing recognition that here may be perfect art and perfect effect? Does this Negro minstrel type, rendered thus in native setting, become for the moment the perfect expression of folk spirit and folk art? Hundreds of verses dedicated to the business of moving about give evidence that the trail of the black knight of the road is strewn with spontaneous[5] song, often turned into polished phrase. A favorite stanza has long been descriptive of being “on road here few days longer, then I’ll be going home.” Sung again and again, the song takes on a new form but loses nothing of its emphatic meaning: I’m gonna row here, I’m gonna row here Few days longer, Then I’ll be gone, Lawd, I’ll be gone. For, says the worker, “If I feel tomorrow like I feel today, I’m gonna pack my suitcase and walk away,” and “reason I’m workin’ here so long, hot flambotia and coffee strong.” Following the trail of the workaday Negro, therefore, one may get rare glimpses of common backgrounds of Negro life and experience in Southern communities. Here were the first real plantings of the modern blues, here songs of the lonesome road, here bad man ballads, here distinctive contributions in songs of jail and chain gang, here songs of white man and captain, here Negro Dr. Jekyls and Mr. Hydes. Here are found new expressions of the old spirituals and remnants still surviving. Here man’s song of woman is most varied and original, and woman’s song of man is best echoed from days and nights of other times. Here are reflected the epics of John Henry, Lazarus, Dupree, and the others. Here are folk fragments, cries and “hollers,” songs to help with work, physical satisfaction and solace, the “Lawdy-Lawdy” vibrato of evening melancholy and morning yodel. Here may be found the subliminal jazz, rare rhythm and movement, coöperative harmony as characteristic as ever the old spirituals revealed. Nevertheless, too much emphasis[6] cannot be placed upon the danger of over-interpretation, for while the workaday songs provide a seemingly exhaustive supply of mirror plate for the reflection of folk temperament and struggle, too much analysis must not obscure their vividness or the beauty and value of their intrinsic qualities. It is important to note the extent to which the notable popular blues of today, more formal embodiment of the Negro’s workaday sorrow songs, have come from these workaday products. Here are true descendants of the old worshipers who sang so well of the Rock in a weary land. And echoing from Southern distances, from Memphis and Natchez, from New Orleans and Macon, from Charleston and Atlanta, and from wayside roads and camps, from jail and chain gang, come unmeasured volume of harmony, unnumbered outbursts of song, perfect technique of plaintive appeal. Many of the most plaintive lines of blues yet recorded were gathered decades ago from camp and road in Mississippi before the technique of the modern blues had ever been evolved. Eloquent successors to the old spirituals with their sorrow-feeling, these songs of the lonesome road have gathered power and numbers and artistic interpretation until they defy description and record. Today the laborer, the migrant, the black man offender constitute types as distinctive and inimitable as the old jubilee singers and those whom they represented. Wherever Negroes work, or loaf, or await judgment, there may be heard the weary and lonesome blues so strange and varied as to reveal a sort of superhuman evidence of the folk soul. No amount of ordinary study into race backgrounds, or historical annals of African folk, or elaborate anthropological excursions can give so simply and completely the story of this Negro quest for expression,[7] freedom, and solace as these low-keyed melancholy songs. And what names and lines, words and melodies, records and improvisations of the new race blues! Plaintive blues, jolly blues, reckless blues, dirty dozen blues, mama blues, papa blues,—more than six hundred listed by one publisher and producer. Here they are—the workaday sorrow songs, the errant love songs, the jazz lyrics of a people and of an age—as clearly distinctive as the old spirituals. And how like the road songs and the gang lines, straight up from the soil again, straight from the folk as surely as ever came the old spirituals. Samples of the growing list of blues, some less elegant, some more aggressive, will be found in Chapter II. And of course we must not forget the bad man blues: Dangerous Blues, Evil Blues, Don’t Mess With Me Blues, Mean Blues, Wicked Blues, and most of all the Chain Gang Blues, Jail Blues, and the Cell-bound Blues. All boun’ in prison, All boun’ in jail, Col’ iron bars all ’roun’ me, No one to pay my bail. And the singer presents, as one of his standard versions of many songs, a regular weekly calendar: Monday I was ’rested, Tuesday I was fined, Wednesday I laid in jail, Thursday I was tried, Friday wid chain gang band, Saturday pick an’ shovel, Sunday I took my rest, Monday wanta do my best. [8] Perhaps the most common concept found in the chain gang and road songs and appearing here and there in all manner of song is the concept of a letter from home, the inability to go home without “ready money,” the attempt to borrow from the captain, or to get a parole. Every, every mail day, I gits letter from my mother, Cryin’, “Son, come home, Lawdy, son, come home.” I didn’t have no, No ready-made money, I couldn’t go home, Lawd, couldn’t go home. A constant source of song is the conflict between actual conditions and desirable ends, between life as it is and ideals of wishful dreaming. “I want to go home,” says the workman, but “I don’t want no trouble wid de walker.” The resulting product is absence from home, absence of trouble with the captain or walker, and abundance of song. I don’t want no trouble, I don’t want no trouble, I don’t want no trouble wid de walker. Lawd, Lawd, I wanta go home. Me an’ my buddy jes’ come, Me an’ my buddy jes’ come, Me an’ my buddy jes’ come here. Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home. Again and again the Negro wanderer portrays home, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, as the most highly esteemed of life’s values—striking paradox to the realism of his practice. Idealism in song and dreams, in workaday songs as well as spirituals,[9] alongside sordidness in living conditions and physical surroundings, appear logical and direct developments from the type of habitation which the Negro common man has ever known. The Negro “bad man” who sings sorrowfully of his mother’s admonitions and his own mistakes, glories also in the motor-imaged refrain: In come a nigger named Billy Go-helf, Coon wus so mean wus skeered uf hisself; Loaded wid razors an’ guns, so they say, ’Cause he killed a coon most every day. A later chapter is devoted to this notable character, the “bad man,” whose varied pictures represent a separate Negro contribution. Here are new and worthy Negro exhibits to add to the American galaxy of folk portraits: Railroad Bill alongside Jesse James, the Negro “bad man” beside the Western frontiersman, and John Henry by Paul Bunyan. For from the millions of Negroes of yesterday and as many more today, with their oft-changing and widely varying economic and social conditions, has come a rare and varied heritage of folk tradition, folk character, and folk personality. Much of this might remain forever unknown and unsung were it not for the treasure-house of Negro song, the product of a happy facility for linking up the realities of actual life with wishful thinking and imaginative story. Of the grand old “saints,” white haired “Uncles” and “Aunties,” we have viewed from near and far scores of inimitable examples. Of the thousands of musicianers, songsters and workers, and those who sing “down that lonesome road,” recent epochs have mirrored many. But what of the real and mythical jamboree breakers and bad men, or of Po’ Lazarus and[10] Stagolee, or of John Henry, “forehanded steel-drivin’ man” and ideal of the Negro worker? Here are rare folk figures silhouetted against a sort of shifting race background with its millions of working folk and wanderers moving suddenly and swiftly across the scene. A brown-black army of ramblers, creepers, high flyers, standin’ men, all-night workers, polish men, “stick and ready” from the four corners of the States—Lazarus, Billy Bob Russel, Shootin’ Bill, Brady, Dupree, and the others. And then John Henry, stately and strong in contrast, noble exponent of sturdy courage and righteous struggle, faithful to death. John Henry went to the mountain, Beat that steam-drill down; Rock was high, po’ John was small, He laid down his hammer an’ he died, Laid down his hammer an’ he died. A chapter on “Man’s Song of Woman” will make but a small beginning of a large task. Its sequel must be deferred until the lover’s specialisms can be published with a liberal usage of the psychiatrists’ terminology. A chapter on “Woman’s Song of Man” ought also to have a companion sequel in the book of Negro symbolism. A chapter on “Workaday Religious Songs” can present only a small portion of those now being sung, but will be representative of the present heritage of the old spirituals. A chapter on the miscellaneous fragments, “hollers,” lines, incoherent and expressive “Lawdy-Lawd-Lawds” gives one of the best pictures of the Negro workaday character and habits. Some of these types make a very good safety valve for the Negro singer; in a different way their plainness may restrain the enthusiast from setting too much “store” by all the Negro’s songs. The characters of John Henry and[11] Left Wing represent two types, one the mythical and heroic, the other the real and commonplace, both typical of the Negro’s idealism and his actual life. The examples of “movement and imagery” are as characteristic of the Negro workaday experience as were the harmonies and swaying of the old spirituals. They are indices to guide judgment and interpretation of the Negro temperament. In each of these chapters, it will be understood, only enough material is presented to illustrate the case, including, however, always the most representative specimens which the authors have been able to collect within their field and time limit. Much that is similar will necessarily await publication in volumes in which the chief objective will be preservation and completeness rather than interpretation. Many pictures of the workaday Negro are presented in this volume through the medium of his songs. They are silhouetted, as it were, at first against a complex background of Negro life and experience. The pictures are vivid, concrete, distinct, often complete. But most of all, perhaps, they have been moving pictures. From the first glimpse of the Negro singer with his “feet’s gone to rollin’ jes’ lak a wheel,” to the last great scene of John Henry dying with the “hammer in his hand,” there is marvelous movement alongside rare imagery. Sometimes rhythm and rhyme, but always movement, have dominated the Negro’s chief characterizations. And this movement in the workaday songs is as much a distinctive feature as were the swaying bodies, the soothing rhythm, and swelling harmony of the old spirituals. Picture the Negro workingman in his song and story life and you picture him on the move. It is scarcely possible to describe this element of movement in the Negro workaday songs. And yet[12] the mere citation and classification of representative examples will suffice to point out the particular qualities of action which might justify the added element of epic style, if one remembers that the singer’s concept of the heroic, while very real, is not exalted in the Greek sense. There are those who do not feel that the Negro’s workaday songs are characterized by the qualities of poetry; yet do they not arouse the feelings and imagination in vivid and colorful language? The type of language used—that is the Negro’s own. In the same way there can be no doubt of his songs emphasizing the quality of action; his heroes and principal figures, like his language, reflect his concepts and tell his stories. Whether epic or heroic, I’m the hot stuff man, From the devil’s land, I’m a greasy streak o’ lightning, Don’t you see, don’t you see? has plenty of action and imagery in it. And it is characteristic of much of the Negro workaday style of talk, imagination, and thought. Many of the pictures are vivid because of the action concept and the rhyming metaphors. In come a nigger named Slippery Jim, None of de gals would dance wid him, He rech in his pocket an’ drew his thirty-two, Dem niggers didn’t run, good Gawd, dey flew. There was also a woman, one Eliza Stone, from a bad, bad land, who threatened to break up the jamboree with her razor but who also “jumped in de flo’, an’ doubled up her fist, say ‘You wanter test yo’ nerve jes’ jump against this.’” Note further a varying reel of moving characters and scenes. [13] Police got into auto An’ started to chase that coon, They run ’im from six in the mo’nin’, Till seven that afternoon. The coon he run so bloomin’ fas’ Till fire come from his heels, He scorched the cotton an’ burnt the corn, An’ cut a road through farmers’ fiel’s. The continuous search after the workaday folk song will always provide one of the most important guides to the “discovery” of the Negro. The task of finding and recording accurately the folk expression is a difficult one under most circumstances. Under certain circumstances it is an easy task, and always an interesting one. If we keep a record of efforts, taken at random, as experimental endeavor, in a cross country visit through North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, about ten per cent, at best, of the requests for songs will be successful. There are other times, when setting and procedure are worked out well, when almost one hundred per cent success would be attained. In most instances the Negro is at his “best” when being urged to coöperate in the rendering of his folk songs. By his “best” is meant that he reveals a striking nature and strong personality, whether in affirming stoutly that he knows no songs now or that he has forgotten what he used to know. He protests vigorously that he does not sing well enough, that he cannot say the words of songs unless he can sing, that he cannot sing unless others are singing, that he has to be in the spirit of the song, or that he will get some songs together and bring them in, or that he will bring a quartet or a pal. Rarely ever does he “produce” if let alone with only a first approach. Nor can he be blamed. He is entirely within his own self-protecting domain, so that his attitude may be put[14] down, not only as a characteristic one but also as a commendable one. He has his own fun, too, in the situation. In general there are several types from which little success may be expected. The more educated and sophisticated Negro not only does not as a rule coöperate, but looks with considerable condescension upon those who seek his help. There are many who believe that all songs desired are for immediate transcription to printed music or phonograph record. These are of little assistance. Others feel that some hidden motive is back of the request. Still others for various reasons do not coöperate. Nor will the Negro student or musician himself find ready coöperation among his common folk who feel constrained to withhold their folk art from the learned of their own race. Perhaps the most striking observation that comes from the whole experience is the seemingly inexhaustible supply of songs among the workaday Negroes of the South. We have yet to find a “bottom” or a limit in the work songs among the crowds of working men in one community. Just as often as there is opportunity to hear a group of Negroes singing at work, just so often have we found new songs and new fragments. There is so far no exception to this rule. Likewise we have yet to find an individual, whose efforts have been freely set forth in the offering of song, whose supply of songs has been exhausted. Time and time again the approach has been made, with the response, “Naw, sir, cap’n, I don’t know no songs much,” with an ultimate result of song after song, seemingly with no limit. Partly the singer is honest; he does not at the time, think of many songs nor does he consider himself a good singer; but when he turns himself “loose” his capacity for memory and singing is astonishing. [15] The same general rule with reference to dialect is used in this volume as was the case in The Negro and His Songs.[4] There can be no consistency, except the consistency of recording the words as nearly as possible as rendered. Words may occur in two or three variations in a single stanza and sometimes in a single line. The attempt to make formal dialect out of natural speech renders the product artificial and less artistic. We have therefore followed the general practice of keeping the dialect as simple as possible. Dialect, after all, is a relative matter. It is the sort of speech which is not used in one’s own section of the country. As a matter of fact, much of what has passed as Negro dialect is good white Southern usage, and there is nothing to justify the attempt to set aside certain pronunciations as peculiar to the Negro simply because a Negro is being quoted. Consequently we have refrained from the use of dialect in all cases where the Negro pronunciation and the usual white pronunciation are the same or practically the same. If the reader will grasp the basic points of difference between Negro and white speech and will then keep in mind the principle of economy, he will have no difficulty in following the peculiarities of dialect. [4]The Negro and His Songs, pp. 9-11, 293-94. There is a good discussion of dialect in James Weldon Johnson’s Book of American Negro Spirituals, pp. 42-46. The principle of economy will be found to operate at high efficiency in Negro speech. It will nearly always explain the apparent inconsistencies in dialect. For example, the Negro often says ’bout and ’roun’ for about and around. But he might vary these to about, aroun’, ’round, and around in a single song, depending upon the preceding and succeeding sounds. He would say, “I’ll go ’bout two o’clock,” but he[16] also would say, “I went about two o’clock,” because in the former case it is easier to say ’bout than about, while in the latter the reverse is true. Rhythm is also related to dialect. In ordinary speech most Negroes would say broke for broken, but if the rhythm in singing called for a two-syllable sound they would say broken rather than broke. Very few of the popular songs which we heard twenty years ago are found now in the same localities. The places that knew them will know them no more. The same disappearing process is going on now, only more rapidly than formerly because of the multitude of blues, jazz songs, and others being distributed throughout the land in millions of phonographic records. One of the first tasks of this volume is, therefore, to take cognizance of these formal blues, both in their relation to the workaday native creations and as an important segment of the Negro’s music and his contribution to the American scene. In the next chapter we shall proceed, therefore, to discuss the blues. [17] CHAPTER II THE BLUES: WORKADAY SORROW SONGS No story of the workaday song life of the Negro can proceed far without taking into account the kind of song known as the blues, for, next to the spirituals, the blues are probably the Negro’s most distinctive contribution to American art. They have not been taken seriously, because they have never been thoroughly understood. Their history needs to be written. The present chapter is not a complete statement. It merely presents some of the salient points in the story of the blues and offers some suggestions as to their rôle in Negro life. Behind the popular blues songs of today lie the more spontaneous and naïve songs of the uncultured Negro. Long before the blues were formally introduced to the public, the Negro was creating them by expressing his gloomy moods in song. To be sure, the present use of the term “blues” to designate a particular kind of popular song is of recent origin, but the use of the term in Negro song goes much further back, and the blue or melancholy type of Negro secular song is as old as the spirituals themselves. The following song might be taken at first glance for one of the 1926 popular “hits,” but it dates back to the time of the Civil War.[5] [5]Allen, Ware, and Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, p. 89. This note is appended: “A very good specimen ... of the strange barbaric songs that one hears upon the Western steamboats.” I’m gwine to Alabamy,—Oh, For to see my mammy,—Ah. [18] She went from ole Virginny,—Oh, And I’m her pickaniny,—Ah. She lives on the Tombigbee,—Oh, I wish I had her wid me,—Ah. Now I’m a good big nigger,—Oh, I reckon I won’t git bigger,—Ah. But I’d like to see my mammy,—Oh, Who lives in Alabamy,—Ah. Very few of the Negro’s ante-bellum secular songs have been preserved, but there is every reason to suppose that he had numerous melancholy songs aside from the spirituals. At any rate, the earliest authentic secular collections abound in the kind of songs which have come to be known as the blues. The following expressions are typical of the early blues. They are taken from songs collected in Georgia and Mississippi between 1905 and 1908, and they were doubtless common property among the Negroes of the lower class long before that.[6] [6]This collection was published by Howard W. Odum in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 24, pp. 255-94; 351-96. Went to the sea, sea look so wide, Thought about my babe, hung my head an’ cried. O my babe, won’t you come home? I got the blues, but too damn mean to cry, Oh, I got the blues, but I’m too damn mean to cry. Got nowhar to lay my weary head, O my babe, got nowhar to lay my weary head. I’m po’ boy long way from home, Oh, I’m po’ boy long way from home. Ever since I left dat country farm, Ev’ybody been down on me. [19] Here are blues in the making. This is the stuff that the first published blues were made of, and some of it sounds strikingly like certain of the latest blues records issued by the phonograph companies. About 1910 the first published blues appeared, and since that time they have been exploited in every imaginable form by music publishers and phonograph companies.[7] The inter-relations between the formal blues and the native blues will be discussed later. At present it is necessary to take up certain questions concerning the nature of the blues. [7]W. C. Handy is credited with having published the first blues (Memphis Blues, 1910) and with having had much to do with their popularization. He is still writing songs. His works include Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues, Beale St. Blues, Joe Turner Blues, Yellow Dog Blues, Aunt Hagar’s Blues, and others. What are the characteristics of the native blues, in so far as they can be spoken of as a type of song apart from other Negro songs? The original blues were so fragmentary and elusive—they were really little more than states of mind expressed in song—that it is difficult to characterize them definitely. The following points, then, are merely suggestive. In the first place, blues are characterized by a tone of plaintiveness. Both words and music give the impression of loneliness and melancholy. In fact, it was this quality, combined with the Negro’s peculiar use of the word “blues,” which gave the songs their name. In the second place, the theme of most blues is that of the love relation between man and woman. There are many blues built around homesickness and hard luck in general, but the love theme is the principal one. Sometimes the dominant note is the complaint of the lover: [20] Goin’ ’way to leave you, ain’t comin’ back no mo’, You treated me so dirty, ain’t comin’ back no mo’.[8] Where was you las’ Sattaday night, When I lay sick in bed? You down town wid some other ol’ girl, Wusn’t here to hol’ my head.[9] Sometimes it is a note of longing: I hate to hear my honey call my name, Call me so lonesome and so sad.[10] I believe my woman’s on that train, O babe, I believe my woman’s on that train.[11] At other times the dominant note is one of disappointment: I thought I had a friend was true; Done found out friends won’t do.[12] All I hope in this bright worl’, If I love anybody, don’t let it be a girl.[13]  [8]The Negro and His Songs, p. 184.  [9]Ibid., p. 185. [10]Ibid., p. 224. [11]Ibid., p. 222. [12]Ibid., p. 250. [13]Ibid., p. 181. A third characteristic of the blues is the expression of self pity.[14] Often this is the outstanding feature of the song. There seems to be a tendency for the despondent or blue singer to use the technique of the martyr to draw from others a reaction of sympathy. Psychologically speaking, the technique consists of rationalization, by which process the singer not only excuses his shortcomings, but attracts the attention and sympathy of others—in imagination, at least—to[21] his hard lot. The following expressions will make the point clear.[15] [14]For a discussion of this subject, see Lomax, “Self-pity in Negro Folk Song,” Nation, vol. 105, pp. 141-45. [15]Illustrations are taken from The Negro and His Songs unless otherwise indicated. Bad luck in de family, sho’ God, fell on me, Good ol’ boy, jus’ ain’t treated right. Poor ol’ boy, long ways from home, I’m out in dis wide worl’ alone. Out in dis wide worl’ to roam, Ain’t got no place to call my home. Now my mama’s dead and my sweet ol’ popper too, An’ I ain’t got no one fer to carry my troubles to. If I wus to die, little girl, so far away from home, The folks, honey, for miles around would mourn. Now it is apparent to any one familiar with the folk songs of various peoples that the blues type, as it has been described above, is not peculiar to the Negro, but is more or less common to all races and peoples. So far as subject matter and emotional expression are concerned, the lonesome songs of the Kentucky mountaineer, of the cowboy, of the sailor, or of any other group, are representative of the blues type. If this be so, then why was it that the Negro’s song alone became the basis for a nationally popular type of song? The answer to this question is, of course, far from simple. For one thing, the whole matter of the Negro’s cultural position in relation to the white man is involved. The Negro’s reputation for humor and good singing is also important. Perhaps, too, the psychology of fads would have to be considered. But, speaking in terms of the qualities of the songs themselves, what is there about them to account for the superior status enjoyed by the Negro’s melancholy songs? [22] To begin with, the Negro’s peculiar use of the word “blues” in his songs was a circumstance of no mean importance. Much more significant, however, was the music of the blues. The blues originated, of course, with Negroes who had access to few instruments other than the banjo and the guitar. But such music as they brought forth from these instruments to accompany their blues was suited to the indigo mood. It was syncopated, it was full of bizarre harmonies, sudden changes of key and plaintive slurs. It was something new to white America, and it needed only an introduction to insure its success. But there is still another feature of the blues which is probably responsible more than any other one thing for their appeal and fascination, and that is their lack of conventionality, their naïveté of expression. The Negro wastes no time in roundabout or stilted modes of speech. His tale is brief, his metaphor striking, his imagery perfect, his humor plaintive. Expressions like the following have made the blues famous. Looked down the road jus’ far as I could see, Well, the band did play “Nearer, My God to Thee.” Well, I started to leave an’ I got ’way down the track; Got to thinkin’ ’bout my woman, come a-runnin’ back. Wish to God some ol’ train would run, Carry me back where I came frum. I laid in jail, back to the wall: Brown skin gal cause of it all.[16] [16]See Perrow, “Songs and Rhymes from the South,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 28, p. 190. When the first published blues appeared, the problem for the student of Negro song began to become complicated. It is no longer possible to speak with certainty of the folk blues, so entangled are the relations[23] between them and the formal compositions. This inter-relation is itself of such interest and importance that it demands the careful attention of students of folk song. Only a few points can be touched upon in the present work, but an attempt will be made at least to indicate some of the ramifications of the subject. There is no doubt that the first songs appearing in print under the name of blues were based directly upon actual songs already current among Negroes.[17] Soon after Handy began to issue his blues, white people as well as Negroes were singing them heartily. But a song was never sung long in its original version alone. The half-dozen stanzas of the original often grew to a hundred or more, for many singers took pride in creating new stanzas or adapting parts of other songs to the new one. Sometimes publishers would issue second and third editions, incorporating in them the best of the stanzas which had sprung up since the preceding edition. Thus, even before the phonograph became the popular instrument that it is today, the interplay between folk creations and formal compositions had become extremely complex. [17]See James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry, pp. x-xiv; and Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, pp. 269-70. In the last ten years the phonograph record has surpassed sheet music as a conveyor of blues to the public. Sheet music, however, is still important. In fact, practically every “hit” is issued in both the published and phonographed form. But the phonograph record obviously has certain advantages, and it is largely responsible for the present popularity of the blues. Most of the large phonograph companies now maintain special departments devoted to the recording[24] of “race blues.” They employ Negro artists, many of whom have already earned national reputations, and they advertise extensively, especially in the Negro press. In spite of the extremes to which exploitation of the blues has gone in recent years, there is often an authentic folk element to be found in the present-day formal productions. Some of the phonograph artists are encouraged by their employers to sing blues of their own making. When the artist has had an intimate acquaintance with the life of his race and has grown up among the blues, so to speak, he is often able to produce a song which preserves faithfully the spirit of the folk blues. The folk productions of yesterday are likely to be found, albeit sometimes in versions scarcely recognizable, on the phonograph records of today. That this is the case is indicated by the following comparison of a few of the lines and titles of songs collected twenty years ago with lines and titles of recent popular blues songs. Lines and Titles of Songs Collected Twenty Years Ago[18] Lines and Titles of Recent Popular Blues Laid in jail, back to the wall. Thirty days in jail with my back turned to the wall. Jailer, won’t you put ’nother man in my stall? Look here, mister jailer, put another gal in my stall. Baby, won’t you please come home? Baby, won’t you please come home? Wonder where my baby stay las’ night? Where did you stay last night? I got my all-night trick, baby, and you can’t git in. I’m busy and you can’t come in. I’ll see her when her trouble’s like mine.[25] I’m gonna see you when your troubles are just like mine. Satisfied. I’m satisfied. You may go, but this will bring you back. I got what it takes to bring you back. Joe Turner Joe Turner blues. Love, Kelly’s love. Love, careless love. I’m on my las’ go-’round. Last go-’round blues. [18]See Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 24; also The Negro and His Songs. When a blues record is issued it quickly becomes the property of a million Negro workers and adventurers who never bought it and perhaps never heard it played. Sometimes they do not even know that the song is from a record. They may recognize in it parts of songs long familiar to them and think that it is just another piece which some songster has put together. Their desire to invent a different version, their skill at adapting stanzas of old favorites to the new music, and sometimes their misunderstanding of the words of the new song, result in the transformation of the song into many local variants. In other words, the folk creative process operates upon a song, the origin of which may already be mixed, and produces in turn variations that may later become the bases of other formal blues. A thorough exposition of this process would take us far beyond the limits of this volume, but the following instances are cited to illustrate generally the interplay between the folk blues and the formal blues. Here is a specimen captured from a Negro girl in Georgia who had just returned from a trip to “Troit,” Michigan. When you see me comin’ Throw yo’ woman out de do’, [26] For you know I’s no stranger, For I’s been dere once befo’. He wrote me a letter, Nothin’ in it but a note. I set down an’ writ him, “I ain’t no billy goat.” Standin’ on de platform, Worried in both heart an’ soul; An’ befo’ I’d take yo’ man I’d eat grass like a Georgia mule. I love my man Lak I love myse’f. If he don’t have me He won’t have nobody else. Now this song is a mixture of several popular blues. The first stanza is from the House Rent Blues, and is sung practically the same as on the phonograph record. The second stanza is from the Salt Water Blues and is like the original except for the repetition in the original of the first two lines. The third stanza is also from the Salt Water Blues, but it is a combination and variation of two stanzas which go as follows: Sittin’ on the curbstone, Worried in both heart an’ soul; Lower than a ’possum Hidin’ in a ground-hog hole. I wrote my man, “I ain’t nobody’s fool; An’ befo’ I’d stand your talkin’ I’d eat grass like a Georgia mule.” This girl does not worry over the lack of consistent meaning in the third stanza of her song. Furthermore, as far as she is concerned, “soul” and “mule” rhyme about as well as “fool” and “mule.” The fourth[27] stanza of her song, finally, is taken from Any Woman’s Blues, there having been, however, a slight variation in the second line. The original is: I love my man Better than I love myself; An’ if he don’t have me, He won’t have nobody else. Thus in a single song we have examples of the processes of borrowing, combining, changing, and misunderstanding through which formal material often goes when it gets into the hands of the common folk. The composite of four stanzas presented above has no very clear meaning in its present form, but at that it is about as coherent as any of the blues from which it was assembled. Left Wing Gordon, whose story is told in Chapter XII, is a good study in the relation of folk song and formal blues. Left Wing’s repertoire is practically unlimited, for he appears to have remembered everything that he has ever heard. One of his favorite expressions is You don’t know my mind, You don’t know my mind; When you see my laughin’, I’m laughin’ to keep from cryin’. This comes from You Don’t Know My Mind Blues, a popular sheet music and phonograph piece today. Left Wing sings dozens of stanzas, some evidently from the published versions, some of his own making, ending each one with “You don’t know my mind,” etc. Nearly all of his songs showed this sort of mixture of formal and folk material. As an example of the misunderstanding, deliberate twisting of the words of a phonograph blues, or lapse[28] of memory, the following instance may be cited. In the Chain Gang Blues this stanza occurs. Judge he gave me six months ’Cause I wouldn’t go to work. From sunrise to sunset I ain’t got no time to shirk. A Southern Negro on a chain gang recently sang it thus: Judge he give me sentence ’Cause I wouldn’t go to work. From sunrise to sunset I don’t have no other clean shirt. Examples of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely, but these will suffice. In the notes on the songs in the various chapters of this book will be found comments bearing upon the relation of formal blues and folk songs. Thus it is clear that in many cases there is a complex inter-relation and interaction between the folk song and the formal production. But the tendency has been on the whole for the latter to get further and further away from folk sources. Few authors now attempt to do more than imitate certain features of the old-time blues. In order to understand more clearly the present situation, it is necessary to consider for a moment the blues as they are manufactured today. There are at least three large phonograph companies which give special attention to Negro songs. They will be designated herein as “A,” “B,” and “C.” The following table, compiled from data obtained from the general “race record” catalogs of these three companies, gives an idea of the importance of the blues. [29] Brand of Record Total No. of Titles in Catalog No. Religious and Classical Titles No. Secular Titles Titles Containing Word “Blues” Number Percentage of Secular Songs “A” 592 34[19] 558 263 43 “B” 430 90[20] 340 154 40 “C” 298 44[19] 254 108 42 [19]No classical titles listed. [20]Includes 28 classical titles. In this table only those titles including the word “blues” have been counted as blues. If the term were expanded to include all songs which are now popularly known as blues, it would be found that upwards of seventy-five per cent of the total number of secular songs listed in the catalogs would fall in this class. The “A” catalog bears the title, “A” Race Records—The Blue Book of Blues; the “B” catalog follows titles like Oh, Daddy, Brown Baby, Long Lost Mama, etc., with the explanation, “blues song” or “blues record”; and the “C” catalog bears the title, “C” Race Records—The Latest Blues by “C” Colored Artists. Certainly the popular notion among both whites and Negroes now is that practically every Negro song which is not classed as a spiritual is a blues. The term is now freely applied to instrumental pieces, especially to dance music of the jazz type, and to every vocal piece which, by any stretch of the imagination, can be thought of as having a bluish cast. A survey of the titles in the three catalogs mentioned above yields some interesting data concerning the nature of the formal blues. For one thing, there are sixty or seventy titles of the place or locality type. Southern states and cities figure prominently in this[30] kind of blues, although the popularity of Northern localities is on the increase. The favorite states are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. The chief titles for these states are as follows: Alabama Alabama Blues Birmingham Blues Mobile Blues Selma Bama Blues Bama Bound Blues Georgia Atlanta Blues Decatur Blues Georgia Hunch Georgia Blues Louisiana Lake Pontchartrain Blues Lou’siana Low-down Blues New Orleans Hop Scop Blues New Orleans Wiggle Shreveport Blues Mississippi Mississippi Blues Ole Miss Blues Mississippi Delta Blues Texas Dallas Blues Houston Blues Red River Blues Waco Texas Blues Seawall Special Blues Virginia Virginia Blues Hampton Roads Blues Norfolk Blues There are also, to name only a few others, Arkansas Blues, Florida Blues, California Blues, Carolina Blues, Omaha Blues, Michigan Water Blues, Memphis Blues, Tulsa Blues, St. Louis Blues, Salt Lake City Blues, Wabash Blues, and Blue Grass Blues. Finally there are foreign titles, such as London Blues and West Indies Blues. Titles, of course, are not to be taken as accurate indices of the contents of the songs. As a matter of fact, most of the songs bearing titles of the locality type really deal with the relation of man and woman. Another feature of the formal blues is their tendency to specialize in certain slang expressions. “Sweet[31] mama,” “sweet papa,” “daddy,” “jelly roll,” and a few other expressions have been thoroughly popularized among certain classes, white and Negro, by the blues songs. By actual count, titles containing one or more of the words, “mama,” “daddy,” “papa,” “baby,” constitute twenty-five per cent of the total number of secular titles in the catalogs referred to above. It is to be expected that a very large proportion of these present-day blues (using the term now in the broad sense as it is popularly used) deals with the relation of man and woman. In fact, if the locality types, most of which are based on the love relation, and the “mama-papa” type were eliminated from the count, there would be a mere handful left. The following titles will give some impression of the nature of the songs which deal with the man-woman relation.[21] [21]Any one who is acquainted with the slang and vulgarity of the lower class Negro will suspect immediately that there are often double meanings in titles like those listed here. Such is the case. Negro songs writers and phonograph artists usually have had intimate acquaintance with Negro life in all of its forms, and they have doubtless come across many a song which was too vulgar to be put into print, but which had certain appealing qualities. Often a melody was too striking to be allowed to escape, so the writer fitted legitimate verses to it and, if it was at all possible, preserved the original title. Thus it comes about that many of the popular Negro songs of today—and white songs, too, as for that—have titles that are extremely suggestive, and are saved only by their perfectly innocuous verses. The suggestiveness of the titles may also be one explanation of why these songs have such a tremendous appeal for the common folk, black and white. It may be that in these songs, whitewashed and masked though they be, they recognize old friends. Leave My Sweet Papa Alone I’ve Got a Do-right Daddy Now Mistreated Mama Slow Down, Sweet Papa, Mama’s Catching up With You Sweet Smellin’ Mama Black but Sweet, O God How Do You Expect to Get My Lovin’?[32] He May Be Your Man, but He Comes to See Me Sometimes Changeable Daddy Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night How Can I Be Your Sweet “Mama” When You’re “Daddy” to Some One Else? You Can Have My Man if He Comes to See You Too That Free and Easy Papa of Mine You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did Mistreatin’ Daddy If I Let You Get Away With It Once You’ll Do It All the Time Daddy, You’ve Done Put That Thing on Me I’m Tired of Begging You to Treat Me Right My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll Do It a Long Time, Papa No Second Handed Lovin’ for Mine I Want a Jazzy Kiss I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down Beale Street Mama Big Fat Mama Lonesome Mama You’ve Got Everything a Sweet Mama Needs but Me If You Don’t Give Me What I Want I’m Gonna Get It Somewhere Else Mama Don’t Want Sweet Man Any More If You Sheik on Your Mama Mean Papa, Turn in Your Key Take It, Daddy, It’s All Yours How Long, Sweet Daddy, How Long? You Can Take My Man but You Can’t Keep Him Long Can Anybody Take Sweet Mama’s Place?[33] You Don’t Know My Mind Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home? Then there are innumerable miscellaneous titles and sentiments. One may have the Poor Man Blues, Red Hot Blues, Through Train Blues, Railroad Blues, Crazy Blues, Stranger Blues, Don’t Care Blues, Goin’ ’Way Blues, Bleedin’ Hearted Blues, Cryin’ Blues, Salt Water Blues, Mountain Top Blues, Thunderstorm Blues, Sinful Blues, Basement Blues, House Rent Blues, Reckless Blues, and even the A to Z Blues. Here again however, titles are misleading, for practically all songs bearing such titles really deal with the man-woman theme. It may be worth mentioning that the majority of these formal blues are sung from the point of view of woman. A survey of titles in the “A,” “B,” and “C” catalogs shows that upwards of seventy-five per cent of the songs are written from the woman’s point of view. Among the blues singers who have gained a more or less national recognition there is scarcely a man’s name to be found. It is doubtful whether the history of song affords a parallel to the American situation with regard to the blues. Here we have the phenomenon of a type of folk song becoming a great fad and being exploited in every conceivable form; of hundreds of blues, some of which are based directly upon folk productions, being distributed literally by the million among the American people; and the Negro’s assimilation of these blues into his everyday song life. What the effects of these processes are going to be, one can only surmise. One thing is certain, however, and that is that the student of Negro song tomorrow will have to know what was[34] on the phonograph records of today before he may dare to speak of origins. Whether the formal blues have come to stay or not, it is impossible to tell at present. Possibly they will undergo considerable modification as the public becomes satiated and the Negro takes on more and more of the refinements of civilization. That their present form, however, is acceptable to a large section of Negro America is indicated by the fact that the combined sales of “A,” “B,” and “C” blues records alone amount to five or six millions annually. The folk blues will also undergo modification, but they will always reflect Negro life in its lower strata much more accurately than the formal blues can. For it must be remembered that these folk blues were the Negro’s melancholy song long before the phonograph was invented. Yet the formal songs are important. In their own way they are vastly superior to the cruder folk productions, since they have all of the advantages of the artificial over the natural. They may replace some of the simpler songs and thus dull the creative impulse of the common Negro folk to some extent, but there is every reason to suppose that there will be real folk blues as long as there are Negro toilers and adventurers whose naïveté has not been worn off by what the white man calls culture. The plaintiveness of the blues will be encountered in most of the songs of this volume. It is present because most of the songs were collected from the class of Negro folk who are most likely to create blues. In the next chapter certain general songs of the blues type have been brought together but the note of lonesomeness and melancholy will be struck in the songs of the other chapters as well, especially in those dealing with jail and chain gang, construction camp, and the relation of man and woman. [35] CHAPTER III SONGS OF THE LONESOME ROAD The blues par excellence are, of course, to be found in those songs of sorrow and disappointment and longing which center around the love relation.[22] But the song of the “po’ boy long ways from home” who wanders “down that lonesome road” is rich in pathos and plaintiveness. The wanderer is not unlike the old singer who sang, Sometimes I hangs my head an’ cries I’m po’ little orphan chile in de worl’ Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile Nobody knows de trouble I’ve had This ol’ worl’s been a hell to me I’m rollin’ through an unfriendly worl’ [22]See Chapters VII and VIII for the songs of this type. This chapter deals with more general lonesome songs. Typical of the lonesome note in the present-day songs of the wanderer are the following lines: I’m gonna tell my mama when I git home How people treated me way off from home Freezin’ ground wus my foldin’ bed las’ night Got up in the mornin’, couldn’t keep from cryin’ My shoes all wore out My clothes done tore to pieces Trouble gonna follow me to my grave Bad luck in family, sho’ God, fell on me Ain’t got nuthin’ to eat Sick all night on de street I been mistreated all my days[36] Po’ boy got nowhere to lay his head Well, rock was my pillah las’ night Clothes all wet, feet on the ground Po’ boy, dey don’t give me no show Law’, I’m so worried I don’t know what to do I’m gonna ketch dat train, don’t know where it’s from The workhouse settin’ ’way out on lonesome road Always wanderin’ about Nowhere to lay my head Dis po’ man’s life is misery Pocketbook was empty, my heart was full of pain In the “Annals and Blues of Left Wing Gordon”[23] will be found something of the story of one representative of all those black folk who sing down the lonesome road. Left Wing had traveled the lonesome road in at least thirty-eight states of the union. His type is legion. Here is another whose parents died before he was eight years of age. Thence to Texas, and Louisiana, across Mississippi to Georgia, then down to Florida, back through South Carolina to his home state, North Carolina. Abiding there shortly, thence to Maryland and Washington, to St. Louis, thence to Ohio, thence to New York, back to Philadelphia, across again to Ohio, then the war and camp, and armistice and more travels, with periods of “doing time.” Then back again to the lonesome road. [23]See Chapter XII. Nowhere is self-pity in the plaintive song better expressed than in the forlorn Negro’s vision of himself, the last actor in the wanderer drama, folks mourning his death, hacks in line, funeral well provided for.[37] Sometimes reflecting on his hard life, he pictures his own funeral! Look down po’ lonesome road, Hacks all dead in line; Some give nickel, some give a dime, To bury dis po’ body o’ mine. Perhaps he will jump into the sea or off the mountain or lay his head on a railroad track. Then folks will miss him and mourn his tragic end. He feels that he has more than his share of trouble and hard luck. Sometimes he sings that he cannot keep from crying: I can’t keep from cryin’ Look down dat lonesome road an’ cry You made me weep, you made me moan Woke up in de mornin’, couldn’t keep from cryin’ I got de blues an’ can’t keep from cryin’ The following songs show this note of hard luck, weeping, and self-pity: Ship My Po’ Body Home If I should die long way from home Ship my po’ body home. Ax fer a nickel, ax fer a dime, Ax fer a quarter, ship my po’ body home, Lawd, ship my po’ body home. Ain’t got no money, Ain’t got nothin’ to eat, Sick all night on de street; If I die long way from home Ship my po’ body home. [38] Pity Po’ Boy Pity a po’ boy Stray ’way from home, Pity a po’ boy Stray ’way from home. If I ever gits back, I sho’ never mo’ to roam; If I ever gits back, I sho’ never mo’ to roam. I Rather Be in My Grave I lef’ my rider standin’ in back do’ cryin’, “Lawd, please don’t leave me behin’.” You mistreat me, you drove me from yo’ do’, Good book say you got to reap what you sow. I’m goin’ ’way, Lawd, I’m goin’ ’way, I ain’t comin’ back, Lawd, at all. If my mind don’t change, Lawd, If my mind don’t change, I ain’t comin’ back. Woke up this mornin’, blues all around my bed, Snatch up my pillow, blues all under my head. I’m feelin’ blue, mama, feel blue you know, I feel blue all day long. Lawd, I’m worried now, Lawd, But I won’t be worried long. I feel like train, mama, Ain’t got no drivin’ wheel. I rather be daid in six foot o’ clay, I rather be in my grave. Throw Myself Down in de Sea Goin’ up on mountain top, Lord, goin’ up on mountain top, O Lord, goin’ up on mountain top, Throw myself down in de sea. [39] Throw myself down in sea, O Lord, throw myself down in sea; Goin’ up on mountain top, Throw myself down in sea. Po’ Nigger Got Nowhere to Go Po’ nigger got nowhere to go, Po’ nigger got nowhere to go, Po’ nigger got nowhere to go, Nothin’ but dirt all over de flo’. Clothes am dirty rags, Clothes am dirty rags, Clothes am dirty rags, Stuff in dirty bags. Beds am ragged an’ ol’, Beds am ragged an’ ol’, Beds am ragged an’ ol’, No money to buy no mo’. I Wish I Was Dead Over de hill is de po’ house, Please don’t let me go. A place to sleep, somethin’ to eat, I don’t ast no mo’, I don’t ast no mo’. My clothes am done tore to pieces, My shoes am all wo’ out; Got nobody to do my patchin’, Always wanderin’ about, Always wanderin’ about. Ain’t got nobody to love me, Nowhere to lay my head. Dis po’ man’s life am a misery, Lawd, Lawd, how I wish I was dead, Lawd, Lawd, how I wish I was dead. [40] Trouble All My Days[24] Trouble, trouble, Been had it all my days. Trouble, trouble, Got to mend dis nigger’s ways. Trouble, trouble, I believe to my soul Trouble gonna kill me dead. Trouble, trouble. But I’s gwine away, To rid trouble off my min’. But I’s gwine away, To rid trouble off my min’. Fair brown, fair brown, Who may yo’ regular be? If you got no regular, Please take a peep at me. Trouble, trouble, Been had it all my day; Believe to my soul Trouble gonna kill me dead. Say, look here, man, See what you done done; You done made me love you, Now you tryin’ to dog me ’roun’. [24]This song is very much like a popular phonograph record, Downhearted Blues. Cf. also Trouble, Trouble Blues. I Can’t Keep From Cryin’[25] I received a letter that my daddy was dead, He wasn’t dead but he was slowly dyin’. Just to think how I love him, I can’t keep from cryin’. I followed my daddy to the buryin’ ground, I saw the pall-bearer slowly ease him down. That was the last time I saw my daddy’s face.[41] I love you, sweet daddy, but I just can’t take your place. [25]A somewhat condensed version of a phonograph song, Death Letter Blues. Po’ Little Girl Grievin’ Po’ little girl grievin’, Po’ little girl grievin’, Lawdy, Lawdy, po’ little girl grievin’, Po’ little girl grievin’. Little girl wid head hung down, Little girl wid head hung down, Lawdy, Lawdy, little girl wid head hung down, I’m sorry for little girl wid head hung down. Sorry yo’ man, Sorry yo’ man, Lawdy, Lawdy, sorry Yo’ man done left you. Standin’ at station weepin’, Standin’ at station weepin’, Lawd, standin’ at station weepin’ ’Cause her man done gone. Don’t treat me lak used to, Don’t treat me lak used to, Lawd, girl don’t treat me lak used to, Don’t treat me lak used to. Lawd, I don’t know why, Lawd, I don’t know why, Lawdy, Lawdy, I don’t know why, Don’t treat me lak used to. It won’t be long, It won’t be long, Lawdy, Lawd, it won’t be long, Lawd, it won’t be long. The old line, “po’ boy ’long way from home,” is still a favorite. In the Negro’s songs and stories of wanderings, home and father and mother are themes of constant appeal, apparently much in contrast to the[42] Negro’s actual home-abiding experiences. The old spirituals sang mostly of the heavenly home of dreams and ideals as opposed to the experience in which “this ol’ world been a hell to me.” In his wanderer song of today the Negro’s wish-dream to be back home appears an equally striking contrast. Nowhere in the workaday songs is childlike and wishful yearning so marked as in these constant songs of homesickness and of the desire for something that is not. Always accompanying the singer’s dreams of home is his contrasting forlorn condition in the present hour. It would be difficult to find better description of situations than that in which he pictures himself as tired and forsaken on the lonesome road. Parts of this picture may be gathered from the following lines taken here and there from his songs: Take, oh, take me, take me back home My sister’s cryin’ back home If I die long way from home My home ain’t here an’ I ain’t got to stay O Lord, captain, won’t you let me go home Daddy sick, mammy dead, Goin’ back South, dat’s where I’m bound. Every mail day I gits letter from my mother, Sayin’, “Son, son, come home.” I’m one hundred miles from home An’ I can’t go home this way. I didn’t have no ready-made money, I couldn’t go home. A place to sleep, something to eat, I don’t ast no mo’. Look down dat lonesome road an’ cry [43] A variety of songs of home or home-folk, of surcease from work, will be found wherever Negroes sing. This fact is recognized by the publishers of blues when they advertise, “These blues will make every Negro want to hurry back home.” The plaintive longing for home, alongside expressions of weeping and self-pity, is the theme of most of the following songs of the road: I’m Goin’ Home, Buddie All ’round the mountain, Buddie, So chilly and cold, Buddie, So chilly and cold, Buddie, But I’m goin’ home, Buddie, I’m goin’ home. Take this hammer, Buddie, Carry it to the boss, Buddie, Carry it to the boss, Buddie, Tell him I gone home, Buddie, I gone home. I got a wife, Buddie, With two little children, Buddie, With two little children, Buddie, Tell ’em I’m comin’ home, Buddie, I’m comin’ home. That Ol’ Letter That ol’ letter, Read about dyin’; Boy, did you ever, Think about dyin’? Then I can’t read it Now for cryin’, Tears run down, Lawd, Lawd, tears run down. Po’ Homeless Boy In de evenin’ de sun am low, In de evenin’ de sun am low, In de evenin’ de sun am low, [44] Dis po’ homeless boy got nowhere to go, Dis po’ homeless boy got nowhere to go, Nowhere to go. Daddy sick, mammy daid, Daddy sick, mammy daid, Po’ boy got nowhere to lay his haid, Po’ boy got nowhere to lay his haid, Lay his haid. Clothes all wo’, feet on de groun’, Clothes all wo’, feet on de groun’, Goin’ back down South, dat’s where I’s boun’, Goin’ back down South, dat’s where I’s boun’, Where I’s boun’. Home in a two-room shack, Home in a two-room shack, Home in a two-room shack, Cook in de fire, pipe in de crack, Cook in de fire, pipe in de crack, Pipe in de crack. Take Me Back Home Take me, oh, take me, Take me back home. My mammy’s weepin’, daddy’s sleepin’, In de ol’ grave yard. Take me, oh, take me, Take me back home. Please, Mr. Conductor When I left home mother was ill, And she needed the doctor’s care, That’s the reason I came to the city, I’ll pay you my fare next time. Please, Mr. Conductor, Don’t put me off this train. The best friend I have in this world Is waiting for me in pain. [45] Captain, I Wanta Go Home When I call on captain, Lawd, Lawd, He ast me what I need. Captain, captain, I tol’ captain, Lawd, I wanta go back home. He tol’ me, Lawd, why you want to go home, Shine? Say you got to make your time. Captain call me ’bout half pas’ fo’, Captain, Lawd, I wouldn’t go. Want me to go in kitchen, Draw water, make fire. Captain, captain, what make you call me so soon? Poor Shine, Lawd, captain, wish I was home. I went out on road Wid pick and shovel, too. I pick a lick or two, Captain, can’t I go back home? Captain, captain, won’t you take me, Lawd, Lawd, captain, won’t you take me back? My home ain’t here, captain, An’ I ain’t got to stay. O Lawd, captain, captain, Lawd, Won’t you let me go home? Will I Git Back Home? Law’, I do wonder, Law’, I do wonder, Law’, I do wonder, Will I git back home, huh? Will I git back home, huh? Well cuckoo, cuckoo, Keep on hollerin’, An’ mus’ be day, Law’, Mus’ be day. [46] Well whistle, whistle, Keep on blowin’, An’ time ain’t long, Uhuh, time ain’t long. Lawd, Lawd, I’m on My Way Ain’t had nothin’ to eat, Ain’t had nowhere to sleep, Freezin’ ground wus my foldin’ bed, But I’m on my way, O Lawd, I’m on my way. What makes you hold yo’ head so high? Any way you hold yo’ head, That’s way you gonna die, That’s way you gonna die. I sho’ don’t want to go, But I’m goin’ up country Singin’ nothin’ but you; I’m goin’ up country, Singin’ nothin’ but you. Goin’ Down Dat Lonesome Road[26] Goin’ down dat lonesome road, Oh, goin’ down dat lonesome road, An’ I won’t be treated this-a way. Springs on my bed done broken down, An’ I ain’t got nowhere to lay my head. Now my mamma’s dead an’ my papa, too, An’ it left me alone wid you. An’ you cause me to weep an’ you cause me to moan, An’ you cause me to leave my happy home. Longest train I ever saw Was nineteen coaches long. Darlin’ what have I done to you? What makes you treat me so? An’ I won’t be treated this-a way. [26]For the music of this song, see Chapter XIV. A song of this name has been found in the Kentucky mountains, and a phonograph record (Lonesome Road Blues) based on it has recently appeared. Cf. also The Lonesome Road in Miss Scarborough’s On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, p. 73. [47] CHAPTER IV BAD MAN BALLADS AND JAMBOREE There is this fortunate circumstance which contributes to the completeness and vividness of the Negro portraits as found in workaday songs: the whole picture is often epitomized in each of several characters or types of singers and their songs. Thus the picture may be viewed from all sides and from different angles, with such leisure and repetition as will insure accurate impressions. One of these types is the “po’ boy long way from home” singing down “that lonesome road,” as represented in the previous chapter. Whether in his ordinary daily task, or on his pilgrimages afar, or in the meshes of the law, this singer approaches perfection in the delineation of his type. Another type is that to be found in the story of Left Wing Gordon as presented in Chapter XII, and of John Henry in Chapter XIII. Likewise, the songs of jail and chain gang, the songs of women and love, and the specialized road songs all embody that fine quality of full and complete reflection of the folk spirit in the Negro’s workaday life and experience. There is perhaps no type, however, which comes more nearly summarizing certain situations, experiences, and backgrounds than the Negro “bad man,” whose story will make an heroic tale of considerable proportions. In many ways the “bad man from bad man’s land” is a favorite. He is eulogized by the youngsters and sung by the worker by the side of the road. One preacher even described Christ as a man who would “stand no foolin’ wid.” “Jesus such great man, no one lak him. Lord, he could pop lion’s head[48] off jes’ lak he wus fryin’-size chicken an’ could take piece o’ mountain top and throw it across the world.” And as for that other bad man, “Nicotemus,” why Jesus, when he got through with him, had him following behind a donkey like any other slave.[27] There was that other young Negro who “was no comfort to preacher, but was a hawk like pizen. Mens like him and wimmin belonged to him wid his winnin’ ways.” In a previous volume[28] we pointed out some of the characteristic experiences and modes of the Negro bum, “bully of this town,” Railroad Bill, Stagolee, Brady, and the others, of twenty years ago. Since that time the tribe has apparently not diminished and flourishes well in the atmosphere of modern life, migration, and the changing conditions of race relations. Of the statistical and environmental aspects of the Negro criminal much will be reported in another study.[29] In this chapter we are concerned with the portrait of a type, perhaps inexorably drawn into the maelstrom of his day and turned into an inevitable product. He is no less an artist than the wanderer, the “travelin’ man,” or Left Wing Gordon. He is the personification of badness mixed with humor, of the bad man and the champion of exploits. We have already referred to the Negro who “wus so mean wus skeered of hisself,” competitor to that other one whose ... eyes wus red an’ his gums wus blue, ’Cause he wus a nigger right through and through. There were still other companions to these in Slippery Jim, Slewfoot Pete, and Ann-Eliza Stone, “mean wid[49] her habbits on” and breaking up the “jamboree.”[30] A common phrase, indeed, threatened always to “break up dis jamboree” in exchange for slighting one’s “repertation.” [27]Cited by Dr. E. C. L. Adams of Columbia, S. C. [28]The Negro and His Songs, page 164 seq. [29]A study of Negro crime directed by J. F. Steiner, for the Institute for Research in Social Science, at the University of North Carolina. [30]See Swan and Abbot, in Eight Negro Songs, New York, 1923. Many are the bad men, and vivid the descriptions. Said one, “Lawd, cap’n, take me till tomorrow night to tell ’bout dat boy. Eve’ybody skeered uv him. John Wilson jes nachelly bully, double j’inted, awful big man, didn’t fear ’roun’ nobody. Would break up ev’y do he ’tended. Go to picnic, take all money off’n table. Couldn’t do nothin’ wid him. Seen feller shoot at him nine times once an’ didn’t do nothin’ to him, an’ he run an’ caught up wid feller an’ bit chunk meat out o’ his back, ... but one man got him wid britch loader an’ stop ’im from suckin’ eggs.” We have found no black bad-man ballads superior to the old ones, Railroad Bill, Stagolee, That Bully of this Town, Desperado Bill, Eddy Jones, Joe Turner, Brady,[31] and the others. And yet, the current stories sung on the road are more accurate portrayals of actual characters and experiences, and perhaps less finished songs, less formal rhyme. Take Lazarus, for instance, a hard luck story, portraying something of Negro sympathy, burial custom, general reaction. Here is a character more to be pitied than censured, according to his companions. Listen to three pick-and-shovel men, tracing “po’ Lazarus” from the work camp where he, poor foolish fellow, robbed the commissary camp and then took to his heels. Thence between the mountains where the high sheriff shot him down, back to the camp and burying ground, with mother, wife,[50] brothers, sisters, comrades weeping, attending the funeral, where they “put po’ Lazarus away at half pas’ nine.” [31]The Negro and His Songs, pages 196-212. Bad Man Lazarus Oh, bad man Lazarus, Oh, bad man Lazarus, He broke in de commissary, Lawd, he broke in de commissary. He been paid off, He been paid off, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, He been paid off. Commissary man, Commissary man, He jump out commissary window, Lawd, he jump out commissary window. Startin’ an’ fall, O Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Commissary man startin’ an’ he fall, O Lawd, Lawd, Lawd. Commissary man swore out, Lawd, commissary man swore out, Lawd, commissary man swore out Warrant for Lazarus. O bring him back, Lawd, bring him back, O Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Bring Lazarus back. They began to wonder, Lawd, they began to wonder, Lawd, they began to wonder Where Lazarus gone. Where in world, Lawd, where in world, Lawd, where in world Will they find him? [51] Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, Well, Lawd, Lawd, Well, I don’t know. Well, the sheriff spied po’ Lazarus, Well, the sheriff spied po’ Lazarus, Lawd, sheriff spied po’ Lazarus Way between Bald Mountain. They blowed him down, Well, they blowed him down, Well, Lawd, Lawd, They blowed him down. They shot po’ Lazarus, Lawd, they shot po’ Lazarus, Lawd, they shot po’ Lazarus With great big number. Well, forty-five, Lawd, great big forty-five, Lawd, forty-five, Turn him roun’. They brought po’ Lazarus, And they brought po’ Lazarus, Lawd, they brought po’ Lazarus Back to the shanty. Brought him to de number nine, Lawd, brought him to number nine, Lawd, they brought him to the number nine, Lawd, they brought po’ Lazarus to number nine. Ol’ friend Lazarus say, Lawd, old friend Lazarus say, Lawd, old friend Lazarus say, “Give me cool drink of water. “Befo’ I die Good Lawd, ’fo’ I die, Give me cool drink of water, Lawd, ’fo’ I die.” [52] Lazarus’ mother say, Lawd, Lazarus’ mother say, “Nobody know trouble I had with him, “Since daddy died, Lawd, since daddy been dead, Nobody know the trouble I had Since daddy been dead.” They goin’ bury po’ Lazarus, Lawd, they goin’ bury ol’ Lazarus, They goin’ bury po’ Lazarus In the mine. At half pas’ nine, O Lawd, Good Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Goin’ bury po’ Lazarus At half pas’ nine. Me an’ my buddy, Lawd, me an’ my buddy, We goin’ over to bury him, Half pas’ nine. Half pas’ nine, O Lawd, Lawd, half pas’ nine, We goin’ over to bury him, Half pas’ nine. Lazarus’ mother say, “Look over yonder, How dey treatin’ po’ Lazarus, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd.” They puttin’ him away, Lawd, they puttin’ him away, Lawd, they puttin’ Lazarus away, Half pas’ nine. It would be difficult to find a scene and setting more appealing than this ballad being sung by a group of workingmen in unison, with remarkable harmony, fine voices, inimitable manner. “Doesn’t this singing[53] hinder you in your work?” we asked one of the pick-and-shovel men, just to see what type of reply he would make. With first a slow look of surprise, then a sort of pity for the man who would ask such a question, then a “Lawdy-Lawd-Cap’n” outburst of laughter, “Cap’n dat’s whut makes us work so much better, an’ it nuthin’ else but.” And one of the group acted the part of the “shouter” very much like the hearers in the church. He would sing a while, then dig away in silence, then burst out with some exhorter’s exclamation about the song, giving zest to the singing, contrast to the imagery, authority to the story. Once as the singers recorded the shooting of Lazarus, he shouted, “Yes, yes, Lawd, Lawd, I seed ’em, I wus dere”; and again when they sang of his mother weeping, “Yes, Lawd, I wus right dere when she come a-runnin’. I know it’s true.” Taken all in all, the sorrowful story of Lazarus, with its painstaking sequence and its melody as sung on this occasion, it is doubtful if ever Negro spiritual surpassed it in beauty and poignancy. The above version was heard at Danielsville, Georgia. A similar but shorter one, current in North Carolina, is called Billy Bob Russell. “Reason why dey calls it dat is Billy Bob Russell an’ Lazarus been buddies for years, pretty mean boys til dey gits grown. Billy Bob Russell, he’s from Georgia an’ I think Lazarus act sorta like robber or highway robber or somethin’, follow road camp all time.”[32] [32]Other Negroes affirm that Billy Bob Russell was a white man, a Georgia construction foreman and a very noted one. [54] Billy Bob Russell Cap’n tol’ high sheriff, “Go an’ bring me Lazarus, Bring him dead or alive, Lawd, bring him dead or alive.” Eve’ybody wonder Where in world dey would find him, Then I don’t know, Cap’n, I don’t know. Lazarus tol’ high sheriff, He had never been ’rested By no one man, Lawd, Lawd, by no one man. Then they found po’ Lazarus In between two mountains, Wid his head hung down, Lawd, Lawd, wid his head hung down. Shoot po’ Lazarus, Carried him over to shanty, Lawd, shoot po’ Lazarus, Carried him over to shanty. Lazarus’ sister she run An’ tol’ her mother That Lazarus wus dead, Lawd, Lazarus wus dead. Then Lazarus tol’ high sheriff, “Please turn me over On my wounded side, Lawd, on my wounded side.” Lazarus tol’ high sheriff, “Please give me drink water Jes’ befo’ I die, Lawd, jes’ befo’ I die.” [55] Lazarus’ mother, She laid down her sewin’, She wus thinkin’ bout trouble She had had wid Lazarus. In contrast to the more finished rhyming stanzas of Railroad Bill and the earlier heroic epics, note the simple, vivid ballad-in-the-making type of unrhymed song so common as a type of pick-and-shovel melody. Note the accuracy of the picture, its trueness to actual workaday experience, the phrase description. Such a song in the making and in the rendering defies description or competition as a folk-mirror. Differing somewhat and yet of the same general sort of characterization is the current story of Dupree, versions of which have been taken from Asheville, North Carolina, and various other places in Georgia and North Carolina. One of the most interesting aspects of this Dupree song is that it may be compared with the Atlanta ballad of the white Frank Dupree as popularly sung on the phonograph records. The story of the white culprit warns his young friends in the usual way and asks them to meet him in heaven. His crime was, first, snatching a diamond ring for his sweetheart, then shooting the policeman to death, then fleeing but coming back because he could not stay away from his “Betty.” There is little similarity of expression between the white version and the Negro one. Here is the more finished of the Negro songs. Dupree Dupree was a bandit, He was so brave and bol’, He stoled a diamond ring For some of Betty’s jelly roll. [56] Betty tol’ Dupree, “I want a diamond ring.” Dupree tol’ Betty, “I’ll give you anything.” “Michigan water Taste like cherry wine,[33] The reason I know: Betty drink it all the time. “I’m going away To the end of the railroad track. Nothing but sweet Betty Can bring me back.” Dupree tol’ the lawyer, “Clear me if you can, For I have money to back me, Sure as I’m a man.” The lawyer tol’ Dupree, “You are a very brave man, But I think you will Go to jail and hang.” Dupree tol’ the judge, “I am not so brave and bol’, But all I wanted Was Betty’s jelly roll.” The judge tol’ Dupree, “Jelly roll’s gonna be your ruin.” “No, no, judge, for that is What I’ve done quit doin’.” The judge tol’ Dupree, “I believe you quit too late, Because it is Already your fate.” [33]See phonograph record, Michigan Water Blues. In striking contrast to the Dupree just given is one sung by a young Negro who had been in the chain gang[57] a number of times and whose major repertoire consisted of the plaintive chain gang songs. Here the singer has translated the version into his own vernacular, varying lines, eschewing rhyme, carrying his story through the regular channels of the prison type. The lines are given exactly as sung, repetitions and irregularities constituting their chief distinction. And yet something of the same story runs through it. It is perhaps a little nearer the Atlanta version, and the singer adds still another interpretation that Dupree and Betty had quarreled and as a result Dupree had killed her and hidden her body in the sawdust. An interesting local color is that Dupree was sent to Milledgeville, Georgia, where as a matter of fact is situated the combined state prison and hospital. Here, then, is the song with its mixed imagery and reflection of a certain mentality. Dupree Tol’ Betty Betty tol’ Dupree She want a diamond ring; Betty tol’ Dupree She want a diamond ring. Dupree tol’ Betty, Gonna pawn his watch an’ chain; Dupree tol’ Betty, Gonna pawn his watch an’ chain. Dupree left here cold in han’, Dupree left here cold in han’, But when he git back to Georgia, He was wrapped up all in chains. Dupree tol’ Betty, “Gonna git that diamond ring.” Betty tol’ Dupree, “If you stay in love with me, [58] Hurry an’ git that diamond ring; If you stay in love with me, Hurry an’ git that diamond ring.” Dupree tol’ Betty, He git that diamond ring; Dupree tol’ Betty, He git that diamond ring, He went to the pawnshop An’ snatched the diamond ring, He went to the pawnshop An’ snatched the diamond ring. High-sheriff come git Dupree, Took him in the jail. Lawd, jail keeper come and git Dupree, Took him to the jail. Lawd, jail keeper took Dupree An’ put him in his cell, Lawd, jail keeper took Dupree An’ put him in his cell. Dupree ask the sheriff What he had done, Lawd, Dupree ask the sheriff What he had done. Sheriff tol’ him He had snatched diamond ring, Sheriff told him He had snatched diamond ring. Dupree say he ain’t killed no man. Jailer tol’ him take it easy, ’Cause he done snatched the diamond ring, ’Cause he done snatched the diamond ring. He say, “I aint got no case ’gainst you But I bound to put you in jail.” He say, “I aint got no case ’gainst you But I bound to put you in jail.” Dupree laid in jail So long they tried to hang him; They tried to take him to court [59] An’ taken him back again, Judge give him the same old sentence, Lawd, judge give him the same old sentence. Say, “Dupree you kill that po’ little girl An’ hid her in the sawdust. Dupree, we got hangin’ for you, Sorry, Dupree, we got to hang po’ you.” They try to take him to Milledgeville, Lawd, tried to take him to Milledgeville, Put him in a orphans’ home, Lawd, to keep him out of jail. A popular bad man song of many versions is the Travelin’ Man. No one has ever outdistanced him. A long story, rapidly moving, miraculously achieving, triumphantly ending, it represents jazz song, phonograph record, banjo ballad, quartet favorite, although it is not easy to capture. Three versions have been found in the actual singing, one by a quartet which came to Dayton, Tennessee, to help entertain the evolution mongers; another by Kid Ellis, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, himself a professed traveling man; a third by a North Carolina Negro youth who had, however, migrated to Pennsylvania and returned after traveling in seven or eight other states of the union. The South Carolina version, which is given here, is of the Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ type of vaudeville and ballad mixture. Travelin’ Man Now I jus’ wanna tell you ’bout travelin’ man, His home was in Tennessee; He made a livin’ stealin’ chickens An’ anything he could see. Chorus: He was a travelin’ man, He certainly was a travelin’ man, [60] He was mos’ travelin’ man That ever was in this lan’. And when the law got after that coon, He certainly would get on the road. An’ if a train pass, no matter how fas’, He certainly would get on boa’d. He was a travelin’ man, Was seen for miles aroun’, He never got caught, an’ never give up Until the police shot him down. The police shot him with a rifle, An’ the bullet went through his head, The people came for miles aroun’ To see if he was dead. They sent down South for his mother, She was grieved and moved with tears, Then she open the coffin to see her son, An’ the fool had disappeared. The police got in an auto An’ started to chase that coon, They run him from six in the mornin’ Till seven that afternoon. The coon ran so bloomin’ fast That fire come from his heels; He scorched the cotton an’ burnt the corn An’ cut a road through the farmer’s’ fields. The coon went to the spring one day To get a pail of water; The distance he had to go Was two miles and a quarter. He got there an’ started back, But he stumbled an’ fell down; He went to the house and got another pail, An’ caught the water ’fore it hit the ground. The coon stole a thousand dollars, Was in broad open day time. [61] I ast the coon if he wa’n’t ashame To commit such an awful crime. They put the coon on the gallows An’ told him he would die; He crossed his legs an’ winked his eye And sailed up in the sky. The coon got on the Titanic An’ started up the ocean blue, But when he saw the iceberg, Right overboa’d he flew. The white folks standin’ on the deck, Said “Coon, you are a fool.” But ’bout three minutes after that He was shootin’ craps in Liverpool. For the rest of this picture of the bad man the simple presentation of songs and fragments in sufficient numbers to illustrate main types will suffice. His name is legion, and he ranks all the way from the “polish man” to the “boll-weevil nigger,” much despised of the common man of the better sort. Bad men come into peaceful and industrious communities and disturb the peace. They flow in from other states to add to the number of offenders, yet in spite of their numbers and character, the church throng, the picnic, the funeral and other social occasions seem to have much fewer murders and fracases than formerly. If the bad man can be turned into song and verse, with the picture of adventure and romance becoming more and more mythical, the Negro will profit by the evolution. For the present, however, here are samples of the portrayals most commonly sung, with apologies to all improvisators, minstrel artists, and white-folk imitators of Negro verse. [62] Bolin Jones Bolin Jones wuz A man of might, He worked all day And he fit all night. O Lawsy, Lawsy, He’s a rough nigger, Han’ to his hip, Fingers on de trigger. Lay ’em low, Lay ’em low, When Bolin’s ’round, Mind whar you go. Roscoe Bill I’m de rowdy from over de hill, I’m de rowdy called Roscoe Bill, Roscoe Bill, Roscoe Bill, When I shoots I’m boun’ to kill. I’m Roscoe Bill Dat never gits skeered, Goes frum shack to shack, Tries de udder man’s bed. I’m Roscoe Bill, De man of might, Plum tickled to death When I raise a fight. I’m Roscoe Bill Dat de women all foller. Takes what dey got, Den steals deir dollar. Layin’ Low Layin’ low, never know When de cops about. Shootin’ crap on my gal’s lap, I’ve got to go my route. [63] Layin’ low, never know, When de p’liceman’s walkin’ about, Walkin’ in, stalkin’ about, Dat p’liceman’s walkin’ about. Don’t Fool Wid Me Dark town alley’s too small a place For me and that cop to have a fair race. I lay low till de night am dark, Den dis here nigger is out for a lark. Han’s up, nigger, don’t fool wid me, I put nigger whar he ought-a be. Creepin’ ’Roun’ Work in de mornin’, In de evenin’ I sleep. When de dark comes, Lawd, Dis nigger got to creep. Chorus: Creepin’ ’roun’, Creepin’ in, Creepin’ everywhere A creeper’s been. Eats in de mornin’, In de evenin’ I looks ’roun’. When de dark comes, Lawd, A chocolate gal I’ve foun’. Shootin’ Bill Dere’s a nigger on my track, Dere’s a nigger on my track, Dere’s a nigger on my track, Let de undertaker take him back. I’m a man shoots de two-gun fire, I’m a man shoots de two-gun fire, I’m a man shoots de two-gun fire, I’se got a gal who’s a two-faced liar. [64] When I shoots, I shoots to kill, When I shoots, I shoots to kill, When I shoots, I shoots to kill, Dat’s why dey fears Shootin’ Bill! I Am Ready For de Fight When at night I makes my bed, When at night I makes my bed, When at night I makes my bed, Puts my feets up to de head. If dey hunts me in de night, If dey hunts me in de night, If dey hunts me in de night, I am ready fer de fight. I sleeps wid one year out, I sleeps wid one year out, I sleeps wid one year out, Got to know when dem rounders ’bout. Up an’ down dis worl’, Up an’ down dis worl’, Up an’ down dis worl’, Lookin’ fer dat tattlin’ gal. Slim Jim From Dark-town Alley Slim Jim wus a chocolate drop, Slim Jim wus a chocolate drop, Slim Jim wus a chocolate drop From dark-town alley. Slim Jim drapped down a cop, Slim Jim drapped down a cop, Slim Jim drapped down a cop In dark-town alley. Hy Jim, hey Jim, we got you at las’, Hy Jim, hey Jim, we got you at las’, Hy Jim, hey Jim, we got you at las’ In dark-town alley. [65] De jails kotch him at las’, dat chocolate drop, De jails kotch him at las’, dat chocolate drop, De jails kotch him at las’, dat chocolate drop From dark-town al-ley. Dem bars wus strong, but Chocolate melted away, Dem bars wus strong, but Chocolate melted away, Dem bars wus strong, but Chocolate melted away, Back to dark-town alley. I’m a Natural-bo’n Ram’ler I’m a natural-bo’n ram’ler, I’m a natural-bo’n ram’ler, I’m a natural-bo’n ram’ler, An’ it ain’t no lie. I travels about on Monday night, I travels about when de moon is bright. I travels about on Tuesday, too, I travels about when got nuthin’ else to do. I travels about on Wednesday mo’n, Been travelin’ ever since I been bo’n, On Thurs’ I rambles ’round de town, Dey ain’t no Jane kin hol’ me down. Friday ketches me wid my foot in my han’, I’m de out-derndest traveler of any man. Saturday’s de day I rambles fo’ sumpin to eat, An’ Sunday de day dis ram’ler sleeps. I’m de Hot Stuff Man I’m de hot stuff man Frum de devil’s lan’. Go on, nigger, Don’t you try to buck me, I’m de hot stuff man Frum de devil’s lan’. I’m a greasy streak o’ lightnin’, Don’t you see? Don’t you see? Don’t you see? [66] I can cuss, I can cut, I can shoot a nigger up. Go on, nigger, Don’t you try to buck me, I’m de fas’est man, Can clean up de lan’. I’m a greasy streak o’ lightnin’, Can’t you see? I’m a greasy streak o’ lightnin’, Can’t you see? Reuben[34] Dat you, Reuben? Dat you, Reuben? Den dey laid ol’ Reuben down so low. Say ol’ Reuben had a wife, He’s in trouble all his life. Den dey lay Reuben down so low. Dat you Reuben? Dat you Reuben? Den dey laid Reuben down so low. Says ol’ Reuben mus’ go back, When he pawn his watch an’ hack. Den dey laid Reuben down so low. Says ol’ Reuben mus’ be dead, When he laid upon his bed. Den dey laid Reuben down so low. Dat you Reuben? Dat you Reuben? Den dey laid Reuben down so low. [34]We are told that this song is common among the whites of Western North Carolina. Bloodhoun’ on My Track Bloodhoun’ from Macon right on my track, Right on my track, right on my track. Bloodhoun’ from Macon right on my track, Wonder who gonna stan’ my bon’? [67] Buffalo Bill I’m de bad nigger, If you wants to know; Look at dem rounders In de cemetery row. Shoot, nigger, Shoot to kill, Who’s you foolin’ wid? My Buffalo Bill? Buffalo Bill Wus a man of might, Always wore his britches Two sizes too tight. Split ’em nigger, Ride ’em on a rail; I’ve got de mon to Pay yo’ bail. Dat Leadin’ Houn’ Dere’s a creeper hangin’ ’roun’, I’m gwiner git ’im I be boun’. Den dey put dat feller in de groun’ An’ I be listenin’ fer dat houn’, Dat leadin’ houn’. All aroun’ here, All aroun’ here, What does I keer? Listenin’ fer dat leadin’ houn’. Steal in home middle o’ de night, Give dem folksies sich a fright. Say, “Feed me, woman, treat me right,” But she send fer de sheriff An’ de leadin’ houn’. Outrun Dat Cop Hi lee, hi lo, happy on de way, Hi lee, hi lo, outrun dat cop today. Hi lee, hi lo, watch his shirt-tail fly, Hi lee, hi lo, ’splain to you by and by. [68] Don’t You Hear? Don’t you hear dat shakin’ noise? Don’t you hear dat creepin’ ’roun’? Don’t you hear dat stefly walkin’? Dat’s dat man I laid down, laid down. Can’t you hear dem bones a-shakin’? Can’t you hear dem dead man’s moan? Can’t you see dem dead man’s sperrits? Can’t you see dat man ain’t gone? I’s a Natural-bo’n Eastman I’s a natural-bo’n eastman, An’ a cracker jack, I’s a natural-bo’n eastman An’ a cracker jack, On de road again, On de road again. I Steal Dat Corn I steal dat corn From de white man’s barn, Den I slips aroun’, Tells a yarn, An’ sells it back again. I steal dem chickens From de white man’s yard, Den I tells dat man I’s workin’ hard, An’ I sells ’em back again. I steal de melons From his patch, It takes a smarter man dan him Fer ter ketch, An’ I sells ’em back again. [69] I’m de Rough Stuff I’m de rough stuff of dark-town alley, I’m de man dey hates to see. I’m de rough stuff of dis alley, But de womens all falls for me. Lawd, Lawd, how dey hates me! Lawd, Lawd, how dey swear! Lawd, Lawd, how dey hates me! Lawd, Lad, what-a mo’ do I care? I Ain’t Done Nothin’ Went up to ’Lanta, Who should I meet? Forty-leben blue coats Comin’ down de street, Forty-leben blue coats Comin’ down de street. I ain’t done nothin’, What dey follerin’ after me? I ain’t done nothin, Can’t dey let me be? When He Grin His head was big an’ nappy, An’ ashy wus his skin, But good God-a’mighty, man, You forget it when he grin. His nose wus long an’ p’inted, His eyes wus full o’ sin, But good God-a’mighty, man, You forget it when he grin. His foots wus long an’ bony, An’ skinny wus his shin, But good God-a’mighty, man, You forget it when he grin. [70] He’d fight ten, He could sin, always win, But good God-a’mighty, man, You forget it when he grin. Shot My Pistol in the Heart o’ Town[35] O Lawd, Shot my pistol In the heart o’ town. Lawd, the big chief hollered, “Doncha blow me down.” O Lawd, Which a-way Did the po’ gal go? She lef’ here runnin’, Is all I know. O Lawd, Which a-way Do the Red River run? Lawd, it run east and west Like the risin’ sun. Black gal hollered, Like to scared my brown to death. If I hadn’t had my pistol I’d a-run myself. O Lawd, Jes’ two cards In the deck I love Lawd, the Jack o’ Diamonds An’ the Ace o’ Clubs. O Lawd, Stopped here to play Jes’ one mo’ game. Lawd, Jack o’ Diamonds Petered on my han’. [35]For music see Chapter XIV. [71] CHAPTER V SONGS OF JAIL, CHAIN GANG, AND POLICEMEN Not all Negro “bad men” achieve an abiding place in jail or chain gang. Not all Negroes in jail or chain gang are “bad men”—not by long odds. And yet the prison population of the South contains abundant representations of both major and minor Negro offenders, although the indications are that the ratio of Negroes to whites is decreasing rapidly. And if one wishes to obtain anything like an adequate or accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find much of his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situations of the ever-fleeing fugitive from “chain-gang houn’,” high sheriff or policeman. “I ain’t free, Lawd, I ain’t free,” sings the prisoner who bemoans the bad luck in which he had “nobody to pay my fine.” Never did the old spiritual, as in “Go down, Moses, tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people go,” express more determined call for freedom than the Negro singer behind the bars. Yet the Negro prisoner combines admirable humor with his wailing song: I Ain’t Free De rabbit in de briar patch, De squirrel in de tree, Would love to go huntin’, But I ain’t free, But I ain’t free, But I ain’t free, Would love to go huntin’, But I ain’t free, ain’t free. [72] De rooster’s in de hen house, De hen in de patch, I love to go shootin’ At a ol’ shootin’ match; But I ain’t free, But I ain’t free, But I ain’t free, At a ol’ shootin’ match, But I ain’t free, ain’t free. Ol’ woman in de kitchen, My sweetie hangin’ ’roun’, ’Nudder man gonna git ’er, I sho’ be boun’, ’Cause I ain’t free, ’Cause I ain’t free, ’Cause I ain’t free, ’Nudder man ’ll git ’er, ’Cause I ain’t free, ain’t free. Dig in de road band, Dig in de ditch, Chain gang got me, An’ de boss got de switch I ain’t free, I ain’t free, I ain’t free, Chain gang got me, An’ I ain’t free, ain’t free. This chapter makes no approach to the study of the Negro criminal. That will be done in the scientific inquiries which are now being made at length and in later studies of the Negro bad man. What the chapter attempts is simply to give further pictures of the Negro workaday singer as he is found behind prison bars, or with ball and chain, or in humorous workaday retrospect or prospect of experiences what time he pays the penalty for his misdoings. For these prison and road songs, policeman and sheriff epics, jail and chain[73] gang ballads constitute an eloquent cross-section of the whole field of Negro songs. Many are sung even as the ordinary work songs; others are improvised and varied. One may listen to high-pitched voices, plaintive and wailing, until the haunting melody will abide for days. The prisoners sing of every known experience from childhood and home to “hard luck in the family, sho’ God, fell on me.” One youngster about twenty-one years of age, periodic offender with experience on the chain gang and in jail, sang more than one hundred songs or fragments and the end was not yet. They cannot be described; selections are not representative. And yet, listen for a while: Jail House Wail The jail’s on fire, Lawd, The stockade’s burnin’ down. Well, they ain’t got nowhere, Lawd, to put the prisoners now. Taken prisoners out o’ jail, Lawd, Carried ’em to county road. Say, I ruther be in chain gang Than be in jail all time. Say, jailer keep you bound down, Lawd, say jailer dog you ’roun’. Says if I had my way wid jailer, I’d take an’ lock him in cell. I’d take key an’ tie it on door, An’ go long way from here, Lawd, Lawd. Says jail keeper tol’ me, Lawd, Gonna help me get back home. When time come to be tried, Jail keeper lied on me. [74] I told my mother not to worry at all, Lawd, not to worry at all. Lawd, goin’ to road, mama, Tryin’ to make good time. Mama, she cried all night long, O mama, she cried all night long. Well, she wiped her tears off, Say, son, she won’t cry no more. Mama come to the road, Lawd, See her son on the gang. I tol’ her not to bother, Lawd, cause I got short time. Once on the gang or in the jail continuous song is not unusual. Waking folk with song in early morning, chanting after meal time, plaintive in the evening, the Negro lives over his past life, gives expression to his feelings, and plans the new day, “standin’ on rock pile with ball an’ chain,” or “standin’ on rock pile, with hammer in my hand.” He sings of past days, sorrows that some other man will get his girl, boasts a woman in the white man’s yard— My gal she bring me chicken, My gal she bring me ham, My gal she bring me everything, An’ she don’t give a damn. Sometimes he is more cheerful and sings, “cawn pone, fat meat, all I gits to eat, better’n I git at home,” “Rings on my arms, bracelets on my feet, stronger’n I has at home!” And with bunk for a bed and straw for his head, he sings, “baby, baby, let me be.” How could he help falling into the hands of the officers anyway? [75] ’Tain’t as Bad as I Said Good God a’-mighty! What’s a fellow gonna do, When ol’ black mariah[36] Come a-sailin’ after you? Good God a’-mighty! My feet’s got wings, Dey can take dis ol’ body Lak she on ’iled springs. Good God a’-mighty! She’s right ’roun’ de corner, Sho’s you bohn, Dis nigger’s a goner. Good God a’-mighty! ’Tain’t bad as I said, Three square meals a day An’ bunk fer a bed. [36]“Black Mariah” is frequently encountered in Negro songs. It refers to the patrol wagon. The songs that follow will illustrate further the Negro’s story of his prison life, his desire for freedom, his efforts to escape, his attitude toward the policeman, jailer and sheriff, and his humorous interpretation of various situations in which he finds himself. Vivid pictures they are. If I Can Git to Georgia Line If I can git to Georgia line, If I can git to Georgia line, Lawd, if I can git to Georgia line, Georgia, murderer’s home. Monday I was ’rested, Tuesday I was fined, Wednesday I laid in jail, Thursday I was tried. [76] If I can git to Georgia line, Lawd, if I can git to Georgia line, O Lawd, if I can git to Georgia line, Georgia, murderer’s home. Don’t ask about it, If you do I cry. Don’t ask about it, If you do I cry. What did redbird, redbird Say to crow, crow? You bring rain, rain, I bring snow, snow! Friday wid chain gang band, Saturday pick an’ shovel, Sunday I took my rest, Monday want to do my best. Every, every mail day, Mail day, I gits a letter, Cryin’, “Son, come home, Lawd, Lawd, come home.” I didn’t have no, No ready money, I couldn’t go home. No, no, couldn’t go home. I’m on road here Just a few days longer, Then I’m goin’ home Law’, Law’, I’m goin’ home. Got Me in the Calaboose Got me in the calaboose, Got me in the calaboose, Got me in the calaboose, Ain’t nobody turn me loose. Hit’s bad, bad on the inside lookin’ out, Hit’s bad, bad on the inside lookin’ out, [77] Hit’s bad, bad on the inside lookin’ out, This po’ boy know what he’s talkin’ about. My gal come to the bar and done peep in, My gal come to the bar and done peep in, My gal come to the bar and done peep in, She say, “Honey man, where you been?” When I git out I ain’t gonna stay here, When I git out I ain’t gonna stay here, When I git out I ain’t gonna stay here, Ain’t let nobody treat me dis way. Po’ boy, don’t give me no show, Po’ boy, don’t give me no show, Po’ boy, don’t give me no show, Ain’t gonna be bossed around no mo’. I Don’t Mind Bein’ in Jail I never turn back no more, Lawd, I never turn back no more, Every mail day I gets letter from my mother, Say, “Son, son, come home.” I been fallin’ ever since Mary was a baby, An’ now she’s gone. I’m nine hundred miles from home An’ I can’t go home this way. I wish I was a contractor’s son, I’d stand on the bank and have the work well done. If he don’t work, I’ll have him hung, Lawd, if he don’t work, I’ll have him hung. I wish I had a bank of my own, I’d give all the po’ workin’ men a good happy home. She used to be mine, look who’s got her now. Sho’ can keep her, she don’t mean no good to me no mo’. I laid in jail, back turned to the wall, Told the jailer to put new man in my stall. I don’t mind bein’ in jail If I didn’t have to stay so long.[37] [37]This stanza is found in somewhat different form in the popular song entitled Jail-House Blues. [78] Chain Gang Blues[38] Standin’ on the road side, Waitin’ for the ball an’ chain. Say, if I was not all shackled down I’d ketch that wes’ boun’ train. Standin’ on the rock pile Wid a hammer in my hand, Lawd, standin’ on rock pile, Got to serve my cap’n down in no-man’s land. The judge he give me sentence ’Cause I wouldn’ go to work. From sunrise to sunset I have no other clean shirt. All I got is lovin’, Lovin’ an’ a-sluggin’, Say I feels just like a stepchild, Just gi’me the chain gang blues. Oh, my captain call me An’ my gal work in white folks’ yard. I believe I’ll go there too, ’Cause I got the chain gang blues. My gal she bring me chicken, My gal she bring me ham, My gal she bring me everything, An’ she don’t give a damn. My gal she got a molar Right down below her nose, She got teeth in her mouth I’d swear to God was gold. My gal she cried las’ night, She cried the whole night long; She cried because judge sentence me, ’Cause I had to go so long. [79] My gal she cried all night, I told her not to worry at all. I’m goin’ on the chain gang, I ’spec’ I’ll be back in the fall. [38]The first four stanzas of this song, except for some slight variations, are also found in Chain Gang Blues, a popular phonograph piece. All Boun’ in Prison[39] Hey, jailer, tell me what have I done. Got me all boun’ in prison, Tryin’ to ’bide dis woman’s time, Tryin’ to ’bide dis woman’s time. Chorus: All boun’ in prison, All boun’ in jail, Col’ iron bars all ’roun’ me, No one to go my bail. I got a mother and father Livin’ in a cottage by de sea. I got a sister and a brother, too, Wonder do dey think o’ po’ me. I walked in my room de udder night, My man walked in and began to fight. I took my gun in my right han’, Told de folks I’m gonna kill my man. When I said dat, he broke a stick ’cross my head. First shot I made my man fell dead. De paper comed out and strowed de news, Das why I say I’s got de cell-bound blues. [39]Cf. phonograph record, Cell Bound Blues. I Went to de Jail House O Lawd, Lawd, good Lawd, Lawd, I went to de jail house, fell down on my knees. I ask that jailer, “Captain, give me back my gal.” Jailer told me, “Sorry, brother, she said her las’ goodbye.” Lawd, I went to judge to ask for a fine. Judge say, Lawd, he ain’t got no time. [80] Lawd, I laid in jail so long, Ain’t got no home at all. Good lawd, look-a here, jail keeper, Won’t you put another gal in my stall? Say, I been here so long, Don’t know what I’ll do. Judge Gonna Sentence Us So Long Say, brother, we better get ready to leave jail, ’Cause judge gonna sentence us so long. Judge gonna sentence us so long, We ain’t gonna come back here no mo’. Lawd, we have laid in jail so long, Lawd, we have laid in jail so long. Say, judge sentence me so long, He ain’t had no mercy on us. Lawd, captain, come an’ got me, Taken me to road to work. Lawd, taken me out one mornin’, Taken me out so soon. Told captain didn’t know how to work. Told me, “Shine, get down that line.” I told the court, Lawd, “Rather be layin’ in jail Wid my back turned to de wall.” I am worried, pretty mama, But I won’t be worried long. Thought I rather be in my grave Than be treated like a slave. Say, rather be in Birmingham Eatin’ pound cake and all. Say, these women in Georgia Keep you in trouble all the time. [81] Say, you better catch your train, Go to Alabama bound. I am leavin’ here, rider, Sho’ don’t want to go. But I ’spect I have to leave here, Or I’ll be in chain gang, too. Gonna git me a black woman, Play safe all the time. For your brown skin woman Keep you in trouble all the time. My Man He Got in Trouble Mr. T. Bluker, Don’t work my man so hard, ’Cause he’s po’ player, Ain’t never had no job. Oh, my man he got in trouble, He didn’t have no friend at all. They carried him to jail house, Locked him up in cell. I asked the judge be light on him. Judge told him not bring nothin’ like that, Judge give him six months in jail, Lawd, judge give him six months in jail. Captain put him on the road. “Captain, how long have I got?” Captain say to the shine, “Eat your supper and run on down the line.” Captain say, “Git your supper, Lawd, and change your clothes.” Captain say, “Git your supper, Git your chains and balls.” [82] The Judge He Sentence Me I laid in the jail with my back to the wall, I laid in the jail with my back to the wall, Prayed to the Lord that Big rock jail would fall. The judge he sentence me, Lawd, Give me twelve long months. The judge he sentence me, Lawd, Give me twelve long months. Den captain come take me to de road. I ask the captain what I gonna do. Captain told me to pick and shovel too. I rather be dead, Lawd, and in my grave. Captain told me, Say, “Lawd, you ain’t gonna work, Lawd, you ain’t gonna work nowhere else But on this chain gang.” Say, “If I let you go home this time, You be right back in jail. When judge gets you again Gonna give you five long years.” Say, “If you don’t quit drinkin’ An’ don’t quit killin’, robbin’ and stealin’, You gonna git life time An’ in chain gang, too.” Told captain, “I ain’t robbin’ no trains, I swear to God I ain’t kill no man.” Lawd, I told the captain, “I ain’t robbin’ no trains, Swear to God I ain’t kill no man.” I Got a Letter, Captain I got a letter, captain, Say, Lawd, come home, Lawd, captain, come home, Lawd, say, son, come home. [83] I don’t have, I don’t have, Lawdy, I don’t have, Lawdy, no ready-made money, An’ I can’t go home. I got a gal, Lawd, Stays right in town. I got a gal, Lawd, Stays right in town. Lawd, street car run Right by her door, Lawd, she don’t have to walk Nowhere she go. Say she take a walk up town, Lawd, she take a walk up town. Well, she got in town, Lawd, An’ come back home. Well, she caught street car An’ come back home. Lawd, she got street car, Lawd, Lawd, an’ come back home. Prisoner’s Song[40] Wished I had some one to love me, Some one to call me their own, Because I’m tired of livin’ alone, Lawd, I’m tired of livin’ alone. I has a gran’ ship on de ocean, Filled wid silver an’ gold; An’ befo’ my darlin’ should suffer, Dat ship will be anchored an’ go. I’ll be carried to de jail tomorrow, Leavin’ my po’ darlin’ alone, With the cold prison bars all around me An’ my head on a pillow of stone. [84] If I had wings lak an angel, Over dese prison bars I would fly. An’ I would fly to the arms of my po’ darling, An’ dere I’d lay down and die. [40]Except for a few minor variations, this is the now popular Prisoner’s Song. It was of folk origin, however. Woke up Wid My Back to the Wall O Lawd, I woke up in the morning, Woke up wid my back to the wall. O Lawd, I woke up in the morning, Woke up wid my back to the wall. I took a peep out at the bars O Lawd, I thought I was home. Lawd, I heard a key rattlin’, High-sheriff comin’ in. Thought I heard a sheriff comin’, Lawd, bring my breakfas’ to me. Thought I see my coffin, Lawd, rollin’ up to my do’. Lawd, he say, “Dat gal say she don’t want you no mo’.” Lawd, I lay right down, hung my head and cried. Lawd, he say, “Dat gal say she don’t want you no mo’.” Lawd, I laid right down in jail and cried. Lawd, I’m so awful worried till I don’t know what to do. Well, I mistreated Daddy, he hangs ’roun’ me day and night. He wakes me in the mornings, He moans when I am sleepin’. He makes me swear, Lawd, Have no other man but you. In the Negro’s prison songs is revealed again that dual nature which sings of sorrowful limitations alongside humorous and philosophical resignation. Here are scenes of the lonesome road illuminated by entertainment of rare quality. “I’m in jail now,” he sings,[85] “but jes’ fer a day.” “I ain’t got no parole, but I’m a-comin’ back.” It is true that he has only corn bread and fat meat to eat but that’s “better’n I has at home.” And then with genuine humor he sings also of the iron cuffs about his hands which also are “stronger’n I has at home.” Better’n I Has at Home Cawn pone, fat meat, All I gits to eat— Better ’n I has at home, Better ’n I has at home. Cotton socks, striped clothes, No Sunday glad rags at all— Better ’n I gits at home, Better ’n I gits at home. Rings on my arms, Bracelets on my feet— Stronger ’n I has at home, Stronger ’n I has at home. Bunk fer a bed, Straw under my head— Better ’n I gits at home, Better ’n I gits at home. Baby, baby, lemme be, Chain gang good enough fer me— Better ’n I gits at home, Better ’n I gits at home. I’m Comin’ Back I write you a letter Sayin’, “Come back home.” I sent you a message, “Honey, don’t you roam.” Comin’ back, comin’ back, Hound on my track, yes baby, I’m comin’ back. [86] Went to de gov’nor, Ast a parole. Dat man he answered, “Not to save yer soul.” Comin’ back, comin’ back; Ain’t got no parole, But I’m comin’ back. Lawd, Lawd, I’m comin’ back, Hounds on my track, Ol’ clothes on my back, Ol’ woman in my shack. No parole, but I’m comin’ back. Goin’ Back to de Gang De night wus dark, de guard wus gone, I slipped dat chain off’n my laig, De night wus dark, an’ de rain hit poured. Dis nigger astray wid nowhere to board. I’s hungry and cold, nowhere to go, When de niggers see dese clothes, dey shets de do’. Out all night, de dawgs am comin’, Goin’ back to de gang, tired o’ bummin’. Shin up a tree, no time to be los’, ’Cause here’s de dawgs, and, golly, de boss! Dem Chain Gang Houn’s I ain’t no possum, I ain’t no squir’l, But I can shin de highes’ tree in all de worl’, When I hear dem houn’s, dem chain gang houn’s. Hear dem ol’ houn’s, soun’ goes up to heav’n, If dey’s one dawg, dey mus’ be ’lev’n. Oh, dem houn’s, dat ol’ lead houn’. ’Tain’t good fer a nigger’s health to stay on de ground. Hear dem houn’s, dem chain gang houn’s. Come git me, boss, come take me down, Anything’s better’n de chain gang houn’. [87] Shoot, Good God, Shoot! De jedge and de jury Thought ’twas a shame. Dey called me up dere, Axed me my name. My God a-mighty, What’s a feller gwiner do, When a nigger gits his wife An’ my wife, too? Shoot, good God, shoot! Ol’ Black Mariah Look over de hill, see what’s a-comin’, Ol’ black mariah, natchel-bo’n hummin’. Drive up to de do’, grab me by de collar, Good Lawd, man, ain’t got time to holler. Jes’ Fer a Day I’m ’hind de bars, but jes’ fer a day, ’Cause walkin’ out de do’ ain’t de only way. I’ve got a saw, and I work like de devil, All t’ings in dis case am sho’ on de level. All Us Niggers ’hind De Bars I got a gal, you got a gal, All us niggers got a gal. He fool ’roun’, I fool ’roun’, All us niggers fool ’roun’. I got a razor, he got a razor, All us niggers got a razor. I ’hind de bars, he ’hind de bars, All us niggers ’hind de bars. [88] CHAPTER VI SONGS OF CONSTRUCTION CAMPS AND GANGS In the old days—and sometimes in more recent years—there were characteristic and unforgettable scenes of groups of Negroes singing in the fields. Here was a picture of late afternoon in the cotton field, the friendly setting sun a challenge to reviving energies; rows of cotton clean picked, rivalry and cheerful banter, faster picking to the row’s end, sacks and baskets full for weighing time; group singing, now joyous, then the melancholy tinge of eventide, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Since I Laid My Burden Down or Keep Inchin’ Erlong. Another picture is vivid: A spring morning, a few Negroes following mule and plow, many chopping cotton to the accompaniment of song, all making rhythm of song, movement, and clink of hoe resound in rare harmony, duly interspersed with shouts and laughter. Or the morning yodel or “cornfield holler,” with its penetrating vibrato, Ya-a-ee-ah—oo-a-ee-ou—indescribable either in words, sound, or musical notation.[41] Or wagons lumbering on cold mornings, drivers and workers on the way to field or mill, songs echoing across the hills. And there were the other group scenes: the roustabouts on the levee, the singers around the cabins, the groups in the kitchen. Many of these scenes, of course, in modified form may yet be found and songs of their setting are still to be heard, but they do not constitute the most commonly abounding characteristic workaday songs of the present. [41]The phono-photographic record of such a yodel is given in Chapter XV. [89] Modern scenes, however different, are no less impressive. Whoever has seen a railroad section gang of five score Negroes working with pick and shovel and hammer and bars and other tools, and has heard them singing together will scarcely question the effectiveness of the scene. Likewise steel drivers and pick-and-shovel men sing down a road that is anything but “lonesome” now. Four pickmen of the road sing, swinging pick up, whirling it now round and round and now down again, movement well punctuated with nasal grunt and swelling song. Another group unloading coal, another asphalt, another lime, or sand, sing unnumbered songs and improvisations. Another group sings as workers rush wheelbarrows loaded with stone or sand or dirt or concrete, or still again line up on the roadside with picks and shovels. And of course there are the songs of the chain gangs already described, but nevertheless gang songs of the first importance. All these singers constitute the great body of workers and singers who sing apparently with unlimited repertoire. The selections in this chapter, as in the others, are representative in that they were taken directly from Negro singers and workers in the South during 1924 and 1925. Among the most attractive of all the Negro workaday songs are those sometimes called “free labor gang songs,”[42] of which there are many. Some of these are reserved for Chapter VII in which many miscellaneous examples of songs to help with work are given. Other samples have been included in the “Songs of the Lonesome Road.” Examples of the melodies are given in Chapter XV. It will be understood, of course, that other songs such as John Henry,[90] Jerry on the Mountain, Lazarus, are sung in this capacity, although classified primarily in other groups for the sake of better illustration. [42]The Negroes use the term “free labor” to distinguish ordinary work from convict labor. “Free Labor” Gang Song Cap’n, did you hear ’bout All yo’ men gonna leave you, Nex’ pay day, Lawd, Lawd, nex’ pay day? Ev’y mail day, Mail day, I gits letter, From my dear ol’ mother, She tell me, “Son, come home.” That ol’ letter, Read about dyin’. Boy did you ever Think about dyin’? Then I can’t read it Now for cryin’, Tears run down, Lawd, Lawd, tears run down. Jes’ wait till I make these few days I started, I’m goin’ home, Lawd, Lawd, I’m goin’ home. Everywhere I Look this morning, Look lak rain, Lawd, Lawd, look lak rain. I got rainbow Tied all ’roun’ my shoulder, Ain’t gonna rain, Lawd, Lawd, ain’t gonna rain. Mike an’ Jerry Come down main line Southern, [91] Didn’t stop to get No water neither coal. I done walk till Feets gone to rollin’ Jes’ lak a wheel, Lawd, Lawd, jes’ lak wheel. Now ev’y time I, Time I start ’round mountain, My light goes out, Lawd, Lawd, my light goes out. I’m gonna buy me Magnified lantern, It won’t go out, Lawd, Lawd, it won’t go out. I got a wife, Two-three children in mountain, Cryin’ fer bread, Lawd, Lawd, cryin’ fer bread. O Lawd, Mamie O Lawd, Mamie, Poke yo’ head out window, Jes’ to see me fall, Lawd, jes’ to see me fall. I been fallin’ From my shoulder, Lawd, I been fallin’ All day long. O Lawd, Mamie, If I make it You shall have it, If it’s all in gold. I been fallin’ Ev’y since Mamie wus baby, Now she’s grown, Lawd, now she’s grown. [92] When we meet my Little curly headed woman, Bow yo’ head, O Lawd, an’ tip yo’ hat. If I make it Through July an’ August, O Lawd, I’ll be a man, O Lawd, I’ll be a man. He-i-Heira He-he-heira! Look how my captain stan’, Stand more like a farmer Than he do a railroad man! Oh, oh, oh! If I had listen to what mama said. I’d be at home now, Lawd, in mama’s bed. He-i-heira! Believe I will Take my pick, Lawd, over on the hill. Goin’ up town, Hurry right back, Gonna see Corinne When she ball that jack. Oh, oh, Lawd, oh, Goin’ on up town, Buy my gal a hat, Lawd, buy my gal a hat. She brought it back, Lawd, Laid it on the shelf Every time she turn around Makes her wanter jazz. Goin’ up town, Lawd, Gonna walk in the yard; [93] Two-and-a-half hours to work, Work ain’t hard. O you, down, boys, Yes, we goin’ down. O you, down, boys, Yes, we goin’ down. I don’t know, But believe I will Make my home In Jacksonville. Section Boss Yonder come the engine Ringin’ o’ the bell; Engineer on the right, Fireman on the left. See the engine makin’ time, See the engineer gone. Fall off the car, Throw off the tools. Throw off the tools, Let the engine go by. If I could run like he runs, I’d run an’ never stop. See the train makin’ up speed, See the cars go ’long. If I had wings like that engine, I could run an’ fly. I could pull the bell, I could blow the whistle, I could pull the bell, An’ let the engine run. If I could run like he runs, I never would quit, I’d always railroad I’d always run an’ fly. [94] The mind of the worker and wanderer is perhaps reflected better in his annals of the day’s work as expressed in his “captain” songs than anywhere else. Some of the “captain” songs have been sung until they are on the verge of folk songs; some approach the haven of the blues, and many more are in the formative stage. The examples immediately following in this chapter are combinations of all three, with the predominating mode that of combination and improvisation. Some of them are clearly songs of the chain gang as well as of free labor construction work. That they are fairly accurate portrayals of the worker and his task, of the captain and his ways, of the thoughts and customs of the worker and singer will be evident to any one who knows the field. To the uninitiated the laborer is merely a laborer, silent, reserved, certainly keeping back from the white man his innermost thoughts, wishes, and feelings. But hear him sing—hear him repeat the formal songs, hear him make new ones. O Captain, Captain[43] O captain, captain, Where you been so long? O captain, I been at home An’ done got in trouble again. O captain, captain, Won’t you be kind? Don’t work me so hard, Captain, I been used to light work. O captain, captain, I ain’t used to no hard work. O captain, captain, Won’t you be light on me? [95] O captain, captain, If you be light on me, When I git back home I won’t be hard on you. O captain, captain, Where we gonna work? “Oh, we goin’ down the road, Pick and shovel dirt.” O captain, captain, call me An’ I didn’ hear; Captain took me back To bodyguard. O Lawd, captain, captain, On the side of the bank, Lawd, Lawd, buddy, I’m too tired to work. O captain, captain, I done got too hot Captain, O Lawd, captain, Let po’ Shine rest. Captain, O Lawd, captain, I set down on a bank, O Lawd, captain, captain, Set down on a bank. O captain, captain, I cannot work no longer, ’Cause I’s done, O Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, I’s done. O captain, captain, Po’ boy done got too hot, O Lawd, captain, captain, An’ I couldn’t make it go. Captain, captain, You got letter from my mother, Captain, captain, Read it all the way through. [96] Lawd, she say, “Son, Lawd, come back home.” Lawd, Lawd, she say, “Son, come back home.” Captain, captain, Ain’t got no ready money. Captain, O Lawd, captain, Won’t you loan me some? Sittin’ in dining room, O Lawd, captain, Sittin’ in dining room In yo’ chair. O Lawd, captain, I aint too dumb, Hear yo’ back door slam, Lawd God a-mighty. I got a letter, Letter from my brown. My brown she dyin’, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd. I got a letter, Letter from my rider. My rider was dyin’, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd. Lawd, gonna follow My brown, Lawd, Lawd. Gonna follow my brown To buryin’ groun’. [43]This song and some others in this chapter are excellent illustrations of the chain gang sentiment becoming mixed with ordinary “free labor” gang songs. I’m Goin’ Back Home I can jerry,[44] I can jerry All around the mountain. Lord, I can jerry, I can jerry All the way home. [97] Lord, I see my gal a-comin’, Lord, to bring me my dinner. Lord, I see my gal a-comin’, Lord, I’m goin’ home. Lord, she brought me something, Lord, she brought me something good. Lord, she brought me good dinner, Didn’t know what it was. Lord, I’m gonna buy me rubber-tire hack, Lord, I’m gonna buy me rubber-tire hack, Lord, I’m gonna buy me rubber-tire hack, Goin’ home, take me right back. I’m tired workin’, Lord, Lord, I’m tired workin’. Goin’ buy me rubber-tire hack, Take me back home. Lord, captain standin’, He may hear me sing, Lord, some old day I’m goin’ back home. Lord, I reckon I’ll sell my, Lord, I reckon I’ll sell my rubber-tire hack An’ buy me a Ford, Lord, Buy me a Ford. Lord, captain told me, O Lord, captain told me, Time to go to dinner, Lord, we’re goin’ back home. Lord, I got back home An’ had my dinner. Lord, I went and et, Lord, I got back home. Then ’bout half pas’ one Captain call us all, Say we got a-go back, Lord, say we got a-go back to work. [98] Lord, some o’ these mornings, Lord, some o’ these mornings, Captain ain’t gonna hear me sing ’Cause I’m goin’ back home. Sunshine in my back door, Lord, sunshine in my back door, Some o’ these mornings, Lord, captain, I’m goin’ back home. Lord, my gal cryin’ all day, Lord, my gal cryin’ all day. Lord, she made a pallet on floor ’Cause she’s feelin’ right bad. Captain say, “O Shine, When you go home, Say, Shine, you comin’ back?” Yes, captain, O Lord, captain. Yonder come my girl, Comin’ down the track. Bring me good cool water, Keep cool all day long. I got sun low ’cross the field, I got sun low ’cross the field plowin’. Lord, Lord, he tol’ me, O Lord, it was too hot. Lord, took out the mules, Lord, I took out my mules An’ went straight home, ’Cause it was too hot. [44]The meaning of this expression is uncertain. In other songs it appears as “Hikin’ Jerry” or “Mike and Jerry.” There is a tradition among the Negro workers that two large mules, named Mike and Jerry, broke loose from their driver and hiked a remarkable distance in one day. If this was the origin of the song, then “I can Jerry” is a result of misunderstanding. My Home Ain’t Here, Captain H-e-y- L-a-w-d, Lawd, Lawd, O Lawd, Lawd, captain. My home ain’t here, captain, An’ I ain’t got to stay. I’m goin’ back home, captain, I’m long time sinner, goin’ back home. [99] Ol’ Aunty Dinah had candy wagon, I ast her could I be her driver. Lawd, Lawd, tol’ me “No,” Lawdy, Lawd, tol’ me “No.” O captain, captain, what’s matter now? Ain’t thing matter, but I ain’t gwine. Woke up dis mornin’ ’bout half pas’ fo’, Cap’n call me, but I jes’ ain’t gonna go. O Lawd, captain, captain, How long you gonna hold dis job? Lawd, captain you look jes’ lak new man Comin’, Lawd, on dis job. Cap’n, captain, will you send me some water, Ain’t had none since dis long mornin’. All I hate ’bout captain, Lawd, He want to take me by de tent. Captain, captain, do you drink co’n liquor? “Yes, by God, but I ain’t got none now.” Captain, captain, when you go to town, Bring me back a God-damn dram. Captain, captain, I won’t let on, Lawdy, O Lawdy, captain, I won’t let on. O Lawd, captain, captain, O Lawd, Won’t you let me go home? Captain tol’ me I have to wait, O Lawd, till I work out my time. Captain call me an’ I laugh, Cap’n get shoe shine off my britches. O captain, don’t think hard of me, O Lawd, captain, I don’t mean no harm. Captain, captain, don’t mean no harm, Jes’ won’t carry on no fun. [100] Captain, what kin’ o’ state you come from? Come from country or come from town? Captain say, “I come out o’ town, Lawdy, I’ll lay yo’ body down.” Captain, captain, you look mo’ lak farmer Than you look lak guard man. Captain, I’ll Be Gone O Lawd, captain, hurry, hurry? Captain, you can’t take my time. What’s the use o’ hurryin’? ’Cause I got a life time. Captain, captain, what time o’ day? Captain, captain, what time o’ day? Say he look at Waterbury, Throw his watch away. Lawd, captain, captain, did you hear, Lawd, captain, did you hear about it? All your men gonna leave you, All your men gonna leave you on next pay day. On next pay day, Lawd, On next pay day, Lawd. Captain, all your men gonna be gone On next pay day. Captain gonna call me some of these mornings, Lawd, I’m gonna be gone. Captain gonna call me, go back home, Lawd, Lawd, I’ll be gone. Wake up one mornin about half pas’ fo’, Ask captain could I git drink of water. Wake up one mornin’ about half pas’ fo’, Ask captain could I git drink of water. Captain tol’ me to git my pick and shovel, Git on down the line. Captain tol’ me to git my pick and shovel, Git on down the line. [101] Lawd, captain carried me to the road, Tol’ me I had to work. Tol’ my captain I couldn’t pick and shovel, Captain told me have to carry me back to camp. I ask the captain how long I got. Captain told me git my shovel, Say, “Git on down the line, Lawd, git on down the line.” Say I went to road, captain. Captain put chains all ’round my legs. I tol’ captain no use to chain me, ’Cause ain’t gonna run no mo’. Captain say, “Yes, I know you won’t run, ’Cause I gonna chain you good.” Lawd, say, “Yes, I know you won’t run, ’Cause I gonna chain you good.” Captain, captain, little too hard on me, Lawd, captain little too hard on me. Captain, captain, I’ll be glad to git home; I’ll never come this way no mo’. Captain called water boy, Water boy begun to laugh. Cap’n got shoe shine Off water boy’s pants. Captain mus’ be big, Weighs two-fifty pounds. Captain, Lawd, mus’ be big, Weighs two-fifty pounds. Captain, captain, good long ways, Lawd, captain, come from Chicago. I ask the captain the time of day, Say, “None of you damn business to know.” If I’d A-Known My Cap’n Was Blin’[45] If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’, darlin’, If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’, darlin’, If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’ I wouldn’ a-went to work till ha’f pas’ nine, darlin’. [102] Cap’n, cap’n, you must be cross, darlin’, Cap’n, cap’n, you must be cross, darlin’, Cap’n, cap’n, you must be cross, Five-thirty an’ you won’t knock off, darlin’. When I’m late an’ behin’, darlin’, When I’m late an’ behin’, darlin’, When I’m late an’ behin’, I can’t go to work till ha’f pas’ nine, darlin’. Why I love my cap’n so, darlin’, Why I love my cap’n so, darlin’ Why I love my cap’n so, Ask him for a dollar an’ he give me fo’, darlin’. [45]For music see Chapter XIV. I Tol’ My Cap’n That My Feet Was Col’[46] I tol’ my cap’n that my feet was col’. “God damn yo’ feet, let the car wheel roll.” Cap’n, cap’n, old Ben won’t pull. “God damn his soul, put the harness on the bull.” Cap’n Morgan and Bill Dolin come to line this track, Pick it up and shake it back. Cap’n, cap’n the track is wet. “Knock ’er right on, black boy, till the evenin’ sun do set.” Cap’n, cap’n, can you tell The track is slick and cold as hell? Captain, Captain, Let Wheelers Roll Captain, captain, let wheelers roll, Captain, captain, Lawd, let wheelers roll. Told my captain hands an’ feet wus cold, Say, “You ought-a warm ’em befo’ you come here.” Captain call me early in mo’nin’, Call me to shake six-hoss plow. I told my captain, captain, I could not shake dis plow. [103] O captain, captain, what time you gonna quit? “’Tain’t none o’ yo’ business when I quit.” Gonna buy me ticket, long as my long right arm, Gonna catch dat train call Cannon Ball. Goin’ to Atlanta, gonna spend de night, Gonna catch dat train dey call Western Sight. Goin’ to New York an’ I aint comin’ back, Lawd, I ain’t gonna come back at all. Say, I’m in trouble, Lawd, Lawd, I don’t know when I’ll be back. Say, if you want to see me, Lawd, You’ll have to come where I am. Say, I’m long way off, mama, I ain’t comin’ back at all. Have you ever seen risin’ sun, Seen risin’ sun turn over? Lawd, makes me feel low down, Lawd, lak I’m on my las’ go-’round. Lawd, I hate to see you go, Make me feel so low down. Lawd, Lawd, have you ever seen, Lawd, wild cat hug a lion? Say, hug him so hard, Lawd, Wild cat hug him so hard. Lawd, captain, I’m workin’ on road, An’ I’m in trouble again. Lawd, you won’t come see me, An’ I’m workin’ in chains. Lawd, I’m not comin’ home no mo’, O Lawd, I’m not comin’ home no mo. Now I don’t want you here no mo’, Yo’ hair look lak curry comb. [104] I got brown woman better’n you, Lawd, I don’t want you no mo’. [46]For music see Chapter XIV. ’Way up in the Mountain ’Way up in the mountain Diggin’ coal, All I hates about diggin’ coal, I can’t find my parole. Peach and honey, Rock and rye, You can line track If you try. Goin’ up Church Street, Comin’ down Main, Huntin’ for a woman That ain’t got no man. Trottin’ Liza, She come a-trottin’ By one this mornin’ With ’er head rag on. Blues on my mind, Blues all ’round my head. I dream last night That the man I love was dead. I went to the graveyard, Fell down on my knees. I ask the grave-digger To give me back my railroad man. The grave-digger, He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry to tell you, But yo’ good man is dead.” Thirty days in jail With my back turned to the wall. Please, Mr. Jailer, Put another man in my stall. [105] I don’t mind stayin’ there But I got to stay so long, so long, Ever’ friend I had Done shook hands an’ gone.[47] [47]This stanza and the preceding one are also found in a popular song, Jail-House Blues. Don’t You Give Me No Cornbread I don’t want no cornbread, black molasses, Supper time, O my Lawd, supper time. Don’t you give me cornbread, black molasses, Supper time, O my Lawd, my supper time. Don’t let the ’gaiter Beat you to the pone, Give you mo’ trouble Than days done gone. Put ’em up solid An’ they won’t come down. When I gets in Illinois I won’t be bothered with the lowland boys. John the Baptist, he declare That none but the righteous Will be there In the mornin’, oh, when I rise. I got a woman On Jennielee Square; If you would die easy, Let me ketch you there. The reason I stay With captain so long, Ever’ morning he give me Biscuits to rear back on. Little Evaline Sittin’ in the shade, Figurin’ on the money I done made. [106] Captain got a lugger Tryin’ to play bad, I’m goin’ to take it in the mornin’ If he makes me mad. July’s for the Red-bug July’s for the red-bug, August for the fly, I’m diggin’ for the bottom, Bottom must be dry. I ask my captain What was the time of day. Captain got so mad, Threw his watch away. I told my captain, Captain, my feet was cold. “Doggone your feet, Lawd, Let the wheelbar’ roll.” I told my captain, Just to keep down trouble, I reckon I must obey. Here come the chain gang boss. But after all there are no workaday songs superior to the gang songs, heave-a-horas, steel-driving songs, short pick-and-shovel songs, and the scores of other short specimens which accompany special tasks requiring hard work, team unison, or continuous effort. There is, of course, no attempt here to present even an approach to exhaustive lists. We have so far found no intimation of where the number of such songs will stop. But the examples which follow are adequate to continue the portraiture of the Negro as he works and as he sings. [107] Boys, Put Yo’ Hands on It O boys, put yo’ hands on it, O boys, put yo’ hands on it, When I say go, boys, go! O boys, put yo’ hands on it, O boys, when I holler set it on time, Everybody goes around. Say pick up, boys, pick up high, Goin’ line that track steel, O boys, pick it up high. Say, boys, when you get back here, Pick up that steel, Say, put your hands on it. Say, boys, put your hands on it, Everybody goin’ to jump at it. Set it in the bed, boys. Say, boys, raise your hand higher, Says, boys, raise your hand higher, Everybody goin’ to jump at it. Never Turn Back[48] No mo’, oh, no mo’! No mo’, oh, never no mo’! My Lord Be here. I will never Turn back, Never turn back No mo’, no mo’. If you get there Befo’ I do, Oh, you can tell ’em I’m comin’ too. I will never turn back, Never turn back no mo’. [108] An’ I would never turn back, Never turn back no mo’. Jesus my all To heaven is gone, An’ whom may I fix My hopes upon? No mo’, no mo’, No mo’, never, my Lawd, I would never turn back, Never turn back no mo’. [48]Here a spiritual theme is used as a gang song. No More No—more, No—more, No—more, O—Lord. O—Lord, O—Lord, O—Lord, No—more, I’m—through, I’m—through, I’m—through, O—Lord. O—Lord, O—Lord, O—Lord, I’m—through. I’m—tired, I’m—tired, I’m—tired, O—Lord. O—Lord, O—Lord, O—Lord, I’m—tired. [109] I’m—goin’, I’m—goin’, I’m—goin’, O—Lord. O—Lord, O—Lord, Yes, O—Lord, I’m—tired. All Right All—right, O—Lord, All—right, Push—on. All—right, O—Lord, Let’s—go, Little—mo’. All—right, O—Lord, Get—it—over, Let’s—go. All—right, O—Lord, Get—around—it—boys, Let’s—go. All—right—boys, Pick—it—up, Gang—around—it, Let’s—go. Help Me Drive ’Em[49] O King’s Mountain, O King’s Mountain, O King’s Mountain, So high! [110] O run here, buddy, O run here, buddy, O run here, buddy, O boy! O help me drive ’em, O help me drive ’em, O help me drive ’em, All day! [49]This is an example of a steel-driving song. As the driver raises his hammer he sings a line, then stops singing for a moment, brings the hammer down with a grunt, then sings another line, and so on. The technique is the same as the digging technique described in some detail in Chapter XIV. I Belong to Steel-drivin’ Crew O shake ’em up, buddy, An’ I’ll drive ’em down; O shake ’em up, buddy, An’ I’ll drive ’em down; I belong to steel-drivin’ crew, Lawd, I belong to steel-drivin’ crew. O lovin’ buddy, Where you been so long? O lovin’ buddy, Where you been so long? I belong to steel-drivin’ crew, Lawd, I belong to steel-drivin’ crew. O Buckeye Rabbit The rabbit run, the rabbit jumped, The rabbit skipped the river. O buckeye rabbit, hey, hey! O buckeye rabbit, Susan! O buckeye rabbit, hey, hey! The rabbit skipped the river! U—h, U—h, Lawdy[50] U—h, u—h, Lawdy, I wonder why I got to live Fer de by an’ de by. [111] U—h, u—h, Lawdy, Don’t you bother me. I’m always mighty happy When I’m on a spree. U—h, u—h, Lawdy, U—h, u—h, Lawdy, U—h, u—h, Lawdy, U—h, Lawdy, u—h, Lawdy, po’ me! [50]This is an example of a pick song, although it could be used, of course, for almost any kind of rhythmic work. For a description of the singing-digging technique see Chapter XIV. This Ol’ Hammer This ol’ hammer, hammer Mus’ be loaded; This ol’ hammer, hammer Mus’ be loaded; This ole’ hammer, hammer Mus’ be loaded; Do bear down, Do bear down. Bitin’ spider, where did You leave Trottin’ Sallie? Bitin’ spider, where did You leave Trottin’ Sallie? Bitin’ spider, where did You leave Trottin’ Sallie? In Birmingham, O Lawd, In Birmingham. We Are Clambin’ Jacob’s Ladder[51] Get ’em over yonder, Get ’em long, Get ’em short. Lord, get ’em over yonder, Get ’em over yonder. We are clambin’, clambin’ Jacob’s ladder, Jacob’s ladder. Oh, we are clambin’ Jacob’s ladder, Almos’ home, yes, almos’ home. Every little roun’ gets[112] Higher and higher, Higher and higher. Every little roun’ gets higher and higher, Almos’ home, home, almos’ home. [51]Here a theme from a spiritual is made to do service as a pick song. Reason I Stay on Job So Long[52] Reason I stay on job so long, Lawd, dey gimme flamdonies An’ coffee strong. Reason I love my captain so, ’Cause I ast him for a dollah, Lawd, he give me fo’. Reason why I love Boleen, She keeps my house An’ shanty clean. Why I like Roberta so, She rolls her jelly Like she do her dough. [52]For music see Chapter XIV. Hot Flambotia an’ Coffee Strong Reason I stay on job so long, Oh, reason I stay on job so long, O Lawd, reason I stay on job so long: Hot flambotia an’ coffee strong. Hot flambotia an’ coffee strong, Yes, Lawd, hot flambotia an’ coffee strong. O Lawd, hot flambotia an’ coffee strong, Reason I stay on job so long. I’m Goin’ On[53] I’m gonna row here, I’m gonna row here, I’m gonna row here few days longer, Then, Lawd, I’m goin’ on. [113] Oh, I’m gonna row here, Lawd, I’m gonna row here, Yes, Lawd, I’m gonna row here few days longer, Then I’m goin’ on. Yes, Lawd, I’m goin’ on, Then, Lawd, I’m goin’ on, Yes, Lawd, I’m gonna row here few days longer, Then I’m goin’ on. [53]This song has been heard also as “I’m on road here few days longer” and “I’m gonna roll here few days longer.” “Row” may well be a corruption of “road” or “roll.” I Don’t Want No Trouble With de Walker[54] I don’t want no, Want no trouble with de walker. I don’t want no, Want no trouble with de walker. I wanta go home, Lawd, Lawd, I wanta go home. Oh, me an’ my buddy Jes’ came here this mornin’. Wanta go home, Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home. I can drive it, Drive it long as anybody. Wanta go home, Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home. Cap’n, did you hear about, Hear about two your womens gonna leave you? Wanta go home, Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home. I’m gonna roll here,[55] Roll here a few days longer. I’m goin’ home, Lawd, Lawd, I’m goin’ home. [114] Cap’n an’ walker, Walker been raisin’ san’. Cap’n told walker He could git ’im another man. Lawd, dey got my buddy, Buddy an’ his forty-fo! Next ’lect’ocution Dey’ll git him sho’. [54]This is a pick song commonly heard around Chapel Hill, N. C. The “walker” refers to the walking boss or overseer on the job. The first two lines of each stanza are repeated as shown in the first stanza. For music see Chapter XIV. [55]See footnote, p. 112. I Don’t Want No Cornbread[56] I don’t want no,[57] Want no cornbread, peas, an’ molasses; I don’t want no, Want no cornbread, peas, an’ molasses, At supper time, Lawd, Lawd, at supper time. Oh, hand me down a Can o’ corn an’ tomatoes, For my meal, Lawd, Lawd, for my meal. My little woman, She don’t treat me like she used to. No she don’t, Lawd, Lawd, no she don’t. She used to feed me, Feed me on biscuits an’ butter For my meal, Lawd, Lawd, for my meal. She used to give me, Give me lots o’ huggin’ every mornin’. Now she don’t, Lawd, Lawd, now she don’t. [56]This is sung to the same tune as the preceding song, I Don’t Want No Trouble With the Walker, the music of which is given in Chapter XIV. [57]All of the stanzas have this form, first two lines always repeated. [115] Turning from the songs of construction or railroad gangs, some of the mixed songs, partly remnants of former years, partly products of sophistication, may be cited. There are many songs about the white man and the captain, excellent samples of which have already been cited in this chapter. Some were given in The Negro and His Songs and many more are to be found. Indeed, songs about the white man may well constitute a separate chapter in a later volume. A stock joke among the older Negroes used to be that of telling how the white man always brought “nigger out behind.” The modern singer, albeit not always in joking mood, still thrusts “at” his “captain” or “boss” or “white man.” “Captain,” he sings, “you look mo’ lak farmer than railroad man,” and with considerable glee asks, “Captain, captain, where’d you come frum?” On the other hand, reminiscent of farm days and echoing current life, he still sings: Niggers plant the cotton, Niggers pick it out, White man pockets money, Niggers does without. In another song the Negro complained that no matter if he worked all the time, “Boss sho’ bring nigger out behin’.” So now in some Georgia scenes he sings: Nothin’ to Keep Up at fo’ ’clock, Work till dark, Wages han,’ I’m de man. Twelve a month an’ boa’d, Lawd, twelve a month an’ boa’d. Hope I die, Mo’ I try, I comes out [116] Owin’ boss mo’, I comes out, Lawd, owin’ boss mo’. Plenty to eat, Place to sleep, All night to stray about; But nothin’ fer a feller, Lawd, nothin’ fer A feller to keep. Everybody Call Me the Wages Man Early in the spring I’m plowin’ my lan’, Early in the spring I’m plowin’ my lan’, Early in the spring I’m plowin’ my lan’, Everybody calls me the wages man, Baby, baby. Next down de row with guano horn, Next down de row with guano horn, Next down de row with guano horn, Never work so hard since I’ve been born, Baby, baby. Little bit later I swings de hoe, Little bit later I swings de hoe, Little bit later I swings de hoe, I’se de nigger dat leads de row, Baby, baby, baby. Sack an’ basket all that I pick, Sack an’ basket all that I pick, Sack an’ basket all that I pick, Never stop for nothin’, even if you sick, Baby, baby. White man in starched shirt settin’ in shade, White man in starched shirt settin’ in shade, White man in starched shirt settin’ in shade, Laziest man that God ever made, Baby, baby. [117] Missus in de Big House Missus in de big house, Mammy in de yard. Missus holdin’ her white hands, Mammy workin’ hard, Mammy workin’ hard, Mammy workin’ hard. Missus holdin’ her white hands, Mammy workin’ hard. Ol’ marse ridin’ all time, Niggers workin’ ’roun’. Marse sleepin’ day time, Niggers diggin’ in de groun’, Niggers diggin’ in de groun’, Niggers diggin’ in de groun’. Marse sleepin’ day time, Niggers diggin’ in de groun’. [118] CHAPTER VII JUST SONGS TO HELP WITH WORK In some respects it is unfortunate that classification of the Negro workaday songs must be attempted, for, strictly speaking, accurate classification is not possible. There is much overlapping apparent in most of the best types. There are mixed pictures in the majority and a cross index would be necessary for any sort of complete analysis. And yet the total picture is clearer when the songs are grouped according to prevailing themes, as has been done in other chapters on the wanderer songs, the bad man ballads, chain gang and jail songs, favorites of the construction gang, songs of woman, songs of man, and religious remnants. In each of these classes it is readily seen that there is abundance of new material of great value. And yet, after these attempts at classification, there are scores of songs, some the favorites of the present day, some among the most attractive, which appear best as simple work songs, sung as an integral physical part of the Negro’s workaday efforts. These songs are not simply the “miscellaneous” and “all others” group. They are more than that; they are the songs for song’s sake, expression for expression’s sake, and “hollerin’ jes’ to he’p me wid my work.” This chapter, therefore, presents a varied group of songs, many of which, for simple spontaneity, imagery, and creative art might well represent the choice of the collection. Among these are the lyric types like those quoted in Chapter I, figures of a “rainbow ’round my[119] shoulders,” the “feet rollin’ lak a wheel,” the winter song in summer, and many other fragments of similar quality. There are fragments, pick-and-shovel songs, driving songs, mostly short, which are sung perhaps more often than any others by the group of workers. This chapter will present, first, some of the miscellaneous and more artistic songs that are most difficult to classify except as “just songs to help with work.” Then will follow certain types, corruptions from blues, jazz and minstrel, but sung on any and all occasions, one as well as another, in the kitchen, on the road, in the field, in the alley, in the barber shop, or on the street. Then, finally, there will be the group of incoherent words and lines, senseless for the most part and merely expressive of feeling and effort. In addition to these there are still more than one hundred miscellaneous songs, improvisations, fragments and other collected items which must await a special collection of this sort. One of the most attractive of all the work songs is Mule on the Mountain, in which the title constitutes the bulk of the song. It is a pick-and-shovel favorite repeated over and over with variations and exclamations. The simplest form of this song is as follows: Mule on the Mountain Mule on mountain Called Jerry, I can ride ’im Any time I want to; Lawd, I can ride ’im Any time I want to. In the following version this simple stanza has taken seven others for companions, thus making a lengthy pick song. [120] I Got a Mulie[58] I got a mulie, Mulie on the mountain, call ’im Jerry. I got a mulie, Mulie on the mountain, call ’im Jerry. I can ride ’im, Ride ’im any time I want to, Lawd, Lawd, all day long. Lawd, this ol’ mountain, Mountain must be hanted, My light goes out, Lawd, Lawd, my light goes out. I’m gonna buy me, Buy me a magnified lantern. ’Twon’t go out, Lawd, Lawd, won’t go out. I’m gonna buy me, Buy me a winchester rifle, Box o’ balls, Lawd, Lawd, box o’ balls. I gonna back my, Back myself in the mountains To play bad, Lawd, Lawd, to play bad. Mike an’ Jerry[59] Must be a gasoline burner; Didn’t stop here, Lawd, Lawd, didn’t stop here. Mike an’ Jerry Hiked from Jerome to Decatur[60] In one day, Lawd, Lawd, in one day. [121] Didn’t stop here, Lawd, To get no coal, neither water, Hiked on by, Lawd, Lawd, hiked on by. [58]For music see Chapter XIV. [59]See footnote, p. 96. [60]Probably refers to Rome and Decatur, Georgia. The distance between these two places is about a hundred miles, a pretty good “hike” for the mules if they made it in one day! Very much after the same manner and type is the pick-and-shovel song, Lookin’ over in Georgia, which apparently has nothing specific as its historical base and no more sense to it than Mule on the Mountain. And yet it is one of the prettiest of Negro songs when accompanied by group movement, rhythm, and harmony. Lookin’ Over in Georgia Well I can stan’, Lookin’ ’way over in Georgia; Well I can stan’, Lookin’ ’way over in Georgia; Well I can stan’, Lookin’ ’way over in Georgia, O-eh-he, Lawd, Lawd, She’s burnin’ down, Lawd, she’s burnin’ down. For sheer artistry, however, one would have to search a long time to find a superior to the following verses, sung by a young Negro workingman, on platform and swing, washing the brick walls of a newly constructed university building. Bear Cat Down in Georgia I’ll be back here, I’ll be back here, Lawd, Lawd, I’ll be back here. Bear cat, Lawd, Bear cat, Lawd, Turn to lion Down in Georgia. [122] Look-a yonder, Look-a yonder, Lawd, Lawd, Down in Georgia. Ever see bear cat Turn to lion, Lawd, Lawd, Down in Georgia? My ol’ bear cat, My ol’ bear cat Turn to lion, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd. Ever see a bear cat Hug a lion, Lawd, Lawd, Down in Georgia? If I make it, If I make it, Lawd, Lawd, Down in Georgia. Lord, I been fallin’, Lord, I been fallin’, Lawd, Lawd, From my place. ’Fo’ long, Lawd, Yes, ’fo’ long, Lawd, I’ll be back here, I’ll be back here. Scarcely less mixed and informal is the delightful song Shoot that Buffalo sung in low undertone suitable to any sort of work such as digging, cutting, laying rock, unloading coal or gravel, or doing domestic duties. The melody of this “song just to help with work” is presented in Chapter XIV. [123] Shoot That Buffalo Went down to Raleigh, Never been there befo’, White folks on the feather-bed, Niggers on the flo’. Chorus: Shoot that buffa-, Shoot that -lo, Shoot that buffalo. Went down to low groun’ To gather up my corn, Raccoon sot the dogs on me, ’Possum blowed his horn. Las’ year was a bad crop year, Ev’ybody knowed it. I didn’t make but a bushel o’ corn An’ some damn rascal stoled it. I had ol’ back-band, It was made out o’ leather; Kept me all the doggone time Keepin’ it sewed together. One of the bad man songs listed in Chapter IV was Dupree, of which two versions were presented. The following song was sung by a young Negro recently from the chain gang. It purports to be a song made up by Dupree while in prison. As a matter of fact it is a composite jumble composed largely while being sung. It illustrates well the general situation in which any song of any sort will do just as well as any other. Dupree’s Jail Song I don’t want no coal-black woman for my regular, Give me brown, Lawd, Lawd, give me brown. Black woman study evil, That’s why I want brown, yes, yes, give me brown. [124] I’m gonna roll here a few days longer, Then I’m goin’ home, yes, then I’m goin’ home. Don’t you hear those rein-deers cryin’? But it ain’t gonna rain, no, no, ain’t gonna rain. If it rain I can’t see Betty, That’s why it ain’t gonna rain. Every mail day I get a letter Saying, “Daddy, come home, yes, yes, daddy, come home.” Some of these days I’ll see Betty, An’ it won’t be long, no, no, it won’t be long. If I could see her just one mo’ time, My mind would be changed all the time. The jailer told Dupree, “Just be good,” And he surely would, yes, yes, he surely would. Dupree was the best man in the pen Just to get that thing, yes, yes, that thing. Another illustration of the common promiscuity of these current songs adapted as a part of the physical effort of work is the following mongrel song of the self-styled bad man who mixes metaphors and lines to his own satisfaction. I’m Goin’ out West When you see me comin’ Wid my new shine on, ’Cause I got my col’-iron burner[61] Under my ol’ left arm. Lawd, I goin’ out West, Goin’ out ’mongst the robbers. Say, if I don’t get back, Lawd, don’t worry at all. [125] ’Cause the Western men call theirself bad, ’Cause the Western men call theirself bad. Say, when they get unruly, Say, I got their water on. Say, my gal lay down, Lay down and cried ’Cause I’s goin’ out West, But I’m satisfied. Say, I grab an’ hug an’ kiss her, Say, don’t worry at all, ’Cause I’m goin ’way from here, Goin’ to kill some rowdy men. I reach down an’ kiss my gal, Kiss an’ hug her all day long, Lawd, she make me so much worry I had to leave home. [61]That is, his pistol. The selections that follow are typical of the large number of miscellaneous songs of almost every imaginable mixture and variety. They are examples of corruptions and also of the song-making process and of the insignificance of words and meaning in the workaday song. Julia Long O Lawd, Aunt Julia! Julia Long, Julia Long! O Lawd, Aunt Julia! Julia Long, Julia Long. Julia Long, dead and gone, Julia Long, Julia Long! O Lawd, Aunt Julia! Julia Long, Julia Long! Julia Long I used to know, Julia Long, Julia Long. O Lawd, Aunt Julia! Julia Long, Julia Long! [126] Turn Yo’ Damper Down When you see me comin’ Raise yo’ winder high, When you see me leavin’ Hang yo’ head an’ cry. I got lovin’ Way a rabbit hug a houn’, An’ if you two-time me, daddy, Turn yo’ damper down. Casey Jones[62] Casey was goin’ about ninety-four, An’ he forgot to blow. Casey told the fireman he’d better jump, For there’s two locomotives that’s about to bump. Chorus: Casey Jones, marchin’ to the cabin, Marchin’ to the cabin with the orders in his hand. Casey said before he died, “Three mo’ roads I want to ride.” The fireman ask him what could they be, “Southern Pacific an’ the Santa Fe.” Casey told his children, “Go to bed and hush your cryin’, You have another papa On the Salt Lake Line.” [62]Casey Jones is still heard occasionally. The version given here is somewhat below par, but represents the sort of thing a worker is likely to sing. Note that Casey wants to ride “three mo’ roads,” but names only two. Also, in the last stanza, Casey, instead of his wife, is represented as speaking to the children. Wash My Overhalls Wash my overhalls, Search my overhalls, Starch my overhalls, Wash ’em clean, ’Cause I’m goin’ to ketch de train. [127] Listen at dis fireman blow de train. If I don’t ring dat bell, You ring it fer yo’self; If you don’t ring it, Won’t be no fault o’ mine. Dove Came Down by the Foot of My Bed Dove came down by the foot of my bed, By the foot of my bed, By the foot of my bed, Dove came down by the foot of my bed, And he carried the news that I was dead. I’m going away one day before long, One day before long, One day before long. I’m going away one day before long, And I won’t be back before judgment day. If you don’t believe I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed, I’ve been redeemed. If you don’t believe I’ve been redeemed, Just follow me down by Jordan stream. Dig my grave and dig it deep, Dig it deep, Dig it deep. Dig my grave and dig it deep, And cover me up with a linen sheet. Tell my mother if she wants to see me, If she wants to see me, If she wants to see me, Tell my mother if she wants to see me, She must ride that horse in the battlefield. He Wus de Gov’nor of Our Clan He wus de gov’nor of our clan, He wus a rough-an’-tumble man, He wus a rough-an’-tumble man. He pull his pistol an’ a feller drap, He make his money playin’ crap, He make his money playin’ crap. [128] I Got Chickens on My Back I got chickens on my back, An’ the white folks on my track, I am hunting for a shanty, God knows, nobody knows. I am hunting for a shanty, God knows, nobody knows. I Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Make a Fool Out o’ Me I’ve been all over the U. S. A., I’ve seen most everything; I’ve shot craps with the president, Played cards with the queen and king. But I ain’t gonna let nobody, Nobody make a fool out o’ me. If you give your gal everything she needs, You will spend the winter in your B. V. D.’S. I ain’t gonna let nobody, Nobody make a fool out o’ me. On My Las’ Go-’Round[63] I had it in my head to join the U. S. A., But instead of gettin’ better I got still worse. Every time I hear some church bell ringin’, I begin to think I was on my las’ go-’round. O I believe I am on, I think I am on, I know I am on my las’ go-’round. So when I am dead, wear no black, When Gable blows his trumpet I’ll rush on back. [63]There are now popular songs entitled Last Go-’Round Blues and I’m on My Last Go-’Round, but they do not resemble this song. For an older version, see The Negro and His Songs, p. 180. Berda, You Come too Soon O Lord, Berda, you come too soon, Found a man in my saloon. Berda walked out screamin’ an cryin’, Girls on front street skippin’ an’ flyin’. Berda, you come too soon, Berda, you come too soon. [129] Rain or Shine I hoes an’ I plows In all kinds o’ weather, I got to keep a-goin’ ’Cause I can’t do no better. Rain or shine, Sleet or snow, When I gits done dis time, Won’t work no mo’. Empty or full, Sleep or ’wake, I’m gwine to de party, Dance fer dat cake. Who’s Goin’ to Buy Your Whiskey? Who’s goin’ to buy your whiskey When I’m gone away from you? Who’s goin’ to do your holdin’ When I’m gone from you, Lawd, Lawd? Who’s goin’ to bring you chicken From the white folks’ house When I’m gone away from you? You Calls Me in de Mornin’ You me in de mornin’, You calls me in de night, An’ you is de cause o’ me Losin’ my life. My home ain’t here, I don’t have to stay. When I leaves don’t wear no black, Do, I sho’ gonna come creepin’ back, Do, I sho’ gonna come creepin’ back. Dig-a My Grave Wid a Silver Spade Dig-a my grave wid a silver spade, Let me down wid a golden chain. Oh, who’s gonna dig-a my grave? Let me down wid a golden chain. Yonder come mudder, Look lak mudder comin’ on. Oh, who’s gonna dig-a my grave? [130] Yonder Come de Devil Yonder come de devil, Yonder come de devil, Ketch him, devil, ketch him, Ketch him, devil, ketch him. He done sin, he done sin, He done sin, he done sin. Ketch him, devil, ketch him, Ketch him, devil, ketch him. Dem Turrible Red Hot Blues[64] Nothin’ new, Her name wuz Sue, I got de turrible Red hot blues, Oh, dem turrible red hot blues. I got a pal, This gal is Sal, Bofe got de turrible red hot blues, Oh, dem turrible red hot blues. [64]Compare Red Hot Blues, a popular phonograph and sheet music piece. Das ’Nough Said Hit rains, hit hails, Different sorts o’ wedder, Hit rains, hit hails, Wusser de better. Steal up to de back do’ Den on to de bed, Lawsy, lawsy, mister, Das ’nough said. Diamond Joe Diamond Joe wants a sack of flour, Diamond Joe wants a sack of flour, Diamond Joe he don’t work by de hour. Drive on, Diamond Joe. Sometimes he works in de country, Sometimes he works in de town, Sometimes he has a good notion To jump in de river an’ drown. Drive on, Diamond Joe. [131] He Run Me In Talkin’ ’bout yo’ ghosts, let me tell: I thought I drapped dat nigger in dat well But he run me in, yes, Lawd, he run me in. ’Tain’t no fun I’s here to tell When a dead nigger gits out’n an ol’ fiel’ well An’ runs me in, yes, Lawd, he run me in. He ain’t got no arms, he ain’t got no haid, I didn’t stop an’ count dem tracks I made, ’Cause he run me in, yes, Lawd, he run me in. I believes in a ghost an’ I believes in a hant Dis here nigger sho’ ain’t no saint, ’Cause he run me in, yes, Lawd, he run me in. De Goat’s Got a Smell De goat’s got a smell, De skunk’s got a stink, But de black gal Got a ’culiar odor. De black gal, de balmoral, Dey bofe got a ’culiar odor. Goodby Sookie Goodby, Sookie, good by, Sal, You struts about in dat balmoral. Goodby, Sookie, good by, Sal I’s leavin’ dis hot town wid dat yallow gal. Out in de Cabin Out in de cabin, banjo pickin’ low; Out in de cabin, banjo pickin’ low. Up in de big house, singin’ soft an’ low; Up in de big house dancin’ to an’ fro. I lubs my missus, I lubs ol’ marse; I lubs my white folks mo’ an’ mo’, Mo’ an’ mo’. [132] Darlin’ Get on de Road Darlin’, when you see me comin’, Hang your head an’ cry. When you see me leavin’, Get on the road. Darlin’, get on the road, Darlin’, get on the road. When you see me cryin’, Hang you head in shame. When you see me smilin’, You know I am the same. So let us get on the road, Darlin’, get on the road. I’m Gonna Have Me a Red Ball All My Own Lawd, lissen, I believe I go to town An’ ketch the Red Ball.[65] An’ I walked up to get in. What you reckin’ the man said to me? “No nigger can ride the Red Ball.” So I turned around an’ went back home An’ began to paint my face. But I forgot to paint my neck an’ hands. So I went back an’ tried him again. Didn’t have no luck. An’ I’m Gonna get me a mule an’ name him Red Ball, An’ I can ride just the same. I’m gonna have me a Red Ball all my own. [65]A fast freight train. Great Scots, You Don’t Know What to Do Bull frog sittin’ on mantel-piece, Great scots, you don’t know what to do, Clapped his hand in a pan of grease, Great scots, you don’t know what to do. I’m going down in new town to live. [133] Look out, ladies, let him by, You don’t know what to do, Here he comes with a greasy eye, Great scots, you don’t know what to do. I’m going down in new town to live. Chicken Never Roost too High fo’ Me[66] Ol’ massa’s chicken Live in the tree, Chicken never roost Too high fo’ me. Went out strollin’, See what I can see. Chicken never roost Too high fo’ me. Ever since the Yankee Set-er me free, Chicken never roost Too high fo’ me. They think the old lady An’ me agree. Chicken never roost Too high fo’ me. I’s in jail, Not long till I’m free, Chicken never roost Too high fo’ me. [66]In a somewhat different version, this song was popular as a minstrel some twenty years ago. Stewball Was a Racer[67] Stewball was a racer, Mollie was too. My mist’iss bets by hundred, My master bets by thousands. [134] I bet you mo’ cash money Ol’ Stewball won. Run on, ol’ Stewball, Mollie done run. [67]This is a fragment of a song, Skewball, which used to be almost an epic among the Negroes. Its origin probably goes back to an old Irish song. For a discussion of this point, see Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, pp. 61-4. Shanghai Rooster Shanghai rooster done lost all his feathers, Shanghai pullet eat by her betters. You gits de gizzard, I eats the breast, Got to save the preacher all the rest. Chicken wid a preacher don’t stand no show, When the preacher is about chicken gotta go. Went over to fishin’ on a little stream, All I got is a nod and dream. Catch Miss Catfish by the snout, Led Miss Catfish all about. [135] CHAPTER VIII MAN’S SONG OF WOMAN There is probably no theme which comes nearer being common to all types of Negro songs than the theme of the relation of man and woman. It is the heart and soul of the blues. The Negro bad man is often pictured as being bad because of a woman. The jail and chain gang songs abound in plaintive references to woman and sweetheart, and the worker in railroad gang and construction camp often sings to his “cap’n” about his woman. Likewise, in the songs of woman, man plays the leading rôle. These man and woman songs are of such significance that special attention must be given to them as a type of Negro song in order to round out the picture of Negro workaday life which this volume is trying to present. In this chapter and the one following, therefore, there have been brought together examples of songs which deal primarily with the relation of the sexes. Conflicts, disagreements, jealousies and disappointments in the love relation have ever been productive of song. They are the chief source of “hard luck” songs or blues, and the Negro’s naïve way of singing of his failure and disappointments in love is what has made the blues famous. Sometimes his songs portray vividly, often with a sort of martyr-like satisfaction, his difficulties with women. At times his song is defiant. At other times it is merely a complaint. Again, it is despondent, in which case he is going “to jump in the rivuh an’ drown” or “drink some pizen down” or do[136] something else calculated to make the woman sorry that she mistreated him. Some of the “hard luck” stories of the Negro man are told in the following group of songs. Lawd, She Keep on Worryin’ Me Lawd, Lawd, she keep on worryin’ me, Lawd, captain, she keep on worryin’ me. Lawd, she cry all night long, Lawd, Lawd, she cry all night long. Mama, the mo’ I pet her, Lawd, The mo’ I pet her the mo’ she cries. Lawd, I gonna give her mouf full o’ fist An’, Lawd, she won’t cry no mo’. Captain, captain, I don’t bother nobody, Works every day as bes’ I can. Captain, look like you could make her, Lawd, leave me alone. Captain, she say she love me Like school boy love his pie. Lawd, she say I leave her alone, Lawd, ain’t got no friends at all. My Girl She’s Gone and Left Me My girl, she’s gone and left me, She left me all alone, She promised that she would marry me The day that she left home. So kiss me, all you brown skins And all you yellows, too. I would give anything in this wide, wide world Just because I do love you. [137] Brown Gal Baby Done Turn Me Down I’s goin’ down to de rivah, Jump in an’ drown, Dat brown gal baby Done turn me down, Done turn me down. Goin’ down to de drug sto’, Pisen I drink down, Den dey take de news To my baby brown, To my baby brown. Call up de doctah Mighty quick, Tell my brown baby I sho’ is sick, I sho’ is sick. Den my black baby Come hurryin’ ’roun’, She sho’ be sorry She turn me down, She turn me down. I Brung a Gal From Tennessee Ain’t yer heard my po’ story? Den listen to me: I brung a gal from Tennessee Tennessee, Tennessee I brung a gal from Tennessee. Ain’t yer heard my po’ story? Den listen to me: Dat Georgia gal set de police on me. Tennessee, Tennessee, I brung a gal from Tennessee. Don’t Wanta See Her No Mo’ I ain’t never seed her befo’, I ain’t never seed her befo’, I ain’t never seed her befo’, Don’t wanta see her no mo’, baby. [138] She say, “Come on, go to my house,” She say, “Come on, go to my house,” She say, “Come on, go to my house,” She ain’t nuffin but a roust-about, baby. She s’arch my pockets through, She s’arch my pockets through, She s’arch my pockets through, Den say, “I ain’t got no need of you, baby.” Don’t e’r wanta see her no mo’, Don’t e’r wanta see her no mo’, Don’t e’r wanta see her no mo’, Never had seed her befo’, baby. I’s Havin’ a Hell of a Time I’s a-havin’ a hell of a time, I’s a-havin’ a hell of a time, I’s a-havin’ a hell of a time, Livin’ wid dese two women o’ mine. De po’ boy, dey got no mercy at tall, De po’ boy, dey got no mercy at tall, De po’ boy, dey got no mercy at tall, Dey lock in de room, he sets out in de hall. Ain’t gonna stay here no mo’, Ain’t gonna stay here no mo’, Ain’t gonna stay here no mo’, De creepers all ’roun’ my do’. Goin’ back down to Georgia lan’, Goin’ back down to Georgia lan’, Goin’ back down to Georgia lan’, Where women don’t have jes’ one man. Yer don’t haf to have no clo’es, Yer don’t haf to have no clo’es, Yer don’t haf to have no clo’es, De women don’t never lock deir do’s. [139] Lawdy, What I Gonna Do? U—h, Lawdy, what I gonna do? U—h, Lawdy, what I gonna do? U—h, Lawdy, what I gonna do? Been havin’ jes’ ol’ lady, but now I got two, baby! U—h, Lawdy, ol’ lady got rough, U—h, Lawdy, ol’ lady got rough, U—h, Lawdy, ol’ lady got rough, Say, hell in fire, she sho’ got ’nough, baby! U—h, Lawd, ol’ un bring in de meat, U—h, Lawd, ol’ un bring in de meat, U—h, Lawd, ol’ un bring in de meat, Dis new gal of mine she got all de sweet, baby! U—h, Lawdy, dem rations am good, U—h, Lawdy, dem rations am good, U—h, Lawdy, dem rations am good, Have sech a good time, if de ol’ woman would, baby! Some o’ Dese Days Some o’ dese days, Hit won’t be long, Mammy gonna call me An’ I be gone. Some o’ dese nights, An’ I don’t kere, Mammy gonna want me An’ I won’t be here. Some o’ dese days In de by an’ by, You won’t have no’n’ t’eat, Den you gonna cry. Some o’ dese days While I’s here to home, Better feed me an’ pet me, Don’t, I’s gonna roam. [140] You Take de Stockin’, I Take de Sock You take de stockin’, I take de sock, honey, You take de stockin’, I take de sock, baby, You take de stockin’, I take de sock, Take you all night to wind dat clock, honey. You take de garter an’ I take de string, honey, You take de garter an’ I take de string, baby, You take de garter an’ I take de string, You gits de money, I don’t git a thing, honey. You take de slipper, I take de shoe, honey, You take de slipper, I take de shoe, baby, You take de slipper, I take de shoe, I don’t kere now whut you gonna do, honey. You take de boot an’ I take de laig, honey, You take de boot an’ I take de laig, baby, You take de boot an’ I take de laig, You ain’t nuffin but a rotten aig, honey. Pull off Dem Shoes I Bought You A Goin’ up de country, Don’t you wanta go? Git me out my Rag time clo’es. Pull off dem shoes I bought you, Pull off dem socks I bought you, Pull off dat hat I bought you, You know you have mistreated me. Tore up all my clo’es; Pull off dat wig I brung you, Let yo’ devilish head go bal’. B Mary, Mary, when I met you You didn’t have no clo’es at all. Now I ax you kindly, Miss Mary, Give me dem shoes, stockin’s, an’ dat petticoat, An’ dat dress an’ hat, an’ las’ dat wig, An’ let yo’ head go bal’. [141] Mammy-in-Law Done Turn Me Out Keep on a-worryin’, What’s it all about? Mammy-in-law Done turn me out. Don’t bring in no sugar, Don’t bring in no meat, Don’t never bring in Nothin’ to eat. Mammy-in-law done turn me out. Don’t bring in no rations, Don’t bring in no dough, ’Nother man hang around her do’. Mammy-in-law done turn me out. De Women Don’t Love Me No Mo’ De women don’t love me no mo’, I’s a broke man from po’ man’s town. De women don’t love me no mo’, ’Cause I can’t buy her stockin’s an’ a gown, ’Cause I can’t buy her stockin’s an’ a gown. I don’t kere, don’t matter wid me, I don’t love to work no mo’. Got to have money, got to have clo’es, Don’t, a feller can’t make no show. De gal love de money An’ de man love de gal; If dey bofe don’t git what dey wants, It’s livin’ in hell. The Negro man runs true to masculine style when he philosophizes upon the subject of woman. Needless to say, his philosophy is often the result of his failure to get along with the other sex. When he is “down” on womankind the burden of his song is that woman is the cause of most of the trouble in the world. He avows that Woman is a good thing an’ a bad thing, too, They quit in the wrong an’ start out bran’ new. [142] Or he declares that he will never again have anything to do with women: All I hope in dis bright worl’: If I love anybody, don’t let it be a girl. One of his strong points is giving advice to others in order that they may avoid his mistakes. “Listen to me, buddy,” he says, “let me tell you what a woman’ll do.” Don’t never git one woman on yo’ min’, Keep you in trouble all yo’ time. De Woman Am De Cause of It All and the songs immediately following it are typical of the songs of the woman-hater. Dey Got Each and de Other’s Man is as clever a bit of cynicism as one could want. De Woman Am de Cause of It All A De woman am de cause of it all, De woman am de cause of it all, She’s de cause of po’ Adam’s fall, De woman’s de cause of it all. Bill and John fall jes’ de same, Bill and John fall jes’ de same, De onliest difference, dey ain’t got po’ Adam’s name, But de woman am de cause of it all. She strips yo’ pocket book, She strips yo’ pocket book, Den tells de police you a damn crook, De woman am de cause of it all. Workin’ in de gang, ’out no frien’, Workin’ in de gang, ’out no frien’, Nobody comes, brings nuffin’ in, De woman am de cause of it all. [143] B De woman is de cause of it all, She’s de cause of Daddy Adam’s fall. Ol’ Daddy Adam, Ol’ Mudder Eve, Takin’ all dese years to bring in de sheaves. Ol’ Miss Eve didn’t have no showin’ Widout heaps of stags to keep her goin’. If dey’d been twenty stags in de Garden of Eden, De devil and de sarpent sho’d got beaten. If Dere’s a Man in de Moon[68] If dere’s a man in de moon, Dere’s a woman hangin’ roun’. If dere’s a man in de moon, She nag at ’im, I be boun’. Man in de moon, man in de moon, Wonder if dat man’s a coon, Wonder if dat man’s a coon, Wonder if dat man’s a coon, Dat man in de moon. Go fer a walkin’ out at night, See dat woman pickin’ a fight. Man in de moon, man in de moon, Wonder if dat man am a coon, Wonder if dat man am a coon, Wonder if dat man am a coon, Dat roun’ face man in de moon. [68]Probably derived from the song If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon, which was a popular minstrel several years ago. A Vampire of Your Own If you want to have a vampire of your own, Let these loose women alone. Fix up your wife you have at home, An’ you’ll have a vampire of your own. [144] Stop spendin’ your money on other women, An’ your friends, you have not any. Go home at night, treat your own wife right, An’ you’ll have a vampire of your own. Dey Got Each and de Udder’s Man See two passenger trains, Lawd, Runnin’ side by side. See two womens, see two womens, Stan’ an’ talk so long. Bet yo’ life dey got Each and de udder’s man. The Negro man is at his best when he sings of his “gal” or his “baby.” Sometimes his song is boastful of the qualities of his “gal.” Sometimes he compares the merits of the brown girl and the yellow girl or of the black and the yellow and casts his vote for his favorite color. Again, he sings the story of his courtship, and he counts it a never-to-be-too-much-talked-about experience to have been driven away from his sweetheart’s house by an irate father. In My Jane the lover characterizes his “gal” with enviable terseness and humor. My Jane My Jane am a gal dat loves red shoes, My Jane am a gal dat loves silk clo’es. My Jane am a gal what loves plenty money, She can devil a feller till it ain’t even funny. My Jane am a gal dat loves heaps o’ men, Gits what you got an’ dat’s yo’ en’. My Jane am a gal loves to frolic all night, Won’t cook fer a feller, not even a bite. My Jane’s a gal gits all she can, If you ain’t got it, she hunts another man. My Jane am a gal drive a feller to de bad, But Jane’s, hell-o-mighty, bes’ gal I ever had! [145] My Gal’s a High Bo’n Lady My gal she’s a high bo’n lady, She’s dark but not too shady, All de mens fall fer dat High bo’n gal o’ mine! Chorus: She’s a high bo’n baby, She’s a high bo’n lady, She’s a brown dat suits my eye. De mens dey calls her cutie, Dat gal a natural bo’n beauty, All de same I’s in de ring Fer dat high bo’n brown o’ mine. If You Want to See a Pretty Girl Rubber is a pretty thing, You rub it to make it shine. If you want to see a pretty girl, Take a peep at mine, take a peep at mine. Talkin’ about a pretty girl, You jus’ ought-a see mine. She is not so pretty But she is jus’ so fine. She gives me sugar, She gives me lard, She works all the while In the white folks’ yard. Honey Baby If I could lay my head on yo’ sweet breas’, Honey baby, I could fin’ sweet res’. Sweet res’, sweet res’, Honey baby, I could fin’ sweet res’. If I could set down in your lap, Baby mine, I could have a nap. Good nap, sweet nap, Honey baby, I could have a nap. [146] Give Me a Teasin’ Brown If ’twant fer de ter’pin pie And sto’-bought ham, Dese country women Couldn’t git nowhere. Some say, give me a high yaller, I say, give me a teasin’ brown, For it takes a teasin’ brown To satisfy my soul. For some folksies say A yaller is low down, But teasin’ brown Is what I’s crazy about. You Take de Yaller, I Take de Black Yaller gal’s yourn An’ de black gal’s mine, You never can tell When de yaller gal’s lyin’. Give me a chocolate drop, She’s white on de inside, Black on de back. She don’t cause a feller To ride de railroad track. You take yaller, I take de black, Hurry up, nigger, Come out’n dat shack. Dat chocolate Gal am mine. Long, Tall, Brown-skin Girl I’m Alabama boun’, Long, tall, brown-skin girl. I’m Alabama boun’, I’m Alabama boun’. [147] I have a mule to ride To that long, tall, brown-skin girl. I have a mule to ride, I have a mule to ride. She is on the road somewhere, She is a long, tall, brown-skin girl. She is on the road somewhere, She is on the road somewhere. You can leave me here With my long, tall, brown-skin girl. You can leave me here, You can leave me here. I Got a Gal an’ I Can’t Git Her I got a gal an’ I can’t git her, I got a gal an’ I can’t git her, I got a gal an’ I can’t git her, Mammy won’t lemme see ’er, can’t even go wid her. Went to de house, I wus lovin’ sick, Went to de house, I wus lovin’ sick, Went to de house, I wus lovin’ sick, I got over dat spell, Lawd, mighty quick. Daddy had a pistol, mammy had a gun, Daddy had a pistol, mammy had a gun, Daddy had a pistol, mammy had a gun, Totin’ my stuff roun’ de corner, Lawd, wus fun. I Went to See My Gal I went to see my gal at half pas’ fo’ Her ol’ fool daddy met me at de do’. “I come to git a match,” so says, says I. “Write it on yo’ tombstone, by and by.” I kicked up dirt, I kicked up san’, Lawd, I kicked up everything but dry lan’. You ax me did I run?—No, Lawd, I flew. I’s a mighty black nigger, he skeered me blue. [148] Baby, Why Don’t You Treat Me Right I’m goin’ down to the rivuh, I’m goin’ to jump overboard an’ drown, Because the girl I love, I can’t see her all the time. Chorus: Baby, why don’t you treat me right, So that I can love you all the night? Then you will be my sweet little wife. Baby, why don’t you treat me right? I’m coming to see you tomorrow night, I want everything to be just right, I’m coming to get my own, An’ I want that shine to leave you alone. Dey’s Hangin’ ’Roun’ Her Do’ Dey’s a-hangin’ ’roun’ her do’, Dey’s never done dat befo’, Fer she’s wearin’ her aprons low. Lawdy, Lawdy, I don’t wanta go, All dese niggers hang ’roun’ her do’, ’Cause she’s wearin’ ’em hangin’ low. Unfaithfulness in love is another great source of song. “Somebody stole my gal” is a common tale, and the sequel, “I’m gonna git dat man,” is equally common. The “creeper,” the man who “fools wid another man’s woman,” is the most despised of all Negro characters. Says the Negro man, A sarpent crawls on his belly, A cat wallers on his back; De meanest varmint in de worl’ Is de creeper in my shack. In the following group of songs the man pays his respects to the unfaithful woman and to the “creeper.” [149] A Creeper’s Been ’Roun’ Dis Do’ You don’t think I don’t know A creeper’s been ’roun’ dis do’, dis do’. A sarpent crawls on his belly, A cat wallers on his back, De meanest varmint in dis worl’ Is de creeper in my shack. My woman say hit’s her brother, Den say hit’s her daddy, too; If dat midnight creeper don’t stay ’way, I know what I’s gonna do. My han’s am long, My fingers am strong and slim, When I gits through wid dat creeper’s neck Dey won’t be creeps lef’ in him. Dew-drop Mine Keep me, sleep me, close on yo’ heart, Tell me, angel Susie, never mo’ to part. My black baby, you got no wings, But, my black baby, you got better things. Angel mine, you quit lyin’ In de bed wid dat udder man, Dew-drop mine, I’s a cryin’ Fer you, but I’s spyin’. Angel mine, dis I know, You don’t love me no mo’. Dew-drop mine, dis I know, A midnight creeper come in my do’. He Tuck Her Away I sho’ got to fight, I’s got to use de knife, ’Cause dat stray done got my wife. Oh, he tuck her away, he tuck her away. [150] I Got My Man Look out, nigger, hol’ up yo’ han’. Waited long time, but I got my man. You got de gal, I got you, Devil git us bofe ’fore we gits through. Home Again, Home Again[69] Home again, home again, Crazy to git back. When I gets dere, Finds a stray man in my shack, Finds a stray man in my shack, Finds a stray man in my shack, Home again, home again, Finds a stray man in my shack. Home again, home again, Axe handle in de yard, Whales dat nigger over de head. Now I’s workin’ hard, Now I’s workin’ hard, Now I’s workin’ hard, Home again, home again, Now I’s workin’ hard. De chain gang got me, an’ de coal mine, too, But, Lawd, what’s a po’ nigger gonna do When a creeper comes creepin’ in, When a creeper comes creepin’ in, When a creeper comes creepin’ in? Home again, home again, When a creeper comes a-creepin’ in. [69]Cf. Home Again Blues, a popular phonograph piece. I’s Done Spot My Nigger Han’ on my gun, Finger on de trigger, I’s goin’ to jail ’Cause I’s done spot my nigger. [151] My woman done fool me, Everything gone wrong; I ain’t never gonna live To sing dis song. Jedge an’ jury Sentenced me to hang, Jes’ as lieve to go dere As to go to de gang. He Got My Gal Come up Whitehall, Run out ’Catur, I’se boun’ fer to fin’ dat Big black waiter. Chorus: He got my gal, he got my gal, He got my gal, he got my gal, I boun’ now to git dat man. He give her money, He give her fine wear; But when I finds dat waiter, Watch out fer his hair. She’s Got Another Daddy Bill Snipe’s wife couldn’t buy no coffin, But ’hin’ her veil I seen her laughin’. She’s got another daddy, Lawd, She’s got another daddy. Bill’s wife rid ’hin’ de hearse, She rid in a hack, I kotch her grinnin’ at her new daddy Out’n a crack. She’s got another daddy, Lawd, She’s got another daddy. [152] CHAPTER IX WOMAN’S SONG OF MAN Woman’s song of man is in most respects parallel to man’s song of woman. Her themes are about the same. She sings of her “man” or “daddy,” of her disappointments and failures in love, of her unfaithful lover, and of her own secret amours. It will be noticed that woman’s song conforms quite closely to the blues type as it is popularly known today. In Chapter I examples of the “mama” blues titles were given and in Chapter II it was pointed out that the majority of the formal blues of today deal with the sex theme. Furthermore, most of these blues are sung from the point of view of woman. Consequently, as songs that may be remembered and sung from day to day, they appear more acceptable to woman than to man. Perhaps this explains why the influence of the formal blues is encountered so frequently in the kind of songs with which this chapter is concerned. At any rate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a song of woman on the man theme which does not show the influence of the popular blues.[70] [70]After consulting dozens of popular pieces, in both sheet music and phonograph record form, we have been able to trace some of these songs to them, but we feel sure that the influence of the formal blues is present in many other songs in this and other chapters, even though we have failed so far to locate the direct evidence. We have omitted many songs that were clearly of formal origin, although the singers insisted that they were entirely original. Woman’s song of man frequently concerns itself with “the other woman,” the rival in the case. The first two songs given here are only indirectly concerned with man, but they are of interest because they[153] touch upon the “conflict of color” within the Negro community. They are only samples of a voluminous literature of “chocolate” versus “yellow,” or “black” versus “brown,” which is to be found in the songs of the Negro. De Mulatto Gal De mulatto gal got yaller skin, yaller skin, De mulatto gal got yaller skin, yaller skin, De mulatto gal got yaller skin, yaller skin, De mulatto gal got yaller skin, Den she got a devilish grin, daddy. De mulatto gal got kinky hair, kinky hair, De mulatto gal got kinky hair, kinky hair, De mulatto gal got kinky hair, kinky hair, De mulatto gal got kinky hair, Always wears her big laigs bare, daddy. De mulatto gal got white-gray eyes, gray eyes, De mulatto gal got white-gray eyes, gray eyes, De mulatto gal got white-gray eyes, gray eyes, De mulatto gal got white-gray eyes, An’ dat’s a gal dat never lies, daddy. De mulatto gal got great big laigs, big laigs, De mulatto gal got great big laigs, big laigs, De mulatto gal got great big laigs, big laigs, De mulatto gal got great big laigs, She’s de gal makes de men beg, daddy. De mulatto gal got great big hips, big hips, De mulatto gal got great big hips, big hips, De mulatto gal got great big hips, big hips, De mulatto gal got great big hips, She’s de gal got kissin’ lips, daddy. De Chocolate Gal De chocolate gal got greasy hair, greasy hair, De chocolate gal got greasy hair, greasy hair, De chocolate gal got greasy hair, greasy hair, She is de gal can cuss an’ rare, daddy. [154] De chocolate gal got col’ black eye, black eye, De chocolate gal got col’ black eye, black eye, De chocolate gal got col’ black eye, black eye, She am de gal what steals an’ lies, daddy. De chocolate gal got thick black skin, black skin, De chocolate gal got thick black skin, black skin, De chocolate gal got thick black skin, black skin, She de kin’ of gal what go to de pen, daddy. De chocolate gal she got big laigs, big laigs, De chocolate gal she got big laigs, big laigs, De chocolate gal she got big laigs, big laigs, She am de gal what cries an’ begs, daddy. De chocolate gal got heavy hips, heavy hips, De chocolate gal got heavy hips, heavy hips, De chocolate gal got heavy hips, heavy hips, She’s de gal got lyin’ lips, daddy. Songs like those just given are varied to suit the color of the singer. If the black girl has an off-color rival, she sings that it is the yellow girl who “steals an’ lies,” who “cries an’ begs,” who “can cuss an’ rare,” and so on. In the next few songs woman sings of her “man.” Her appellations, “my man,” “my daddy,” “sweet papa,” “chocolate drop,” “Black Jack,” and others, are an interesting study in themselves. I’s Dreamin’ of You has simplicity and a note of tenderness which approaches the better type of love song. The other songs are quite crude, but it should be remembered that they are characteristic only of the Negro woman of the lower class. I’s Dreamin’ of You I’s dreamin’ of you, I’s dreamin’ of you, I’s dreamin’ of you Every night. [155] I’s thinkin’ of you, I’s thinkin’ of you I’s thinkin’ of you All right. I’s wantin’ of you, I’s wantin’ of you, I’s wantin’ of you Day an’ night. On de Road Somewhere On de road somewhere, I got a long, tall chocolate-drop On de road somewhere. Don’t you leave me here, Don’t you leave me here, If you will leave me here, Leave me dime fer beer. On de road somewhere, On de road somewhere, I got a long, tall chocolate-drop On de road somewhere. My Black Jack When I gits to heaven I don’t wanta stay Widout my Black Jack live out dat way. Black Jack’s a rounder, but I don’t kere, All us need to be happy is a bed an’ a cheer. Daddy Mine Over de fiel’ an’ ’cross de line, I got a daddy dat I call mine. Daddy mine, daddy mine, Keep me cryin’ all de time. Ain’t got no heart, ain’t got no mon, But, God, I loves dat daddy lak fun. Daddy mine, daddy mine, I got a daddy dat I calls mine, Daddy mine, daddy mine. [156] My Man Am a Slap-stick Man My man am a slap-stick man, My man dance wid de band. His head am nappy, His feetsies is long; None o’ dese things Make my man wrong. My man’s a slap-stick man. My man am a slap-stick man, My man dance wid dat yaller gal. Her head am nappy, Her feet am long; All o’ dese things Make dat gal dead wrong. My man’s de slap-stick man. Don’t You Two-time Me If you gonna be my honey Don’t you two-time me. If you gonna be my papa, Better have one man ’stead of three. Don’t you two-time, Try to two-time me. Can Any One Take Sweet Mama’s Place?[71] Can any one take sweet mama’s place? I ain’t good lookin’, Ain’t got no curly hair, But my mama give me somethin’ Take me each an’ everywhere. Come here, sweet papa, Look me in de face, Is dere anybody can take yo’ mama’s place? De Mississippi River Is so deep and wide, Can’t see my good brown From de other side. [71]Cf. phonograph record, Can Anybody Take Sweet Mama’s Place? [157] But the chief theme in woman’s song, as in man’s, is trouble. Sometimes the dominant note is disappointment: Dat nigger o’ mine don’t love me no mo’, Dat ungrateful feller don’t love me no mo’. Sometimes it is regret: I wish I was single again, Oh, I wish I was single again. Again the key-note is one of despondency: Done sol’ my soul to de devil, An’ my heart done turned to stone. And it is usually the “other woman” who is at the bottom of the trouble. He don’t send me no hearin’— I knows another gal’s dere an’ I’s fearin’. Dat sly, ’ceitful, lyin’ gal, Yes, Lawd, she stole my man away. These “hard luck” songs of woman are presented in the next group. It is here that one finds the closest relation between folk songs and the formal blues. When I Wore My Ap’on Low When I wore my ap’on low, When I wore my ap’on low, When I wore my ap’on low, Boys would pass by my do’. Now I’m wearin’ it to my chin, Now I’m wearin’ it to my chin, Now I’m wearin’ it to my chin, Boys all pass and dey won’t come in. [158] I Done Sol’ My Soul to de Devil[72] I done sol’ my soul, Done sol’ it to de devil, An’ my heart done turned to stone. I got a lot o’ gol’, Got it from de devil, Because he won’t let me alone. He says he can make me happy An’ give me back my man If you follow me in sin, An’ I wus so blue he took me in. Look what a fool I am. Done sol’ my soul, Done sol’ it to the devil, An’ my heart done turned to stone. I live down in de valley By a hornet’s nest, Where de lions, bears, and tigers Come to take deir rest. [72]Very similar to phonograph piece, Done Sold My Soul to the Devil. I Got a Letter From My Man[73] I got a letter from my man, My man’s dyin’, Lawd, Lawd. I’m goin’ down track, never look back, Goin’ where my man fell dead. I’m gonna follow my man, Lawd, gonna follow him to the buryin’ groun’. But I’m so sorry, Lawd, But I just can’t take your place. Well, captain, told you about my man, Say, I’m goin’ away, can’t stay behind. [159] Say, I’m goin’ away, captain, Lawd, I done lef’ this town. Say, I’m goin’ home, captain, an’, captain, I won’t be here so long. Say, I’m goin’ away, Lawd, Lawd, Say, I’m on my way home. O Lawd, captain, tell me what’s matter now, Nothin’ matter, jus’ leavin’ the town. Captain, captain, I’m goin’ away so long, You make me think o’ my man. Say, captain, captain, don’t be so hard on me, O Lawd, I don’t do nothin’ but wash an’ iron all day. Say, captain, captain, I can’t work so hard, O Lawd, I can’t wash an’ iron so hard. Say, captain, when you call my name, You make me think, Lawd o’ my man. Say, captain, I ain’t got no husban’, Lawd, captain, you got my man. [73]This song represents the lament of a construction-camp woman. The sentiment of the first four stanzas is found, in a very different form, in the phonograph piece, Death Letter Blues. I Ain’t No Stranger I ain’t no stranger, I ain’t no stranger, I jes’ blow into your town. I didn’t come here, I didn’t come here. To be dawged around. Look-a here, daddy, Look-a here, daddy, See what you done done. Done made me love you, Den tryin’ to throw me away. See dem crazy fellows, daddy? Go to jail about ’em, But I wont go in— [160] What Can the Matter Be?[74] What can the matter be, O dear, what can the matter be? What can the matter be, O dear, Johnnie is so long at the fair. He promised to bring me a ring an’ a locket An’ all the nice things you wear in your pocket. He promised to bring me a bunch of blue ribbon To wear on my pretty brown hair. He said if I’d love him he never would leave me, But now I have chased him I hope he won’t grieve me, I love him so dearly I hope he won’t leave me, But Johnnie is so long at the fair. O dear, what can the matter be? Johnnie is so long at the fair. [74]This song, which is probably of white origin, has a wide distribution. The present version is from North Carolina. The song is mentioned in Pound’s syllabus, Folk Song of Nebraska and the Central West. Perrow gives a version in Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 28, p. 169. Worried Anyhow[75] When de man dat I love says He didn’t want me no mo’, I thought it was de hardest word I ever heard befo’. When de blues overtake you, I’s can’t beat a deal, If it wusn’t fer my mother An’ de man I loves. I give myself to de sick An’ my soul to de God above. If you quit me, daddy, It won’t worry me now, Because when we are together I am worried anyhow. [75]Cf. phonograph record, Worried Anyhow Blues. [161] Dere’s Misery in Dis Lan’ I got a man an’ a sweetheart, too, I got a man an’ a sweetheart, too, I got a man an’ a sweetheart, too, Dere’s misery in dis lan’, dis lan’. Can’t please my man an’ my sweetheart, too, Can’t please my man an’ my sweetheart, too, Can’t please my man an’ my sweetheart, too, Dere’s misery in dis lan’, dis lan’. My man makes money an’ my sweetheart makes none, My man makes money an’ my sweetheart makes none, My man makes money an’ my sweetheart makes none, Dere’s misery in dis lan’, dis lan’. My sweetheart makes love an’ my man makes none, My sweetheart makes love an’ my man makes none, My sweetheart makes love an’ my man makes none, Dere’s misery in dis lan’, dis lan’. Dat Chocolate Man I ain’t never goin’ to be satisfied, All day an’ night I cried. Dat big Bill o’ mine he hide From me, yes, from me. My ol’ haid it’s weary, My ol’ heart it’s dreary For dat chocolate man. I wonder where dat slim Bill’s gone, I can’t do nothin’ but set an’ mo’n. Dat big Bill stray from me, Yes, he stray from me. My bed it’s lonesome an’ col’, I can’t sleep to save my soul. Dat big Bill o’ mine, He’s got dat yaller gal. My ol’ haid it’s achin’, My ol’ heart it’s breakin’ For dat chocolate man. [162] Dem Longin’, Wantin’ Blues I loves dat bully, he sho’ looks good to me, I always do what he wants me to. Den he don’t seem satisfied. I got de blues, Yes, Saro, I’s got dem wantin’ blues, Dem longin’, wantin’ blues. He don’t send me no hearin’, I know another gal’s dere an’ I’s fearin’. He don’t seem satisfied. Now I got de blues, Yes, Lawd, I got dem wantin’ blues, Dem longin’, wantin’ blues. Dat Nigger o’ Mine Don’t Love Me No Mo’. Up an’ down de street, ain’t got no show, Dat nigger o’ mine don’t love me no mo’. No mo’, no mo’, no show, no show, ’Cause dat ungrateful feller don’t love me no mo’. Stroll to de corner, cop in sight, Gonna kill dat man, he ain’t treat me right. No mo’, no mo’, no show, no show, ’Cause dat ungrateful feller don’t love me no mo’. I Don’t Love Him No Mo’. If I don’t come back, If I don’t come back, Put de cop on dat Black man’s track. He’s a rough-neck black, Keep de p’liceman on his track, Put ’im in de jail house, Keep ’im dere. I don’t love him no mo’, So I don’t care. [163] I Wish I Was Single Again[76] When I was single I was livin’ at my ease, Now I am married a drunker to please. I wish I was single again, I wish I was single again. When I was single, fine shoes I wo’, Now I am married, my feet on the flo’. I wish I was single again, I wish I was single again. The water is to bring, the flo’ to sweep, The children are cryin’ and nothin’ to eat. I wish I was single again, I wish I was single again. Wash their little faces, tuck them in their bed, In comes that drunken man—I wish he was dead. I wish I was single again, I wish I was single again. [76]Cf. Campbell & Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, p. 256; also phonograph record version, I Wish I Was a Single Girl. Dere’s a Lizzie After My Man Dere’s a Lizzie after my man, Dere’s a Lizzie after my man; She git ’im if she can, ’Cause I kotch her holdin’ his han’, Dis-a mawnin’, dis evenin’ more ’n late. Her face am powdered white, Her face am powdered white; Her hair am greasy an’ slick, On my man she try to work ’er trick, Dis-a mawnin’, dis evenin’ more ’n soon. She comed ’roun’ to my do’, She comed ’roun’ to my do’; Den I ripped offen her skirt, Den I tore offen his shirt, Dis-a mawnin’, dis evenin’, more ’n soon. [164] Dat Sly Gal Dat sly gal, Oh, dat sly, ’ceitful, lyin’ gal, She leads dat long tearful prayer Wid her head propped on my chair. She stole my man away, Yes, Lawd, she stole my man away. I Don’t Feel Welcome Here I’s goin’ down de road Where I can get better care. I believe I’ll go ’Cause I don’t feel welcome here. I’s goin’ to ketch dat train, Dont’ kere where it’s from, ’Cause I ain’t gonna stay here An’ be made no stumblin’ block. I landed here one night When de clock wus strikin’ nine, Lookin’ fer dat woman Dat had stole dat man o’ mine. I hunts dat woman high, I hunts dat woman low, I’s gonna rip dat woman From her mouf clean down befo’. Occupied Coon, coon, coon, great big yaller coon, He sets all night jis’ outern my do’. He says, “Please lemme res’ dere jis’ once mo’,” But, Lawd, it’s occupied, But, Lawd, it’s occupied. Dat coon’d be hot if he knowed de troof, Dat a chocolate-drop lef’ over de roof. But he wanta come in once mo’ An’ be occupied, An’ be occupied. [165] I’m Gonna Get Me Another Man My man ain’t treatin’ me right, He haven’t been home this week. I’m goin’ get me another man An’ let that black kinky-headed bastard go. He don’t love me an’ he don’t mean me no good. I’m a brown-skin woman an’ tailor-made, I believe I can get me a man in anybody’s town. The man I love an’ am wild about, He is brown-skin, Got curled hair an’ tailor-made hisself. I Got Another Daddy Leavin’ here, I sho’ don’t wanta go. Goin’ up de country, Brown-skin, I can’t carry you. Don’t write me no letters, Dont’ sen’ me no word, I got another daddy To take your place. [166] CHAPTER X FOLK MINSTREL TYPES One of the most interesting of all the Negro’s secular songs is the folk minstrel type. This minstrel song is similar to the original minstrel, in which one or more wandering musicians and songsters travel from place to place rendering song and music with varied accompaniments. Sometimes one singer goes alone, sometimes two, sometimes a quartette. They are entertainers in the real sense that they exhibit themselves and their art with all the naturalness and spontaneity possible. Furthermore, such minstrels are not infrequently ingenious in composing new verses and adapting them to old tunes or to newly discovered ones. Such songs are also well adapted to social gatherings and to various special occasions. They should be distinguished from the black-face type of vaudeville song and the minstrel show, although of course the song of the traveling show must inevitably influence the minstrel type a great deal. For sheer type-portraiture, however, the minstrel Negro and his song must undoubtedly be presented if the whole picture is to be complete. Typical scenes are the singing on special gala occasions, such as fairs, holidays, and picnics, at resorts of the whites, on the road or on street corners. Such singers also accompany many a patent-medicine man or other street-corner vender of wares. Sung in this way, of course, are many of the ordinary secular creations, but in general the minstrel type is[167] more finished and formal, with more of rhyme and something of the ballad technique, with much of the humor and entertaining qualities implied in its kind. Most of these songs would repay special study on the part of the student of folk songs and ballads who wishes to trace origins and developments. While all the songs we have listed are Negro songs in the sense that they are sung much and regularly by Negroes, with the special artistic expression and manner common to them, they are, of course, often much mixed with similar songs originating elsewhere. In the case of It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’,[77] for instance, the origin of course is a common one, and many of the scores of verses are sung alike by white and Negro minstrels, with only minor distinctions due to manner and situation. And yet of the several hundred verses which are even now extant, some are very clearly of Negro origin, exhibiting something of the Negro’s traditional phrases and his blues. A Negro quartette singing It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ is undoubtedly singing a Negro song. Among the songs in the previous volume which are adapted to the minstrel type of singing are Railroad Bill, Lilly, Stagolee, Eddy Jones,[78] and some of the more recently composed religious types. [77]No verses of It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’ are given in this volume, although our collection included several score. They are scarcely within the bounds of the present collection. [78]See The Negro and His Songs, pp. 196, 198, 205, 228. One of the most attractive of all the Negro songs we have heard was That Liar, sung by two elderly Negro men at Columbia, South Carolina, through the courtesy of Dr. E. L. C. Adams. The main part of the song is always chanted by the leader in recitative sing-song very much after the fashion of a sermon when the minister has reached his emotional climax. Then upon reaching the chorus, he suddenly turns into rapid[168] song, accompanied by his companion. They sing the chorus with the usual accompaniment of “Oh” or “Lawd” or “Let me tell you.” The song, with some variations and repetitions, is good for almost an hour’s entertainment. It is also a very good shouting song. That Liar[79] Jes’ let me tell you how a liar will do. Always comin’ with somethin’ new, He’ll steal yo’ heart with false pretense, Makin’ out like he’s yo’ bes’ frien’; An’ when he finds out you believe what he say, Then that liar gonna have his way. He’ll bring you news ’bout women and men, Make you fall out with yo’ bes’ frien’. Chorus: If you don’t want to get in trouble, If you don’t want to get in trouble, If you don’t want to get in trouble, You better let that liar alone. When a liar takes a notion his friends to improve, He lay around de neighbors and git de news. Nearly every day when you look out, See that liar come to yo’ house, Tell you sich lies surprise yo’ min’ An’ mix a little truth to make it shine. An’ when he git his news fix jes’ right, That liar gonna cause a fight. When everything’s in perfect peace, Here come that liar with his deceit, Make believe that he love you so well, Till every day he must come an’ tell. “Let me tell you, my sister, if you jes’ knew What a certain somebody tell me ’bout you.” He studies up lie and tell it so smooth, Until you think undoubtedly must be true. He’ll bring you out to trace de tale, An’ if you don’t mind you’ll be put in jail. [169] A hypocrite and liar both keep up a fuss, Dey both very bad, but a liar’s the wuss; He’ll come to yo’ house in powerful rush, Say, “I can’t stay long for I must go to my work, I jes’ come to tell you what somebody say.” Then he’ll take a seat an’ stay all day. He’ll tell you some things that’ll cause you to pout, Then at las’ he’ll force you out. He knows that he owes you, an’ if you ask him for pay, He’ll fall out wid you and stay away. [79]Cf. The song given by Ballanta in his St. Helena Island Spirituals, p. 72. Sung in very much the same way is the War Jubilee Song, itself a type of popular traveling song. It was the favorite of the same two singers, both noted songsters of the Columbia environs, and they claimed to have learned it from a traveling Negro secretary of the Y. W. C. A., who came from Florida immediately after the World War. Here again the chorus was sung with effective variations, “Now I’m so glad,” or “You know I’m so glad,” or “I declare I’m so glad,” and many others. War Jubilee Song When the U. S. got in de war Wus de saddes’ day I ever saw. Registration day began to start An’ it come near breakin’ all mothers’ heart. Chorus: Now I’m so glad, I’m so glad, Now I’m so glad, I’m so glad, Now I’m so glad, I’m so glad Jesus brought peace all over dis lan’. You know, I declare, Jesus brought peace all over dis lan’. But God who called us here below Tol’ de boys, “Get ready, with you I’ll go.” Jes’ take me over in Germany lan’ An’ I will conquer every man. [170] When time fer train to roll, Uncle Sam had boys under his control, An’ when town bell begin to ring Some tried to be happy and begin to sing. Some from Newport News, so I am tol’, An’ some in France where it was col’. Jes’ carry me over in de lan’ of France Where every soldier will have a fightin’ chance. That vessel leave New York with thousands on board, Steam ship carry such a heavy load. Lawd, I’m over in very strange lan’, Wid all soldiers walk han’ in han’. An’ no good Christian did not fear, ’Cause Jesus Christ was engineer, Engineer standin’ at chariot wheel Backin’ up children on battle fiel’. Reason why war did last so long, So many people was livin’ wrong, Jes’ goin’ round runnin’ down colors and race An’ oughter been beggin’ fer little mo’ grace. Whilst dey wus fightin’ great noise wus heard, Smoke wus flyin’ jes’ lak a bird, Men were dyin’ wid thousands of groans, Now peace declared an’ boys at home. Uncle Sam he made and signed a decree For American nation to ben’ de knee. God sits in Heaven an’ answers prayer, An’ dey had to stop fightin’ over there. We put ourselves as debt to God, We say we’d follow where he trod, But de way got dark and we couldn’t see Jes’ who de winner of war would be. But de Christians prayed until dey cried, Hypocrite say dat dey had lied. But in deir heads dey had a doubt, But when peace was declared, Lawd, dey wanted to shout. [171] One of the most entertaining songs in all the repertoire of the Negro’s aggregate creations is Mr. Epting, sung by four Negro pick-and-shovel men with such zest and harmony as we have rarely heard. It is apparently a parody on the war song Good Morning, Mr. Zip, and with this particular quartette of workers would make a hit on any stage. In the singing, the largest member of the group dances a jig and exclaims in his big bass voice, “Lawd, Lawd, I feels funny when I sings this song. Lawd, Lawd, I can’t keep still, it gives me such a funny feelin’. Whoopee! Singin’ ’bout white man gives me funny feelin’.” In addition to the verses sung here the singer may substitute for whiskey and cocaine such words as gun, woman, policeman, work, and other forces which may be calculated to lead to the demise of these slanderers of Mr. Epting. Good Morning, Mr. Epting Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just nappy as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, You belong to the K. K. kind. Well, ashes to ashes, Well, dust to dust, Show me a woman That you can trust. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just nappy as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just kinky as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, You belong to the K. K. kind. Well, ashes to ashes, Well, dust to dust, Show me a woman That you can trust. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just kinky as mine. [172] Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just as black as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, You belong to the K. K. kind. Well, if whiskey don’t kill me, Well, cocaine must, Show me a woman That you can trust. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just black as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just black as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, You belong to the K. K. kind. Pistol don’t kill me, Well, cocaine must, Show me a woman That you can trust. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just as black as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just short as mine. Good morning, Mr. Epting, You belong to the K. K. kind. Well if whiskey don’t kill me, Well, cocaine must, Show me a woman That you can trust. Good morning, Mr. Epting, Your hair just as short as mine. The old song Raise a Rukus Tonight is now a popular one in various forms, those given here representing Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. There are many other versions and fragments, but these will suffice to indicate the type and mixture so common at present. One may easily see the similarity to the old song but also its corruption by such modern types[173] as It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’. Wring Jing, while not a “rukus” chorus, is so much of the same sort as to make its comparison of value. The other much varied and corrupted types are also valuable for comparative purposes. Raise a Rukus Tonight A My ol’ master promise me, Raise rukus tonight; Before he died he’d set me free, Raise rukus tonight. Chorus: Come along, chillun, come along, While the moon is shining bright, Get on board, down the river float, ’Cause we gonna raise a rukus tonight. His hair come out and his head turned bal’, Raise rukus tonight; He got out o’ notion dyin’ at all, Raise rukus tonight. ’Scuse me, mister, don’t get mad, Raise rukus tonight; ’Cause you look like sumpin the buzzards had, Raise rukus tonight. Look at that nigger, ain’t he black? Raise rukus tonight; Got hair on his head like a carpet tack, Raise rukus tonight. Black cat settin’ on chimney jam, Raise rukus tonight; If that ain’t hot place, I’ll be damn, Raise rukus tonight. Way down yonder on chit’lin’ switch, Raise rukus tonight; Bull frog jump from ditch to ditch, Raise rukus tonight. [174] Bull frog jump from bottom of well, Raise rukus tonight; Swore, by God, he jumped from hell, Raise rukus tonight. Raise a Rukus Tonight B Some folks say preacher won’t steal, Raise rukus tonight; I caught two in my corn fiel’, Raise rukus tonight. One had a bushel, one had fo’, Raise rukus tonight; If that ain’t stealin’ I don’t know, Raise rukus tonight. My ol’ missus promised me, Raise rukus tonight; When she died she’d set me free, Raise rukus tonight. She live so long ’til she got bal’, Raise rukus tonight; She got out notion dyin’ at all, Raise rukus tonight. So come along, chillun, come along, Where moon shine bright tonight; Get on board before boat gone, Gonna raise rukus tonight. Raise a Rukus Tonight C Come on, niggers, While the moon is shining bright, Get on the boat, Down the river we’ll float, We’re gonna raise a rukus tonight. Come on, little chillun, While the moon is shining bright, [175] We’re gonna raise cornbread An’ sweet potatoes tonight, Raise rukus tonight. My ol’ missus promised me, Raise rukus tonight, When she died she’d set me free. We’re gonna raise a rukus tonight, Gonna raise a rukus tonight. My ol’ master promised me, Gonna raise a rukus tonight, When I grew to be a man He’d give me a horse’s rein. Gonna raise a rukus tonight. Wring Jing Had a Little Ding If I live to see next fall, Wring Jing had a little ding, Ain’t goin’ to have no lover at all, Wring Jing had a little ding. My ol’ missus promised me, Wring Jing had a little ding, When she died she’d set me free, Wring Jing had a little ding. When she died she died so po’, Wring Jing had a little ding, She left me sittin’ on de kitchen flo’, Wring Jing had a little ding. Bull frog jumped into bottom of well, Wring Jing had a little ding, Swore, by golly, he jumped in hell, Wring Jing had a little ding. My ol’ missus had a mule, Wring Jing had a little ding, His name was Martin Brown, Wring Jing had a little ding. Every foot that Martin had, Wring Jing had a little ding, Would cover an acre of groun’, Wring Jing had a little ding. [176] Gwine to Git a Home By an’ By My ol’ missus promised me, Gwine to git a home by an’ by, When she died, she’d set me free, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. She did live till she got bal’, Gwine to git a home by an’ by, And she never died at all, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. Chorus: Den O dat watermelon! Lamb of goodness, you must die; I’m gwine to jine de contraband, chillun, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. A shoo-fly cut a pigeon wing, Gwine to git a home by an’ by; A rattlesnake rolled in a ’possum’s skin, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. Cow path crooked gwine through the wood, Gwine to git a home by an’ by, Missus says I shan’t, I says I should, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. Sister Sue and ol’ Aunt Sallie, Gwine to git a home by an’ by, Both live down in shin-bone alley, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. Name on de house, name on de do’, Gwine to git a home by an’ by, Big green spot on de grocery sto’, Gwine to git a home by an’ by. There are many songs of the mule, some of which are old and being revived, some of which have been made new by the phonograph records. The first illustration here was sung with remarkable effect at the Dayton, Tennessee, Scopes trial, with hundreds of whites and Negroes standing around the quartette of Negroes[177] who came for the occasion. Most of their songs were of the stereotyped sort, such as Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’. The mule song is the best illustration of the minstrel type given in this volume. The other mule songs are presented largely for comparison, and are not particularly valuable. One of these, exhorting Miss Liza to keep her seat, is similar to the version collected twenty years ago in Mississippi.[80] [80]See The Negro and His Songs, p. 235. Go ’Long Mule I’ve got a mule, he’s such a fool He never pays no heed; I built a fire ’neath his tail, An’ then he showed some speed. Chorus: Go ’long, mule, Don’t you roll dem eyes; You can change a fool, but a doggone mule Is a mule until he dies. Drove down to the graveyard, Some peaceful rest to fin’; But when a black cat crossed my path I sure did change my min’. My gal’s ol’ man don’t like me much, He’s got a heart o’ flint; Last night I saw him buy a gun An’ I can take a hint. I bought some biscuits for my dog An’ put them on the shelf; Times got so hard I shot the dog An’ ate them up myself. Both Rufus Akes an’ Rastus Payne Got married down in Gaines; An’ now they say the Georgia woods Are full of Akes an’ Paynes. [178] A cowslip ain’t no kind o’ slip To slip upon a cow; That’s why a catfish never answers To a cat’s meow. A man in Georgia pulled a gun An’ took a shot at me; Just as he took the second shot I passed through Tennessee. Bill Jones was taken ill while callin’ On his gal Salome. What really caused his illness was Her husband who came home. They say some one’s been stealin’ things, It’s kind-a newsed aroun’; I swear I don’t know who it is, But I am leavin’ town. I’m goin’ to the river now To lay me down and die, An’ if I find the water’s wet I’ll wait until it’s dry. My gal invited me to dine, I went prepared to eat; But all she placed upon my plate Was chicken necks and feet. They’re gonna hold a meetin’ there Of some society. There’s ’leven sheets upon the line, That’s ten too much for me.[81] [81]Evidently refers to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. [179] Hump-back Mule If you want to sneeze, Tell you what to do, Get some salt an’ pepper, Put it in yo’ shoe. Ridin’ hump-back mule, Ridin’ hump-back mule, If you want to see pretty yaller gal, She’s ridin’ a hump-back mule. Ol’ massa bought pretty yaller gal, Bought her from the South, She wrapped her hair so tight She couldn’t open her mouth. Ridin’ hump-back mule, Ridin’ hump-back mule, If you want to see pretty yaller gal, She’s ridin’ a hump-back mule. Carried her to blacksmith shop To have her mouth made small, She back her years and open her mouth An’ swallowed shop and all. Ridin’ hump-back mule, Ridin’ hump-back mule, If you want to see pretty yaller gal, She’s ridin’ a hump-back mule. Niggers plant de cotton on hill, Niggers pick it out, White man pocket money, Nigger does without. Ridin’ hump-back mule, Ridin’ hump-back mule, If you want to see pretty yaller gal, She’s ridin’ a hump-back mule. Whoa, Mule I hear dem sleigh bells ringin’, snow am fallin’ fas’, I’s got dis mule in de horness, got him hitched at las’. Liza, get yo’ bonnet, come an’ take a seat, Grab up dat robe you’re sittin’ on an’ cover up yo’ feet. [180] Chorus: Whoa, mule, whoa I say! Keep yo’ seat, Miss Liza Jane, an’ hold on to de sleigh. Whoa, mule, whoa I say! Keep yo’ seat, Miss Liza Jane, an’ hold on to de sleigh. What’s dis mule a-roamin’ for? He ain’t got half a load. When you catch dis mule a-roamin’, jus’ give him all de road. Don’t get scared at nothin’, you stay here today, Liza, help me hold dis mule, or else he’ll get away. Watch dis mule a-goin’, goodness how he can sail! Watch his big ears floppin’, see him sling his tail. Goin’ down to de ’possum, Liza, you keep cool, I ain’t got time to kiss you now, I’s busy with dis mule. A Nigger’s Hard to Fool A Georgia nigger an’ a Georgia mule, Dese two asses is hard to fool. Might fool a white man, Might fool his mother, Might fool his sister, An’ you might fool his brother; But a nigger’s hard to fool, But a nigger’s hard to fool. A Georgia yaller gal An’ a Georgia black Kin always dog A feller’s track, But he’s hard to fool. Yes, Lawd, a nigger’s hard to fool. A Georgia road’s red, Bottom lan’ black, A Georgia nigger Is a cracker jack, An’ he’s hard to fool. Yes, Lawd, a nigger’s hard to fool. [181] I’m Fishin’ Boun’ Look ’cross the fiel’, see the sun comin’ down, Dis is de day to be layin’ ’roun’. Bait in de can, hook on de stick, I’m done too lazy to hit a lick, I’m fishin’ boun’, I’m fishin’ boun’. Lazies got me, an’ I don’t keer, Stomach’s empty, but who’s gonna fear? Bait in de can, hook on de stick, Fishin’ spell done got me, I can’t hit a lick, I’m fishin’ boun’, I’m fishin’ boun’. Come on fellers, wid yo’ luck in yo’ han’ We’s gonna eat minners out de fryin’ pan, Bait in de can, hook on de line, If I don’t go to fishin’, nigger, I’ll be dyin’, I’m fishin’ boun’, I’m fishin’ boun’. Stretch flat on yo’ belly wid yo’ back in de air, Look out fo’ yo’ hook, Lawd, he’s bitin’ dere! Bait in de can, hook on de stick, I’m plum’ so hungry, I’m most nigh sick, I’m fishin’ boun’, I’m fishin’ boun’. Co’n Bread Co’n bread, co’n bread, Feed dis nigger on co’n bread. White man eats biscuit, Nigger eats pone; Nigger he’s de stronges’ Jes’ sho’s you bo’n. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Give dis nigger greasy co’n bread. Put on de skillit, Po’ in de grease, Don’t make a little, But a great big piece. Co’n bread, co’n bread, All lazy niggers loves co’n bread. [182] Sif’ out de bran an’ Drap in de pone, Lawd knowed whut he’s doin’ When he made dat co’n. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Give dis nigger plenty co’n bread. You loves Emma an’ I loves Jake. You is de nigger Some greasy co’n bread to bake. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Black greasy nigger eats co’n bread. One han’ in de hopper, De udder in de sack, Ol’ black nigger wid Red lips to smack. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Black greasy nigger eats co’n bread. ’Taters in de hill, Meal in de bag, Home-made sirup In de old black keg. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Black lazy nigger eats co’n bread. Ashes in de corner, Fire in de middle; Woman cooks rations, Man sets an’ whittles. Co’n bread, co’n bread, Feed dis nigger on co’n bread. Other songs which are current through the singing of the minstrel type, or distributed widely on printed sheets in much the same way as the “mule” songs, are No Coon But You, De Co’t House in De Sky, and[183] Hi-Jenny-Ho, sent us by Mr. J. D. Arthur of Tennessee. The Pullman Porter is a little more sophisticated, but represents a type of humor and easy-going vaudeville style. No Coon But You As I was strollin’ down the street, “Who did you meet?” A yellah gal I chanced to meet. “What did you say?” Said I, “My little honey, now who’s you gwine to meet? May I have the pleasure of walkin’ down the street With the one I long so for? You are the apple of my eye.” An’ then she turned her sparklin’ eyes an’ quickly said to me: Chorus: “No coon but you, babe, no coon but you, No coon but you, babe, will ever do. No coon but you, babe, no coon but you, No coon but you will ever do.” As we were passin’ down the street, “What happened then?” Her Sunday babe we chanced to meet. “What happened then?” He grabbed me by the shoulder, he quickly turned me ’roun’. Said I, “Look out here, nigger, I’ll fall you to the groun’.” But he took away my yellah gal, an’ as they passed me by, I heard him say, “Now who’s your babe?” an’ then she said to him: “No coon but you, babe,” etc. [184] That very same night there was a ball. “Where, nigger, where?” Down at the Black Fo’-Hundred’s Hall, “S’pose you were there?” Yes, I took along my razuh, an’ gave it such a swing, I cut that yellah nigger right under his left wing. An’ as they carried out his corpse I heard the people say, “Now who’ll be her babe?” an’ then she said to me: “No coon but you, babe,” etc. De Co’t House in de Sky I’s got a notion in my head As when you come to die, You’ll stand a ’zamination In de co’t house in de sky. You’ll be astonished at the questions That the angels gwine to ax, When they get you on the witness stan’ An’ pin you to the facts. Den yo’ eyes will open wider Than they ever done befo’, When they ax you ’bout the chicken scrapes What happened long ago. Chorus: To de co’t house in de sky I will raise my wings an’ fly, An’ stan’ the ’zamination In de co’t house in de sky. Now de angels on de picket line Along the milky way Keeps watchin’ what you’re doin’ An’ hearin’ what you say. No matter what you’re gwine to do, No matter whar you’re gwine, They’s mighty apt to find it out An’ pass it long de line. [185] Den often in de meetin’-house You make a fuss or laugh, Den the news it goes a kitin’ ’Long the golden telegraph. Den de angel in de office, What is settin’ by the gate, Jes’ reads the message with a look An’ claps it on de slate. Oh, you’d better do yo’ duty, boys, An’ keep yo’ conscience clear, An’ keep a-lookin’ straight ahead An’ watchin’ whar you steer. ’Cause after while the time will come To journey from dis lan’, Dey’ll take you ’way up in de air An’ place you on de stan’. Den you’ll have to listen mighty close An’ answer mighty straight, If you ever ’spects to enter Through that pretty golden gate. Oh, you’d better stop yo’ foolin’, That’s a place you can’t slide by, When you stan’ the ’zamination In de co’t house in de sky. Hi, Jenny, Ho, Jenny Johnson Once I loved a yaller gal, she said she’d marry me, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny, ho, my Jenny Johnson! Saw her eatin’ apples at a huckleberry bee, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Took her to a ball an’ we never did get back Till the break of morn, when you hear the chickens quack. She wouldn’t take the cars, so I took her in a hack; Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Chorus: Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny, come along with me, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny, ho, my Jenny Johnson! Sweeter than the honey at a huckleberry bee, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! [186] O my darling Jenny, she’s the sweetest girl in town, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny, ho, my Jenny Johnson! Captivates the neighborhood for miles an’ miles aroun’, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Said she loved another an’ it broke my heart in two, An’ I had to get it mended with a little piece of glue; She gave me back my locket an’ a little silver shoe, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Now my Jenny’s married to a little yaller coon, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny, ho, my Jenny Johnson! Take care for Jenny’s hubby, for he’ll kill you mighty soon, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Wooly-headed pickaninnies runnin’ roun’ the flo’, For they say there’s only two, but I wish they had a sco’; I’m gwine away to China, so I’ll never see her mo’, Hi, Jenny, ho, Jenny Johnson! Pullman Porter Runs from California Plumb up to Maine. I’s a Negro porter On de pullman train. Pullman train, Pullman train, I’s de Negro porter On de pullman train. Braid on the cap an’ Buttons in a row, On that blue uniform Right down the fo’. In pullman train, Pullman train, I’s a Negro porter On de pullman train. It’s a tip right here An’ a tip right thar, Tip all along Up an’ down de pullman car. [187] Pullman train, Pullman train, I’s a Negro porter On de pullman train. Pocket full o’ money, Stomach full o’ feed, What next in the worl’ Do a fellow need? Pullman train, Pullman train, I’s a Negro porter On de pullman train. Kitty Kimo[82] Dar was a frog lived in a spring, He had such a cold dat he could not sing, I pulled him out an’ frowed him on de groun’, Ol’ frog he bounced an’ run aroun’. Chorus: Camo, kimo, daro, war, My high, my ho, my rumstipumstididdle, Soot bag, pidly-wickem, linch ’em, nip cat, Sing song, Polly, won’t you kime, oh? Milk in de dairy, nine days ol’, Rats an’ skippers are gettin’ hol’; A long-tailed rat in a bucket of souse, Jes’ come from de white folks’ house. In North Carolina de niggers grow, If de white man only plant his toe. Water de ground with ’bacco smoke, An’ up de nigger’s head will poke. Way down South in Cedar street, Dere’s where de niggers grow ten feet, Dey go to bed, but ’tain’t no use, Deir feet hang out for a chicken’s roos’. [82]Cf. Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, pp. 156-7. [188] CHAPTER XI WORKADAY RELIGIOUS SONGS Many a laborer, although singing his full quota of secular songs, still finds his workaday solace best in his favorite heritage of church and religious melodies. There is surcease of sorrow in the plaintive Yes, Lawd, burden down, burden down, O Lawd, since I laid my burden down. And the appeal for relief from present difficulties, so eloquently expressed in the previous chapters, finds its counterpart in this favorite of many workers of the present day. Do, Lawd, remember me, Do, Lawd, remember me, When I’m in trouble, Do, Lawd, remember me. When I’m low down, Do, Lawd, remember me. Oh, when I’m low down, Do, Lawd, remember me. Don’t have no cross, Do, Lawd, remember me, Don’t have no crown, Do, Lawd, remember me. There seems to be an impression abroad to the effect that the making of Negro spirituals stopped long ago. On the contrary, it is quite probable that more spirituals are being made today than during the days of slavery. As a matter of fact the old spirituals have never been[189] static. It is no longer possible to speak of the “pure” or “original” version of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, of Roll, Jordan, Roll, or any other of the old favorites. If any one is in doubt of this, let him compare the words and music of the spirituals as they were recorded by Allen and others in 1867 with the records of the same songs later made by Fenner and Work and with the recent versions in James Weldon Johnson’s Book of American Negro Spirituals. Or let him compare the songs as they are sung at Hampton with the same songs as they are sung at Tuskegee or at Fisk. The spirituals, like all other folk songs, are dynamic. Sometimes in the process of constant change there appear variations which are so unlike the parent songs as to constitute virtually new songs. In this way the old spirituals have been the inspiration for untold numbers of new religious songs. Among the lowly Negro folk of the South the making of spirituals is still a reality. Every community has its “composers.” Often they are supposed to possess some special gift of the “spirit.” From sermon, prayer, and crude folk wisdom they draw ideas and inspiration for their compositions. Sometimes the results are pathetic, but not infrequently there springs up a song which would compare favorably with the old spirituals. It is not the purpose of this chapter to present the old spirituals or merely their newer variations, but rather to give some of the more unsophisticated religious songs of the workaday Negro as they are sung today in the South, by the same groups and individuals whose songs and verbal pictures this volume presents. They are not the kind of songs which are usually sung in the Negro churches, for many of them have only individual or local significance, while others show distinct secular touches. [190] Biblical themes continue to find a place in the Negro’s religious songs. Moses and Pharaoh and Noah and the ark are still the favorites. Here are a few of the workaday religious songs now current in the South. Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded is a favorite with children, and is often sung by them as a sort of reel. The three songs following it were sung by a woman in Georgia who is known locally as Sanctified Mary Harris. She claims that they are her own compositions and says that she composes only when she in “under de spirit.” Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded Mary, don’t you weep an’, Marthie, don’t you moan, Mary, don’t you weep an’, Marthie, don’t you moan; Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O baby, don’t you weep. I thinks every day an’ I wish I could Stan’ on de rock whar Moses stood; Oh, Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O baby, don’t you weep. If you git dere befo’ I do, Tell de Cap’n I’s a-comin’ too; Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O baby, don’t you weep. If I had wings lak de angels have, I never be caught drivin’ in anudder cab; Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O baby, don’t you weep. Baby, don’t you weep an’, baby, don’t you moan, You has to go to heaven wid yo’ buryin’ clothes on; Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O baby, don’t you weep. [191] Gonna Turn Back Pharaoh’s Army When de children wus in bondage Dey cried unto de Lawd, “O turn back Pharaoh’s army.” Hallelu! Chorus: Gonna turn back Pharaoh’s army, Hallelu! Yes, a-gonna turn back Pharaoh’s army, Hallelu! I write to Marse Jesus To send some valiant solders Jus’ to turn back Pharaoh’s army, Hallelu! When Moses smit de water The children all cross over, Den dey turn back Pharaoh’s army, Hallelu! Didn’t Ol’ Pharaoh Get Lost? God spoke to Moses, “Pharaoh now, Fer I have harden Pharaoh’s heart to me, Fer he will not bow.” Chorus: Didn’t ol’ Pharaoh get lost, get lost! Didn’t ol’ Pharaoh get lost in de Red Sea? Moses went unto Pharaoh An’ did whut de Lawd said how, But God had harden Pharaoh’s heart, He would not let dem go. Who Built de Ark? De very fust thing dat Nora done, He cut this timber down. De very next thing dat Nora done He huded it all aroun’. [192] Chorus: Who built de ark? Nora, Nora. Who built de ark? Nora an’ his Lawd. Who built de ark? Nora, Nora. Who built de ark? Nora an’ his Lawd. Nora said to de rovin’ bird, “Go bring me a grain of san’.” De rovin’ bird cried, “O Lawd, I can’t find no lan’.” The old songs had much to say about trouble, the struggle with sin and the devil, and the warning to the sinner man. Favorite lines used to be: Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen I’m a-rollin’ through an unfriendly worl’ O my good Lawd, keep me from sinkin’ down We are climbin’ Jacob’s ladder My sins so heavy I can’t get along Sinner, what you gonna do? O sinner, don’t you let dis harves’ pass Perhaps Satan and the terrors of hell and judgment are not pictured as frequently and as vividly as they used to be, but they are still a vital part of Negro song. The following songs portray the struggle with sin, the warning to the sinner, and the superior status of the sanctified as opposed to the sinner. Good Lawd, I Am Troubled Troubles makes me weep an’ moan, Goin’ where troubles be no mo’; Good Lawd, I am troubled. Troubles meet me at de do’, Goin’ where troubles be no mo’; Good Lawd, I am troubled. [193] Troubles up and troubles down, Troubles never makes me frown; Good Lawd, I am troubled. We Will Kneel ’Roun’ de Altar Lawd, help me to be mo’ humble, Lawd, help me to be mo’ humble, In dat great gittin’-up mornin’, Lawd, help me be mo’ humble in dis worl’. Chorus: We will kneel ’roun’ de altar on our knees, We will kneel ’roun’ de altar on our knees, We will kneel ’roun’ de altar Till we view de risin’ sun. O Lawd, have mercy on me. Lawd, help me be mo’ faithful, Lawd, help me be mo’ faithful in dis worl’. We will see God’s risin’ sun, Lawd, help me be mo’ humble in dis worl’. Lawd, help de widders an’ de orphans in dis worl’, Lawd, help de widders an’ de orphans in dis worl’. In dis great gittin’-up mawnin’, Lawd, help the widders an’ de orphans in dis worl’. De Devil’s Been to My House[83] De devil’s been to my house today, today, De devil’s been to my house today, today, Lawd, de devil’s been to my house today, today, De devil’s been to my house today, today. I kicked him out my do’ today, today, I kicked him out my do’ today, today, Lawd, I kicked him out my do’ today, today, I kicked him out my do’ today, today. [194] I’s goin’ sin-huntin’ today, today, I’s goin’ sin-huntin’ today, today, Lawd, I’s goin’ sin-huntin’ today, today, I’s goin’ sin-huntin’ today, today. [83]The next three songs are compositions of Sanctified Mary Harris. Have Everlastin’ Life has little originality, however. Jes’ Behol’ What a Number! Yonder comes my sister Who I’s loves so well. By her disobedience She have made her bed in hell. Chorus: Jes’ behol’ what a number! Jes’ behol’ what a number! Jes’ behol’ what a number From every grave-yard. I looks unto de eas’, I looks unto de wes’, I see de dead a-risin’ From every grave-yard. Have Everlastin’ Life Better min’, my sister, how you walk on de cross, Have on everlastin’ life, Your foot might slip an’ your soul get los’, Have everlastin’ life. Chorus: Oh, he dat believe, oh, he dat believe, He shall have on everlastin’ life. He dat believe on de father an’ de son Shall have everlastin’ life. De tallest tree in paradise, Have everlastin’ life, De Christian call it de tree of life, Put on everlastin’ life. [195] The Sanctified Say, who’s gonna ride my father’s horse? Say, who’s gonna ride my father’s horse? Say, who’s gonna ride my father’s horse? Thank God, the sanctified. Say, none can ride but the sanctified, Say, none can ride but the sanctified, Say, none can ride but the sanctified, Thank God, the sanctified. Say, Paul he rode with the sanctified, Say, Paul he rode with the sanctified, Say, Paul he rode with the sanctified, Thank God, the sanctified. No sinner rides with the sanctified, No sinner rides with the sanctified, No sinner rides with the sanctified, Thank God, I’m sanctified. What You Gonna Do? Sinner, what you gonna do When de world’s on fi-er? Sinner, what you gonna do When de world’s on fi-er? Sinner, what you gonna do When de world’s on fi-er? O my Lawd. Brother, what you gonna do? etc. Sister, what you gonna do? etc. Father, what you gonna do? etc. Mother, what you gonna do? etc. I Love Jesus Dark was de night an’ cold was de groun’ On which de Lawd had laid; Drops of sweat run down, In agony he prayed. [196] Would thou despise my bleedin’ lam’ An’ choose de way to hell, Still steppin’ down to de tomb, An’ yet prepared no mo’? I love Jesus, I love Jesus, I love Jesus, O yes, I do, Yes, Lawdy. Save Me, Lawd Lawd, have mercy, Lawd, have mercy. Lawd, have mercy, Lawd, have mercy. Save po’ me, Save po’ sinner, Save po’ sinner, Save po’ sinner, Save me, Lawd. I am a-dyin’, I am a-dyin’, I am a-dyin’, Save me, Lawd. O Lawd, bless me, O Lawd, bless me, O Lawd, bless me, O Lawd, bless me. Save po’ me, Save po’ sinner, Save po’ sinner, Save po’ sinner, Save me, Lawd. Parting and death are the subjects of the saddest songs that the Negro sings. The following songs awaken thoughts of the old folk saying their goodby’s at the last service of a revival meeting or parting after a long-hoped-for family reunion. I Bid You a Long Farewell is one of the favorites of Aunt Georgia Victrum, age eighty-three, of Jasper County, Georgia. [197] I Bid You a Long Farewell Mother, meetin’ is over, Mother, we mus’ part. If I never see you no mo’, I love you in my heart. Chorus: I bid you a long farewell, Brother, I bid you a long farewell. If I never see you no mo’ I bid you a las’ farewell. Brother, meetin’ is over, Brother, we must part. If I never see you no mo’, I love you in my heart. I Don’t Want You All to Grieve After Me I don’t want you all to grieve after me, I don’t want you all to grieve after me. Oh, when I’m dead an’ buried in my col’ silent tomb, I don’t want you all to grieve after me. An’ I will walk through the valley in peace, An’ I will walk through the valley in peace. Oh, when I’m dead an’ buried in my col’, silent tomb, I don’t want you all to grieve after me. My dear mother, don’t you grieve after me, My dear mother, don’t you grieve after me. Oh, when I’m dead an’ buried in my col’, silent tomb, I don’t want you all to grieve after me. My ol’ uncle, don’t you grieve after me, etc.[84] [84]And so on for father, sister, brother, etc., etc. When I’s Dead an’ Gone He is a dyin’-bed maker. Jesus met a woman at de well, An’ she went runnin’ home An’ tol’ her friends, “A man tol’ me all I ever done.” [198] The friends dey come a runnin’ with de woman, Saw Jesus settin’ on de well, He said he could give de livin’ water An’ save yo’ soul from hell. He is a dyin’-bed maker. When I’s dead an’ gone Somebody gonna say I’s lost, But dey ought-a go down by Jordan An’ see whar Jesus led me ’cross. When I’s dead an’ gone, I don’t want you to cry; Jus’ go on down to de ol’ church An’ close my dyin’ eye. When Jesus hangin’ on de cross, His mudder began to moan. He looked at his dear ’ciples An say, “Take my dear mudder home.” Angels Lookin’ at Me Dig my grave wid a silver spade, Angels lookin’ at me. Oh, look-a dere, look-a dere, Oh, look-a dere, look-a dere, Angels lookin’ at me. Drive me dere in a cerriage fine, Angels lookin’ at me. Oh, look-a dere, look-a dere, Oh, look-a dere, look-a dere, Angels lookin’ at me. Let me down wid a silver chain, Angels lookin’ at me, etc. All dem sinners can moan an’ weep, Angels lookin’ at me, etc. I’s settin’ in heaven in a golden cheer, Angels lookin’ at me, etc. [199] You Mus’ Shroud My Body Pray, mother, pray fer me, Pray, Lawd, until I die. You mus’ shroud my body, Lawd, An’ lay it away. Chorus: I hear Jerusalem moan, You mus’ shroud my body, Lawd, An’ lay it away. Pray, sister, pray fer me, Pray, Lawd, until I die, You mus’ shroud my body, Lawd, An’ lay it away. But death holds no terror for the Negro. He maintains that death’s stream “chills the body but not the soul,” and he believes that ’Way up in the Rock of Ages In God’s bosom gonna be my pillah. As of old, heaven is the greatest theme of his religious song. He used to sing: When I git to heaven gonna ease, ease, Me an’ my God gonna do as we please. Now wait till I gits my gospel shoes, Gonna walk about heaven an’ spread the news. Dere’s a long white robe in de heaven for me. No more hard trials in de kingdom. Gonna feast off milk an’ honey. Now he sings: I wants to go to heaven, set in de angel’s seat; I wants to go to heaven, eat what de angels eat. [200] I’s gonna be in my home in heaven When I lay my burden down. I’m swingin’ in de swinger, Gonna swing me home to heaven. I’s gonna bathe my weary soul in paradise. But let the songs speak for themselves. Among them are some which might now be famous if they had only been born seventy years ago. I Never Will Turn Back Jesus my all to heaven is gone, I never will turn back While de heaven’s in my view, He who I fix my heart upon. I never will turn back While heaven’s in my view. Chorus: I never will, I never will, I never will turn back While de heaven’s in my view. While de heaven’s in my view My journey I prosue. I never will turn back When heaven’s in my view. When I Lay My Burden Down Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down, Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down, Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down, I gonna be in heaven when I lay my burden down. Glory, glory, hallelujah, I’s goin’ to my home on high, Glory, glory, hallelujah, I’s goin’ to my home on high, Glory, glory, hallelujah, I’s goin’ to my home on high, I’s gonna be in my home in heaven when I lay my burden down. [201] Since I Laid My Burden Down I been shoutin’, I been shoutin’ Since I laid my burden down; I been shoutin’, I been shoutin’ Since I laid my burden down. Chorus: Glory, glory, hallelujah, Since I laid my burden down; Glory, glory, hallelujah, Since I laid my burden down. I been prayerin’, I been prayerin’ Since I laid my burden down; I been prayerin’, I been prayerin’ Since I laid my burden down. In de Mornin’ Soon Sister Sal she got on her travelin’ shoes, In de mornin’ soon, In de mornin’ soon, In de mornin’ soon. Yes, I’s goin’ to bury my weary soul In de mornin’ soon. Sinners, I hates to leave you here, Sinners, I hates to leave you here, Sinners, I hates to leave you here, ’Cause I goin’ to go to paradise In de mornin’ soon. Some o’ dese days jes’ about noon, Some o’ dese days jes’ about noon, Some o’ dese days jes’ about noon, I’s goin’ to bathe my weary soul in paradise In de mornin’ soon. [202] Oh, de Gospel Train’s A-Comin’ Oh, de gospel train’s a-comin’, Goodby, good by, good by. Oh, de gospel train’s a-comin’, Goodby. Oh, de gospel train’s a-comin’, Oh, de gospel train’s a-comin’, Oh, de gospel train’s a-comin’, Goodby. Oh, she’s comin’ ’roun’ de curve, Goodby, good by, good by. Oh, she’s comin’ ’roun’ de curve, Goodby. Oh, de train am heavy loaded, etc. Oh, sinner have you got you ticket? etc. Oh, she’s boun’ straight way to heaven, etc. Can’t you change you way o’ livin? etc. Oh, Marse Jesus am de captain, etc. Oh, de ride am free to heaven, etc. Some o’ These Days I’m a-goin’ to cross that river Jordan, I’m a-goin’ to cross that river Jordan, hal-lu-yah! I’m a-goin’ to cross that river Jordan, I’m a-goin’ to cross that river Jordan some o’ these days. I’m a-goin’ to sit down side o’ my Jesus, I’m a-goin’ to sit down side o’ my Jesus, hal-lu-yah! I’m a-goin’ to sit down side o’ my Jesus, I’m a-goin’ to sit down side o’ my Jesus some o’ these days. I’m a-goin’ to tell him how I love him, I’m a-goin’ to tell him how I love him, hal-lu-yah! I’m a-goin’ to tell him how I love him, I’m a-goin’ to tell him how I love him some o’ these days. [203] I’m a-goin’ to wear them golden slippers, I’m a-goin’ to wear them golden slippers, hal-lu-yah! I’m a-goin’ to wear them golden slippers, I’m a-goin’ to wear them golden slippers some o’ these days. I Wants to Go to Heaven I wants to go to heaven, Jine de angels’ ban’; I wants to go to heaven, Stan’ where de angels stan’. I wants to go to heaven, Have some angel wing; I wants to go to heaven, See de Jesus King. I wants to go to heaven, Shout lak de angels shout; I wants to go to heaven An’ walk about. I wants to go to heaven, Set in de angels’ seat; I wants to go to heaven, Eat what de angels eat. I wants to go to heaven, Weep when de angels weep; I wants to go to heaven Sleep where de angels sleep. When I Git Home Gonna shout trouble over When I git home, Gonna shout trouble over When I git home. No mo’ prayin’, no mo’ dyin’ When I git home, No mo’ prayin’ an’ no mo’ dyin’ When I git home. [204] Meet my father When I git home. Meet my father When I git home. Shake glad hands When I git home, Shake glad hands When I git home. Meet King Jesus When I git home, Yes, I meets King Jesus When I git home. I’s Gonna Shine I’s gonna shine Whiter dan snow, When I gits to heaven An’ dey meets me at de do’. Oh, shine, I will shine, How dey shine, glory shine, When I gits to heaven An’ dey meets me at de do’. Shine, God a’-mighty shine, All de sinners shine in de row; But I’ll be de out-shinedest When dey meets me at de do’. Oh, shine, de brudders shine, Dey sisters shine ever mo’, When we all gits to heaven An’ dey meets us at de do’. I’s Swingin’ in de Swinger[85] I’s swingin’ in de swinger, Thank God. I’s swingin’ in de swinger, Thank God. [205] It’s a bran’ new swinger, Thank God. It’s a bran’ new swinger, Thank God, Thank God. Goin’ to swing me to heaven, Thank God. Goin’ to swing me to heaven, Thank God, Thank God. King Jesus in de swinger, Thank God. King Jesus in de swinger, Thank God, Thank God. [85]The idea for this novel song probably came from Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. It is another composition of Sanctified Mary Harris, as are also the two remaining songs in this chapter. Goodby, Sing Hallelu Goodby to sin an’ sorrow, Goodby, sing hallelu. Farewell, sinner, I see you no mo’, Goodby, sing hallelu. Goodby, hypocrite, you Beelzebub, Goodby, sing hallelu. I’m goin’ away, I’ll meet you in heaven, Goodby, sing hallelu. Farewell, mother, I meet you in de mawnin’, Goodby, sing hallelu. I Calls My Jesus King Emanuel O King Emanuel, I calls my Jesus King Emanuel. King Emanuel, he’s a mighty ’Manuel, I calls my Jesus King Emanuel. Some calls him Jesus, But I call my Jesus King Emanuel. Because his power so great and strong, I calls my Jesus King Emanuel. [206] CHAPTER XII THE ANNALS AND BLUES OF LEFT WING GORDON Here is a construction camp which employs largely Negro workers. In four years 8,504 laborers were employed and there was an average labor turnover of once each month, or forty-eight different sets of men working on the buildings and road under construction during that time. This camp employed men from different Southern states in the order named: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana; while stragglers represented eleven states outside the South. Why this turnover? Why do men travel from state to state? Of what sort are they? How many road camps and construction groups throughout the South duplicate this record? What are the experience, history, difficulties of the Negro worker by the roadside? Why does he quit his job? Where will he go for the next? The entire story of the casual laborer will, of course, have to be told elsewhere in thorough studies of migration and case studies of many individuals. It is a remarkable story, sometimes unbelievable. It is not the purpose of this chapter to go into the matter of causes, but to present a picture of the workaday songster as a sort of cumulative example of the whole story of this volume. It is true that his early home life, his training, his experience, his relation to the whites, have all influenced him greatly. It is true also that there is often slack work, poor conditions of housing and work, little recreation, small wages, and always a[207] call to some better place. But we are concerned with these here only as they are a part of the background of the picture. Here is a type perhaps more representative of the Negro common man than any other. Now a youngster of eight, father and mother dead, off to Texas to an uncle, then—“po’ mistreated boy”—he goes to Louisiana, then to Mississippi, then to Georgia, across South Carolina, back home to North Carolina, then off to Philadelphia, to Pittsburg, to Ohio, to Chicago, then back to the East and Harlem and back South again. He is typical of a part of the Negro movement of the decade. But there is continuously a stream of moving laborers from country to town, from town to town, from city to city, from state to state, from South to North. Here is hardship, but withal adventure, romance, and blind urge for survival. As an example of this worker and songster we present John Wesley Gordon, alias Left Wing[86] Gordon, commonly called “Wing.” He is very real, and one could scarcely imagine a better summary of the lonesome road, if made to order. Recent popular volumes portraying the species hobo show no wanderers arrayed like these black men of the lonesome road. Walt Whitman’s Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road Healthy and free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose would seem a gentle taunt to Left Wing Gordon on the red roads of Georgia or on the Seaboard rods in “sweet ol’ Alabam’.” He had, at the last writing, given excellent tale of working, loafing, singing his way[208] through thirty-eight states of the union, with such experience and adventure as would make a white man an epic hero. “You see, boss, I started travelin’ when I wus ’leven years ol’ an’ now I’ll be thirty this comin’ August 26th. I didn’t have no father an’ mother, so I jes’ started somewheres. I’d work fer folks, an’ they wouldn’t treat me right, so I moved on. An’, Lawd, cap’n, I ain’t stopped yet.” And so he hadn’t, for when on the morrow we came to put the finishing touches on his story, a fellow laborer said, “Law’, boss, Wing done gone to Philadelphia.” [86]So called because he had lost his right arm. “Wing,” who started from St. Joseph in Missouri, lost his arm at eighteen years of age. He gives the following concrete data about some of the places where he has worked and loafed. What story might have been written if we had taken the states alphabetically, asking him for full details, with plenty of time, one can only imagine. Here is the order in which he volunteered information about the different states, in the geography of which he appears to be something of a scholar. The phraseology belongs to Wing and the inconsistencies remain as in his Iliad. Louisiana. Worked on boat some an’ saw-mill some. Florida. Worked on hard roads. Alabama. Worked in steel plants six miles from Birmingham. Texas. Didn’t do nothin’ in Texas, had a little money to spend. Arkansas. Worked at H—— Hotel at New Port, fellow runnin’ name Jack N——. Missouri. Worked on boat. Illinois. Sold papers in Chicago, started mowin’ lawns, white-washin’ fences, brushin’ furniture, an’ worked in packin’ house. [209] Wyoming. Had a little money in Cheyenne an’ didn’t have nothin’ to do. Nebraska. At Omaha worked at packin’ house. Iowa. Worked in mines and on railroad. Canada. Worked at government camp ’cross from Detroit, an’ broom factory at Montreal. Michigan. Worked at Ford factory at district on P. & M. railroad out north of Detroit. Kansas. In harvest fields ’bout 37 miles from Leavenworth—Naw sir, never been in Leavenworth prisons. North Carolina. On a job. Arizona. Didn’t do nothin’ much. South Carolina. On hard roads an’ Southern Power Company. Georgia. Comin’ in a hurry, never fooled ’round there much. Did work in saw mill eight miles out from Waycross two weeks. Tennessee. Out at Knoxville and Maysville at maloominum plant. Mississippi. In boats at Vicksburg and Natchez. Virginia. Worked most everywhere—Richmond at Broad Meadows, 1227 Brook Avenue. New York. Out at Bessemer plants stirrin’ pots. Washington. At Alexandria, Virginia side. Ohio. Worked for Mayor of Bridgeport, named C. J—. West Virginia. At coal mines. Pennsylvania. Worked in Pittsburg steel mills eight miles from Pittsburg. Maryland. I’s in Baltimore, had boat carry us out an’ bring us back, Double A flashlight factory at 47 cents a hour. New Jersey. Cross from New York, four miles from Nooark, work on Hansack River. Wisconsin. Used to work out o’ Milwaukee, butler on C. B. & Q. road; eight miles out but we stayed in Milwaukee. [210] Connecticut. Used to ketch boat an’ go over to New Haven, Hartford, Thomasville, eight miles out from Springfiel’, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Springfiel’ and Boston, too. Didn’t work none in Boston but had sister there. Rhode Island. Never stopped there but I could walk all over that little state. Hartford is capital. North Dakota. Wiped up engine on Great Northern, 237 miles from Minneapolis. South Dakota. Worked out in Aberdeen in wheat fields, harvest for Al T——, mostly carried water. California. When war was goin’ on, time of government camp at Los Angeles an’ Sacramento an’ Miles City. Wing was also a great songster. “When de ‘Wing Blues’ come out, dat’s me,” he would say. His chief refrain was always O my babe, you don’t know my min’, When you see me laughin’, Laughin’ to keep from cryin’,[87] of which he had many versions. This chorus was easily adapted to a hundred songs and varied accordingly. “When you see me laughin’, I’m laughin’ just to keep from cryin’,” or “I’m tryin’ to keep from cryin’,” or “When you think I’m laughin’, I’m cryin’ all the time.” There were his other versions, such as O my babe, you don’t know my min’, When you think I’m lovin’ you I’m leavin’ you behin’, with its similar variety, such as “I’m leavin’ to worry you off my min’,” or “When you think I’m leavin’[211] I’m comin’ right behin’.” Wing claimed a “Blues” for every state and more; if there was none already at hand, he would make one of his own. There were the various Southern blues, the Boll Weevil Blues, Cornfield Blues, Gulf Coast Blues, Atlanta Blues, Alabama Blues, Birmingham Blues, Mississippi Blues, Louisiana Low Down, Shreveport Blues, New Orleans Wiggle, Norfolk Blues, Virginia Blues, Oklahoma Blues, Memphis Blues, Wabash Blues, St. Louis Blues, Carolina Blues, Charleston Blues, and many others. [87]One of the most popular blues today is a piece called You Don’t Know My Mind Blues. We have evidence, however, which tends to show that numerous vulgar versions of the same title were current among the Negroes long before the formal song was published. It must be admitted that Wing’s blues were mixed and of wonderful proportions. He could sing almost any number of blues, fairly representative of the published type, with, of course, the typical additions, variations, and adaptations to time and occasion. Ohio, Ohio, West Virgini, too, De blues dis nigger’s had only very few. What you gonna do? Lawd, what you gonna do? When I come from New York, Walkin’ ’long the way, People pick me up Jes’ to get me to pay, Ain’t my place to live, Anyway you can’t stay here. O Illinois Central, What can you spare? Fo’ my baby’s in trouble An’ I ain’t dere. Hey, Lawdy, Lawdy, I got crazy blues, Can’t keep from cryin’, Thinkin’ about that baby o’ mine. Lawd, I woke up dis mornin’, Found my baby gone, Missed her from rollin’ An’ tumblin’ in my arms. [212] O Lawd, if I feel tomorrow Lak I feel to-day, Good God, gonna pack my suitcase, Lawd, an’ walk away. I’d rather be in jail, Standin’ like a log, Than be here Treated like a dog. Creek’s all muddy, Pond’s gone dry, I never miss my baby Till she said goodby. Well, I went to graveyard An’ looked in my baby’s face, Said, “I love you, sweet baby, Jes’ can’t take yo’ place.” Whistle blowed on, Church bell softly toned; Well, I had good woman But po’ girl dead an’ gone. Well, I woke up dis mornin’, Had blues all ’round my bed; I believe to my soul Blues gonna kill me dead. O baby, you don’t know my min’. When you think I’m laughin’, Laughin’ to keep from cryin’, Laughin’ to keep from cryin’. Wing called that the Louisiana Blues, and certainly for the time being it was so. And for Georgia, although in his narrative he had given the Empire State of the South the usual Negro reputation of quick passage, he sang a mixed blues. [213] Dear ol’ Georgia, my heart is sinkin’ An’ my way come blinkin’ to you, If you ever leave Georgia any length o’ time, Yo’ heart come blinkin’, no other way but you, Can’t be no other way.[88] Then for Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, California, Virginia, there were other fragments, besides numerous formal versions. Alabama, Tennessee, I wrote my mother letter. Don’t write back to me, Reason I tell you, I got de ’fo’-day blues. I got de Florida blues, Hey, mama, hey, baby, I got de crazy blues, Hey, baby, you don’t know my min’, When you think I’m leavin’, I’m comin’ all the time. I ain’t got no money, No place to stay. Hey, baby, hey, honey, I got de Florida blues. I got Elgin watch Made on yo’ frame. Hey, baby, hey, honey, I got Florida blues. California ridden, Don’t think I’m didden, De reason I’m tellin’ you, I have no place to stay. Mother an’ father dead, Done gone away, I’m a lonesome boy, Got nowhere to stay. [214] Hey, mama, hey, baby, I got de ’fo’-day blues. I’m California ridden, I got de California blues. California in U. S., Dat is where my love lie, An’ she will treat me best, You all take Alexander for ol’ plaything, But Alexander no name for you. O baby, you don’t know my min’, When you think I’m lovin’ you, I’m leavin’ you behin’. [88]This and many other of Wing’s stanzas have no clear meaning as far as we can tell. Sometimes his songs give the impression that he has learned the titles of numerous popular blues and has woven as many of them as possible into each stanza. Before continuing Left Wing’s story, giving something more of the scope of his adventures, perhaps the best further introduction will be the exact record of some of his songs in the order in which he gave them. Wing had practically no variation in his tunes and technique of singing. A high-pitched voice, varied with occasional low tones, was the most important part of his repertoire. But what variation in words and scenes, phrases and verses, the recording of which would exhaust the time and endurance of the listener and call for an ever-recording instrument! For certainly the effort to transcribe everything Wing gave left the visitor amazingly exhausted, marveling at the jumbled resourcefulness of the singer, wishing for some new type of photography which would register the voice, looks, experience, and inimitable temperament of this itinerant camp follower. Anna yo’ peaches, but I’s yo’ man. How I wonder where you goin’ to-day, That my mother an’ father have nowhere to stay. Would you take them in, oh, would you take them in? How I love you, how I love you, Would you take me in, would you take me in? Anna yo’ peaches, but I’s yo man, Would you take me in, would you take me in? [215] Lawd, I woke up dis mornin’, Couldn’t keep from cryin’, Thinkin’ about that Lovin’ babe o’ mine. O my babe, you don’t know my min’, O you don’t know my min’. When you think I’m laughin’, I’m cryin’ all de time. Reason I love you so, ’Cause my heart is true, Reason I love you so, I’m goin’ ’way. I’m goin’ ’way to worry you off my min’. Reason I think you worry, I’m ’way all the time, I got de ’fo’-day blues. You put yo’ coat on yo’ shoulder, You want to walk away, You got yo’ lovin’ baby, You want a place to stay. Well, I love you, baby, God knows I do. Reason I love you, Yo’ heart is true. Reason I love you, Got de weary blues. Differing slightly in tone, Wing sets out on a new song only to swing back again to the same lonesome blues; indeed he makes his technique and his whines as he goes, the result blending into a remarkable product. Eddy Studow been here, You got de so long well, ’Cause I feel you sinkin’, Easin’ down to hell, O sweet baby, you don’t know my min’, ’Cause when you think I’m laughin’, I’m cryin’. [216] If you don’t b’lieve I’m sinkin’, Jes’ look what a hole I’m in. If you don’t b’lieve I love you, Jes’ look what a fool I been. O sweet baby, you don’t know my min’. When you think I’m lovin’ you, I’m leavin’ you behin’. O baby, jes’ ship my clo’es out in valise, O baby, jes’ ship my clo’es out in valise. Reason I tell you ship ’em, Yo’ heart I don’t believe. Thought I woke up yesterday, My heart was very sick, ’Cause reason I love you. ’Day’s nearer pay day. The reason I love my lovin’ baby so, Oh, reason I love my lovin’ baby so, ’Cause if she make five dollars She sho’ bring her father fo’. Yes, it’s hey, sweet baby, You don’t know my min’. ’Cause it’s hey, sweet baby. You don’t know my min’. When you think I’m laughin’, Laughin’ jes’ to keep from cryin’. O Lawd, what you gonna say, I need de woman for de money, I got no place to stay. For de reason I love my lovin’ baby so, When she make eight dollahs, Sho’ bring her father fo’. Ruther see you dead, Floatin’ in yo’ grave; Ruther see you dead, Lawd, floatin’ in yo’ grave. Than be here, Lawd, Treated dis a-way. [217] Geech had my woman An’ two or three mo’; Oh, de Geech had my woman An’ two or three mo’. He’s a hard headed man An’ won’t let me go. I wake up dis mornin’, Feet half-way out de bed, Lawd, I wake up dis mornin’, Oh, de blues you give me Sho’ gonna kill me dead. Left Wing’s story of his wanderings does not omit, of course, the woman part of his “lovin’ worl’.” Try as he might to sing of other experiences, inevitably he would swing back to his old theme. I ruther be dead In six feet o’ clay, Than to see my baby, Lawd, treated dis a-way. Well, I love my baby, I tell the worl’ I do, But reason I love her, Her heart is true. Gonna lay my head On some ol’ railroad iron, Das de only way, baby, To worry you off my min’. I went to depot, I looked up on de boa’d, My baby ain’t here, But she’s somewhere on de road. But I’m goin’ to town, Goin’ to ask chief police, Fo’ my baby done quit me An’ I can’t have no peace. [218] An’ I’m goin’ away, baby, To worry you off my min’, ’Cause you keep me worried An’ bothered all de time. I wonder whut’s de matter, Lawd, I can’t see. You love some other man, sweet woman, An’ you don’t love me. Befo’ I’d stay here An’ let these women mistreat me, I’d do like a bull frog, Jump in de deep blue sea. Wing, however, does not jump into the deep blue sea, although like the other traditional bull frog he does jump from place to place. Concerning the women about whom he sings, he affirmed, “Can’t count ’em, take me day after tomorrow to count ’em. Find fifteen or twenty in different cities. New Orleans best place to find most fastest, mo’ freer women,—person find gang of ’em in minute. “But I had some mighty fine women. Fust one was Abbie Jones, ’bout —— Ioway Street. Nex’ was in M——, Missouri, Jennie Baker, Susan Baker’s daughter. Nex’ one St. Louis, lady called Bulah Cotton, Pete Cotton’s daughter. Nex’ one was in Eas’ St. Louis, her name Sylvia Brown. Nex’ I had in Poplar Bluff, one dat took my money an’ went off, Effie Farlan, had father name George Farlan. Nex’ Laura, she’s in Memphis, Tennessee, she’s ’nother took my money an’ gone. Jes’ lay down, went to sleep, jes’ took money an’ gone. Wake up sometimes broke an’ hongry, they jes’ naturally take my money. Nex’ woman was at Columbia, S. C., ’bout las’ regular one I had, Mamie Willard, mother an’ father dead. Sweethearts I can git plenty of if I got money. If I[219] ain’t got none I’se sometimes lonesome, but not always, ’cause sometimes dey feel sorry fer you an’ treat you mighty fine anyway.” Wing tells some remarkable stories, evidently products of the perfect technique of appeal and approach, in which formality and easy-going ways are blended with great patience and persistence. This series of adventures alone would make a full sized volume albeit there is no need to publish it abroad. Typical, however, are the chant verses below. I seed a pretty brown, Lawd, walkin’ down the street, I sided long up to her, Said, “Lady, I ain’t had nothin’ to eat.” Lawd, she don’t pay me no min’, Walkin’ wid her head hung high. But still I knows I’ll git dat gal by an’ by. So I walks up behin’ her, And asts her good an’ polite, “Miss, can you tell me Where po’ boy can stay tonight?” Still she don’t pay me no min’, An’ she’s movin’ on her way, I asks her, “Good Lawd, lady, Where can po’ boy stay?” I ast her to tell me If she knows girl name Sady, ’Cause if she does, I’s her man Brady. Co’se I don’t know no Sady An’ I could git place to stay, But I wants to stay wid dis lady, So I walks on her way. [220] So she takes me to her home An’ makes me pallet on de flo’; An’ she treats me, baby, Better ’n I been treated befo’. Wing says he never stays in any place more than three weeks, “leastwise never mo’ ’n fo’.” Sometimes he walks, sometimes he rides the rods, sometimes when money is plentiful he rides in the cars. He has had his tragic and his comic experiences. The spirit of the road is irrevocably fixed in him and he can think in no other terms. Some day a Negro artist will paint him, a Negro story teller will tell his story, a “high she’ff” will arrest him, a “jedge” will sentence him, a “cap’n” will “cuss” him, he will “row here few days longer,” then he’ll be gone. [221] CHAPTER XIII JOHN HENRY: EPIC OF THE NEGRO WORKINGMAN Left Wing Gordon was and is a very real person, “traveling man” de luxe in the flesh and blood. Not so John Henry, who was most probably a mythical character. Whatever other studies may report, no Negro whom we have questioned in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia has ever seen or known of John Henry personally or known any one who has, although it is well understood that he was “mos’ fore-handed steel-drivin’ man in the world.” Still he is none the less real as a vivid picture and example of the good man hero of the race. Although, like the story of Left Wing, the John Henry ballad carries its own intrinsic merit, this song of the black Paul Bunyan of the Negro workingman is significant for other reasons. It is, first of all, a rare creation of considerable originality, dignity and interest. It provides an excellent study in diffusion, and, as soon as the settings, variations, comparisons, and adaptations have been completed, will deserve a special brochure. For the purposes of this volume, however, we shall present simply the John Henry ballad in the forms and versions heard within the regions of this collection, with some comparative evidence of the workingman’s varied mirror of his hero. John Henry is still growing in reputation and in stature and in favor with the Negro singer, ranging in repute from the ordinary fore-handed steel-driving man to a martyred president of the United States struck down, with the[222] hammer in his hand, by some race assassin. One youth reminiscent of all that he had heard, and minded to make his version complete, set down this: When John Henry was on his popper’s knee, The dress he wore it was red; And the las’ word he said, “I gonna die with the hammer in my hand.” We have found a few Negroes who were not clear in their minds about Booker T. Washington, but we have found none in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia who had not heard something some time about John Henry. In other places, however, in Mississippi and Maryland, for instance, we understand he is not so well known. To trace the story of the ballad to its origin[89] is a difficult task and one awaiting the folk-lorist; but to gather these samples of this sort of nomad ballad is a comparatively easy and always delightful task. [89]Prof. J. H. Cox traces John Henry to a real person, John Hardy, a Negro who had a reputation in West Virginia as a steel driver and who was hanged for murder in 1894. We are inclined to believe that John Henry was of separate origin and has become mixed with the John Hardy story in West Virginia. We have never found a Negro who knew the song as John Hardy, and we have no versions which mention the circumstance of the murder and execution. For Cox’s discussion and several versions of John Hardy, see his Folk-Songs of The South, pp. 175-188; also Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 32, p. 505 et seq. Bibliographies will be found in these references. There are many versions of the common story. Some hold that John Henry’s “captain” made a large wager with the boss of the steel-driving crew that John Henry could beat the steam drill down, and that John Henry did succeed but died with the last stroke of his hammer. Others claim that the wager was John Henry’s own doing and that he never could stand the new-fangled steam contraption. Leastwise he died with the hammer in his hand, some claiming in the mountain drilling stone, others in railroad cuts or tunnels[223] of various roads recently under construction. But in all cases the central theme is the same: John Henry, powerful steel-driving man, races with the steam-drill and dies with the hammer in his hand. Of the fragments or variations of John Henry there seems to be no end. One at Columbia, South Carolina, sets the standard of conduct as at par with John Henry and affirms that “If I could hammer like John Henry, I’d bro-by, Lawd, I’d bro-by,” which was interpreted to mean the act of passing by the whole procession of steel drivers. An Atlanta version represented John Henry as sitting on his mother’s knee, whereupon she “looked in his face an’ say, ‘John Henry, you’ll be the death o’ me’.” Another fragment from an old timer, self-styled “full-handed musicianer,” described John Henry as a steel driver who “always drove the steel” and always “beat the steam drill down,” and added that if he could drill like John Henry he would “beat all the steam drills down.” While most of the versions limited John Henry to steel driving on mountain or railroad, nevertheless there seems to be a general idea that he took turns at being a railroad man, not in the sense of working on the railroad section gangs but as an engineer, perhaps a skilled one. Part of this is the natural story centering around the logical outcome of a railroad man, and part is corruption of the Casey Jones and other noted engineer songs. One opening stanza has it, John Henry was a little boy, He was leanin’ on his father’s knee, Say, “That big wheel turnin’ on Air Line Road, Will sure be death o’ me,” while still others thought the K. C. or Frisco or C. & O. roads would be fatal. In the colloquial story, part of[224] which is given later, John Henry usually told his mother and friends, just as did Jagooze and the other railroad men, about his proprietary powers in the noted railroads across the continent. Then there were the references to his firemen and “riders” and the fear of a wreck. Sometimes, as indicative of the changing form, the singer switches off from the standard John Henry lines to some other, like “goin’ up Decatur wid hat in my hand, lookin’ for woman ain’t got no man.” For the most part, however, the versions are rather consistent. The chief differences have to do with minor details. The main story is always the same. We are now presenting a dozen or more versions of the song, beginning with what may be called the purer or more composite versions and ending with versions that have strayed far from the simple story of John Henry. The first is a common Chapel Hill version, but even that is varied almost as often as it is sung by different groups. In this and the other versions, John Henry’s wife or woman becomes in turn Delia Ann, Lizzie Ann, Polly Ann, or whatever other Ann may be thought of as representing an attractive person. Sometimes John Henry carried her in the “palm of his hand,” as indeed he is also reported to have carried his little son. When a child, John Henry also sat on his father’s knee as well as his mother’s. Sometimes it was seven-, sometimes nine-, sometimes ten-pound hammer that would be the death of him. Sometimes it was the C. & O. tunnel, sometimes steel, sometimes the hammer which was going to bring him down. [225] John Henry[90] A John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man, Carried his hammer all the time; ’Fore he’d let the steam drill beat him down, Die wid his hammer in his han’, Die wid his hammer in his han’. John Henry went to the mountain, Beat that steam drill down; Rock was high, po’ John was small, Well, he laid down his hammer an’ he died, Laid down his hammer an’ he died. John Henry was a little babe Sittin’ on his daddy’s knee, Said, “Big high tower on C. & O. road Gonna be the death o’ me, Gonna be the death o’ me.” John Henry had a little girl, Her name was Polly Ann. John was on his bed so low, She drove with his hammer like a man, Drove with his hammer like a man. [90]The music of this version is given in Chapter XIV. For the music of a version of John Hardy, see Campbell and Sharp, English Folk-Songs From The Southern Appalachians, p. 87. There is available also a very good phonograph version of John Henry. B John Henry was a little boy Sittin’ on his papa’s knee, Say, “Papa you know I’m boun’ to die, This hammer be the death of me.” John Henry say one day, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I’ll be dogged aroun’ I’ll die wid de hammer in my han’.” [226] John Henry said to his captain, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man. Befo’ I work from sun to sun I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man, Carried hammer all time in his han’; Befo’ he let you beat him down He’d die wid de hammer in his han’. John Henry had a little girl, Name was Polly Ann. John Henry was on his dyin’ bed, O Lawd, She drove with his hammer like a man. John Henry went up to the mountain To beat that steel drill down; But John Henry was so small, rock so high, Laid down his hammer an’ he died. C John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man. He drove so steady an’ hard; Well, they put John Henry in head to drive, He laid down his hammer an’ he cried. Up stepped girl John Henry loved, She throwed up her hands and flew, She ’clare to God, “John Henry, I been true to you.” “O where did you get yo’ new shoes from, O’ dat dress dat you wear so fine?” “I got my shoes from a railroad man, My dress from a driver in de mine.” John Henry had a little wife, Dress she wore was blue, An’ she declare to God, “I always been true to you.” [227] John Henry was a little boy Sittin’ on his papa’s knee, He said to his papa, “Drivin’ steel Is gonna be the death of me.” D John Henry was a coal black man, Chicken chocolate brown; “Befo’ I let your steamer get me down, I die wid my hammer in my han’, Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry had a pretty little woman, She rode that Southbound train; She stopped in a mile of the station up there, “Let me hear John Henry’s hammer ring, Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry sittin’ on the left-han’ side An’ the steam drill on the right; The rock it was so large an’ John Henry so small, He laid down his hammer an’ he cried, “Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry had a pretty little woman, Her name was Julie Ann, She walked through the lan’ with a hammer in her han’, Sayin’, “I drive steel like a man, Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry had a little woman, Her name was Julie Ann; John Henry took sick on his work one day, An’ Julie Ann drove steel like a man, Lawd, Lawd. John Henry had a pretty little boy, Sittin’ in de palm of his han’; He hugged an’ kissed him an’ bid him farewell, “O son, do the best you can, Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry was a little boy Sittin’ on his papa’s knee, Looked down at a big piece o’ steel, Saying, “Papa, that’ll be the death o’ me, Lawd, Lawd.” [228] John Henry had a pretty little woman, The dress she wore was red, She went down the track an’ never did look back, Sayin’, “I’m goin’ where John Henry fell dead, Lawd, Lawd.” John Henry had a pretty little girl, The dress she wore was blue, She followed him to the graveyard sayin,’ “John Henry I’ve been true to you, Lawd, Lawd.” E John Henry had a little wife, Name was Julia Ann; John Henry got sick on his dyin’ bed, Julia drove steel like a man, O Lawd, Julia drove steel like a man. John Henry had a little woman, The dress she wore was red, Went down the track, never look back, “Goin’ where my man is dead, Lawd, goin’ where may man is dead.” John Henry was a little boy Sittin’ on his father’s knee, Say, “Ten-pound hammer gonna be the death o’ me, Lawd, gonna be the death o’ me.” John Henry went up to the rock, Carried his hammer in his han’, Rock was so tall, John Henry was so small, Laid down his hammer an’ he died. Lawd, laid down his hammer an’ he died. John Henry had a little woman An’ she always dressed in blue, She went down track, never look back, Say, “John Henry I’m always true to you, Lawd, I’m always true to you.” [229] John Henry on the right side, Steam drill on the lef’; “Befo’ I’ll let you beat me down I die wid de hammer in my han’, Lawd, I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” “Who gonna shoe yo’ pretty little feet,[91] Who gonna comb yo’ bangs? Who gonna kiss yo’ rose-red lips, Who gonna be yo’ man? Lawd, who gonna be yo’ man?” “Sweet Papa gonna shoe yo’ pretty little feet, Sister gonna comb yo’ bangs, Mama gonna kiss yo’ rose-red lips, John Henry gonna be yo’ man, Lawd, John Henry gonna be yo’ man.” “Where you get them high top shoes, That dress you wear so fine?” “Got my shoes from a railroad man, My dress from a worker in mine, Lawd, my dress from worker in mine.” John Henry said to his captain, “Man is nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I let this rock beat me down I’d die wid de hammer in may han’, Lawd, I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” [91]Stanzas of this kind are frequent in John Henry. They came originally from the old English ballad, The Lass of Roch Royal. See Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 76. F John Henry had a little woman, The dress she wore was red; She went on down the railroad track, Say, “Goin’ where John Henry fall dead.” John Henry said to his captain, “Lawd, a man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I let a man beat me down I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” [230] John Henry said to his woman, “Who gonna shoe yo’ little feet? Who gonna kiss yo’ rosy cheeks? Who gonna be yo’ man? “Where you get them high top shoes, That dress you wear so fine?” “Got my shoes from a railroad man, My dress from a man in the mine.” G John Henry said to his captain, “Captain, befo’ you leave this town, If you give me another drink of your corn I’ll beat yo’ steel drill down.” Hammer on the right side, Bucket on the lef’, “Befo’ I let you beat me down I hammer myself to death.” John Henry up on the mountain top, Say, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I let you beat me down I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” John Henry was a little boy, He set on his mother’s knee, Cryin’, “O Lord, nine-pound hammer Gonna be the death o’ me.” H John Henry had a little wife An’ he carried her in the palm of his han’, He hug an’ kiss her an’ bid her farewell An’ told her do the bes’ she can. Chorus: John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man, John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man, John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man, John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man. [231] John Henry was a little boy Sittin’ on his mother’s knee, Say, “Tunnel on C. & O. road Gonna be the death o’ me.” John Henry said to his shaker,[92] “Shaker, you better pray; If I make this six-foot jump, Tomorrow ’ll be yo’ buryin’ day.” John Henry had a little woman, Name was Polly Ann, She took a big hammer an’ went to the hills, Polly Ann drive steel like a man. [92]The “shaker” is the man who holds the drill upright and turns it between the strokes of the hammer. I John Henry told his captain, “Hand me down my time, I can make more money on Georgia Southern Road Than I can on old Coast Line.” John Henry told his captain, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I let you beat me drivin’ steel I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” John Henry had a little woman, The dress she wore was red, Las’ word I heard her say, “Goin’ where my man fall dead.” John Henry told his captain, “Captain, when you go to town, Bring me back a ten-pound hammer So I can drive this steel on down.” J John Henry told his captain, “A man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Befo’ I work from sun to sun I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.” [232] John Henry had a little woman, Dress she wore was red; Goin’ down railroad weepin’ and cryin’, Goin’ where John Henry fall dead. Say, I ain’t gonna work much longer, Ain’t gonna work on no farm; An’ I’m gonna stay here till pay-day, Ain’t gonna do nobody no harm. “Where’d you git them pretty little shoes? Where’d you git that dress so fine?” “Got my shoes from a railroad man, Dress from a man in the mine.” “Who’s gonna shoe yo’ pretty little feet? Who’s gonna comb yo’ bangs? Who’s gonna kiss yo’ rosy cheeks? Who’s gonna be yo’ man? “Papa gonna shoe yo’ pretty little feet, Sister gonna comb yo’ bangs; Mama gonna kiss yo’ rosy cheeks, John Henry gonna be yo’ man.” John Henry had a little woman, Name was Polly Ann; John Henry got sick an’ couldn’t hit a lick, Polly Ann hit steel like a man. John Henry told his captain, “Captain, when you go to town, Oh, bring me back a nine-pound hammer So I can drive this steel on down.” John Henry was a little boy Settin’ on his papa’s knee, Say, “The tunnel on the L. & N. Gonna be the death o’ po’ me.” John Henry had a little girl, Name was Nellie Ann; John Henry took sick an’ had to go home, Every day po’ Nellie drove steel like a man. [233] John Henry had a little pistol, He carried it around in his han’ Well, look way over in Southwest, You will find a steel-drivin’ man. “Who gonna buy yo’ pretty little shoes? Who gonna be yo’ man? Who gonna buy yo’ dress so fine? While I’m in some distant lan’?” John Henry bought a pistol, Put it up in forty-fo’ frame, He look over in Southwest, Spied that steel-drivin’ man. John Henry’s wife settin’ on do’-step cryin’, Say, “Where po’ John Henry gone?” John Henry’s wife settin’ on do’-step cryin’, Say, “Where po’ John Henry gone?” John Henry’s wife said to his chillun, “Little chillun, don’t you worry none, ’Cause mama goin’ down to steel-drivin’ place Where po’ daddy done gone.” Children come runnin’ and cryin’, “Mama, what we gonna do? News done reach gran’ma’s do’, Papa done fall stone dead.” People went up in the mountain, Say mountain was fallin’ in. John Henry say it was sad mistake, “Nothin’ but my hammer in the win’.” John Henry say to his captain, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man, Oh, befo’ I let steel drill beat me down I die wid de hammer in my han’.” John Henry say to his captain, “I have been with you ninety-nine-years, An’, captain, you don’t hurry nobody, But always hurry me.” [234] K John Henry was a little boy, Was settin’ ’roun’ playin’ in the san’, Two young ladies come a-ridin’ by, Say, “I want you to be my man.” John Henry was a little boy, Settin’ on his mamy’s knee, Say, “Dat ol’ nine-poun’ hammer Gonna be the death o’ me.” John Henry was a cruel boy, Never did look down; But when he start to drivin’ steel He ever-mo’ did drive it down. John Henry went to cap’n Monday All worried in his min’, Say, “Give me a heavy axe, Let me tear dis ol’ mountain down.” John Henry told the captain, “Cap’n, when you go to town, Bring me back a ten-poun’ hammer An’ I lay dis ol’ sev’n-poun’ down.” John Henry went to captain, “What mo’ you want me to have? Say, han’ me drink o’ ol’ white gin, An’ I’ll be a steel-drivin’ man.” John Henry had a little woman, The dress she wore was red, She went down de track, never look back, Say, “I goin’ where my man fall dead.” “Who gonna shoe my pretty little feet? Mommer gonna glove my han’. Popper gonna kiss my rosy cheeks, John Henry gonna be my man.” [235] John Henry went to captain, Say, “Man ain’t nothin’ but a man. Befo’ I let you beat me down I die wid de hammer in my han’.” John Henry had a little woman, Name was Lizzie Ann. Say she got her dress from man in mine An’ her shoes from railroad man. John Henry on right, Steam drill on lef’, “Befo’ I let steam drill beat me down I’ll drive my fool self to death. “I drill all time, I drill all day, I drill all way from Rome To Decatur in one day.” John Henry say, “Tell my mother If she want to see me, Buy ticket all way to Frisco.” John Henry on way to Frisco, Wid orders in his han’, Say, “All you rounders who want to flirt, Here come a woman wid a hobble-skirt.” John Henry say to his captain Befo’ he lef’ town, “If you give me ’nother drink o’ yo’ co’n, I’ll beat yo’ steel drill down.” It would take a large volume to record all of the ways in which John Henry is known to the Negro worker and singer. He is known far and wide in song and story and he is the hero of hundreds of thousands of black toilers. Negroes who do work that requires rhythmic movements, such as digging or driving steel, naturally like to dwell upon the thought of the great[236] John Henry, and they make work songs about the great hero. The four songs which follow are not only good examples of this kind of work song, but reveal something of the worker’s feeling for John Henry. Dis Here Hammer Kill John Henry Dis here hammer, hammer Kill John Henry, Kill John Henry; Dis here hammer, hammer Kill John Henry, Can’t kill me, O Lawd, can’t kill me. If I Could Hammer Like John Henry If I could hammer like John Henry, If I could hammer like John Henry, Lawd, I’d be a man, Lawd, I’d be a man. If I could hammer like John Henry, If I could hammer like John Henry, I’d bro-by, Lawd, I’d bro-by. Nine-poun’ hammer kill John Henry, Nine-poun’ hammer kill John Henry, Won’t kill me, Lawd, won’t kill me. I been hammerin’, All ’roun’ mountain, Won’t kill me, babe, Lawd, won’t kill me. Heard Mighty Rumblin’ Heard mighty rumblin’, Heard mighty rumblin’, Heard mighty rumblin’ Under the groun’. [237] Well, heard mighty rumblin’, Under the groun’, Under the groun’, Mus’ be John Henry turnin’ aroun’. Up on the mountain, Up on the mountain, Well, up on the mountain, Heard John Henry cryin’. Heard John Henry cryin’, Heard John Henry cryin’, Well, I heard John Henry cryin’, “An’ I won’t come down.” John Henry Was a Man o’ Might John Henry was a man o’ might, John Henry was a man o’ might, John Henry was a man o’ might, He beat de iron man down. John Henry had a hammer han,’[93] An’ he beat de iron man down. “Lawd, Lawd, boss,” he cried, “De iron man too much fo’ me.” An’ dey laid John Henry low, He won’t swing dat hammer no mo’. John Henry was big an’ strong But de iron man brung ’im down. John Henry was big an’ brown But de iron man brung him down. John Henry say, “I got to go, I can’t swing de ball no mo’.” John Henry was a mighty man, An’ he swing dat hammer. [93]The first line of each stanza is sung three times as indicated in the first stanza. [238] In story John Henry’s deeds often assume magnificent proportions. Indeed, the stories about him are in many respects more interesting than the songs, for the stories usually have more range and reflect more imagination than the songs. Occasionally one can find a Negro who will tell the story simply and without exaggeration, but one usually gets a version which is more or less embellished with the legendary attributes and attainments of John Henry. In the following story, John Henry is credited with such powers as would make him a close rival of Paul Bunyan himself.[94] [94]This story was recorded at Chapel Hill, N. C., but, as far as we can tell it came originally from Stone Mountain, Ga. It is given as nearly as possible in the words in which it was told. “One day John Henry lef’ rock quarry on way to camp an’ had to go through woods an’ fiel’. Well, he met big black bear an’ didn’t do nothin’ but shoot ’im wid his bow an’ arrer, an’ arrer went clean through bear an’ stuck in big tree on other side. So John Henry pulls arrer out of tree an’ pull so hard he falls back ’gainst ’nother tree which is full o’ flitterjacks, an’ first tree is full o’ honey, an’ in pullin’ arrer out o’ one he shaken down honey, an’ in failin’ ’gainst other he shaken down flitterjacks. Well, John Henry set there an’ et honey an’ flitterjacks an’ set there an’ et honey an’ flitterjacks, an’ after while when he went to git up to go, button pop off’n his pants an’ kill a rabbit mo’ ’n hundred ya’ds on other side o’ de tree. An’ so up jumped brown baked pig wid sack o’ biscuits on his back, an’ John Henry et him too. “So John Henry gits up to go on through woods to camp for supper, ’cause he ’bout to be late an’ he mighty hongry for his supper. John Henry sees lake down hill and thinks he’ll git him a drink o’ water, cause he’s thirsty, too, after eatin’ honey an’ flitterjacks an’[239] brown roast pig an’ biscuits, still he’s hongry yet. An’ so he goes down to git drink water an’ finds lake ain’t nothin’ but lake o’ honey, an’ out in middle dat lake ain’t nothin but tree full o’ biscuits. An’ so John Henry don’t do nothin’ but drink dat lake o’ honey dry. An’ he et the tree full o’ biscuits, too. “An’ so ’bout that time it begin’ to git dark, an’ John Henry sees light on hill an’ he think maybe he can git sumpin to eat, cause he’s mighty hongry after big day drillin’. So he look ’roun’ an’ see light on hill an’ runs up to house where light is an’ ast people livin’ dere, why’n hell dey don’t give him sumpin’ to eat, ’cause he ain’t had much. An’ so he et dat, too. “Gee-hee, hee, dat nigger could eat! But dat ain’t all, cap’n. Dat nigger could wuk mo’ ’n he could eat. He’s greates’ steel driller ever live, regular giaunt, he wus; could drill wid his hammer mo’ ’n two steam drills, an’ some say mo’ ’n ten. Always beggin’ boss to git ’im bigger hammer, always beggin’ boss git ’im bigger hammer. John Henry wus cut out fer big giaunt driller. One day when he wus jes’ few weeks ol’ settin’ on his mammy’s knee he commence cryin’ an’ his mommer say, “John Henry, whut’s matter, little son?” An’ he up an’ say right den an’ dere dat nine-poun’ hammer be death o’ him. An’ so sho’ ’nough he grow up right ’way into bigges’ steel driller worl’ ever see. Why dis I’s tellin’ you now wus jes’ when he’s young fellow; waits til’ I tells you ’bout his drillin’ in mountains an’ in Pennsylvania. An’ so one day he drill all way from Rome, Georgia, to D’catur, mo’ ’n a hundred miles drillin’ in one day, an’ I ain’t sure dat wus his bes’ day. No, I ain’t sure dat wus his bes’ day. “But, boss, John Henry wus a regular boy, not lak some o’ dese giaunts you read ’bout not likin’ wimmin[240] an’ nothin’. John Henry love to come to town same as any other nigger, only mo’ so. Co’se he’s mo’ important an’ all dat, an’ co’se he had mo’ wimmin ’an anybody else,’some say mo’ ’n ten, but as to dat I don’t know. I means, boss, mo’ wimmen ’an ten men, ’cause, Lawd, I specs he had mo’ ’n thousand wimmin’. An’ John Henry wus a great co’tin’ man, too, cap’n. Always wus dat way. Why, one day when he settin’ by his pa’ in san’ out in front o’ de house, jes’ few weeks old, women come along and claim him fer deir man. An’ dat’s funny, too, but it sho’ wus dat way all his life. An’ so when he come to die John Henry had mo’ wimmin, all dressed in red an’ blue an’ all dem fine colors come to see him dead, if it las’ thing they do, an’ wus mighty sad sight, people all standin’ ’roun’, both cullud an’ white.” Of course, no Negro believes that the foregoing story is true. But there are innumerable stories which stay within the bounds of possibility—though not always probability, to be sure—and which are thoroughly believed by the Negroes who tell them. One of the most widespread of these, and at the same time interesting and artistic, was concluded as follows by a North Carolina Negro workman: “An’ John Henry beat dat ol’ steam drill down, but jes’ as he took his las’ stroke he fell over daid wid de hammer in his han’. Dey buried him dere in de tunnel, an’ now dey got his statue carved in solid rock at de mouth o’ de Big Ben’ tunnel on de C. & O.—das right over dere close to Asheville somewhere. No, I ain’t never been dere, but dere he stan’, carved in great big solid rock wid de hammer in his han’.” [241] CHAPTER XIV SOME TYPICAL NEGRO TUNES We have pointed out again and again the utter futility of trying to describe accurately the singing of a group of Negroes when they are at their best. A group of twenty workers singing, carrying various parts, suiting song to work, and vying with one another for supremacy in variations and innovations—this is a scene which defies musical notation and description. And yet the picture which we have tried to present in this volume would certainly be incomplete without the addition of some of the simple melodies of typical workaday songs. They are added, therefore, merely as final touches to the picture rather than as attempts to reproduce the complex harmonies of Negro songs. Heretofore the spirituals have received most of the attention of those who were working toward the preservation of Negro music. The secular songs have nothing like the standardization of words and music that the spirituals have, simply because they have not been preserved. It is inevitable, however, that due attention will be given to Negro secular music. Indeed much has recently been done toward that end.[95] But the task of recording the majority of Negro secular tunes is yet to be done. It is to be hoped that the forthcoming volume of secular songs which is being edited by James Weldon Johnson will go a long way toward giving the Negro’s secular music the place which it deserves. [95]For a discussion of the recent collections of Negro songs, see Guy B. Johnson, “Some Recent Contributions to the Study of American Negro Songs,” Social Forces, June, 1926. [242] Any one who has tried to record the music of Negro songs knows that it is very difficult to do more than approximate the tunes as they are actually sung. Several reasons may be cited to account for this. In the first place, there are slurs and minute gradations in pitch in Negro songs which it is impossible to represent in ordinary musical notation. Some of these effects can be reproduced on a stringed instrument, but they cannot be shown on a musical scale which is only divided into half-step changes of pitch. A notation in the form of curved lines would come nearer representing the Negro’s singing than does the system of definite notes along a staff. It is what the Negro sings between the lines and spaces that makes his music so difficult to record. Another factor which must be reckoned with is the inconsistency of the singer. When the recorder thinks that he has finally succeeded in getting a phrase down correctly and asks the singer to repeat it “just one more time,” he often finds that the response is quite different from any previous rendition. Requests for further repetition may bring out still other variations or a return to the previous version. Again, after the notation has been made from the singing of the first stanza of a song, the collector may be chagrined to find that none of the other stanzas is sung to exactly the same tune. The variations are not marked. They are elusive and teasing, and they add beauty to the song. How often the song collector wishes for some instrument which will record group singing in its native haunts! He cannot hope to catch by ear alone all of the parts—and there are undoubtedly six or eight of many of these songs—that go into the making of those rare harmonies which only a group of Negro workers[243] can produce. If he coaxes the singers to keep repeating their song, some of them become self-conscious and drop out. Perhaps the whole group will refuse to sing any more. If perchance he gets one or two singers to give him some special help, he gets but a suggestion of the group effect. He must be contented with securing the leading part of the song and harmonizing it later as best he can. So these rare work harmonies have never been faithfully reproduced in musical notation.[96] Rather than give an artificial harmonization to the tunes recorded in this chapter, we are presenting only the leading part of each song. [96]The nearest approach ever made to accurate recording of such songs is found in the work of the late Natalie Curtis Burlin. See her Negro Folk Songs, Hampton Series, vols. III and IV. Since several of the songs in this chapter are work songs, let us examine for a moment the technique of the worker-singer. Many work songs, of course, are not really work songs except in the sense that they are sung during work. When the work is such that it does not necessitate continuous rhythmic movements, one song is about as good as another. But rhythmic movements, being especially adapted to song accompaniment, have given rise to a distinct type of work song. Digging, hammering, steel-driving, rowing, and many other kinds of work fall in the rhythmic class. The technique for all of these is practically the same. Let us take digging as an example, since it is a very common type of Negro labor in the South. Typical pick-song patterns are as follows: I got a rainbow, Rainbow ’roun’ my shoulder; I got a rainbow, Rainbow ’roun’ my shoulder; ’Tain’t gonna rain, Lawd, Lawd, ’tain’t gonna rain. [244] Well, she asked me In her parlor An’ she cooled me Wid her fan; Lawd, she whispered To her mother, “Mama, I love That dark-eyed man.” Now in the type of song illustrated by the first of the above patterns the strokes of the pick are not all of equal length. The rhythm of the song demands a short stroke alternated with a longer stroke. In the second type of song, however, the meter is such that all of the strokes of the pick may be of equal length. At the end of each line there is a cæsura or pause. This represents the time during which the worker swings his pick from the upright position to the ground. When the pick strikes the ground, the worker gives a grunt, loosens the pick, and raises it. It is during this loosening and upward movement that he sings. The down-stroke calls for much more effort than raising the pick, so he rarely ever sings on the down-stroke. The time required for a digging stroke is, however, shorter than the time required for loosening and raising the pick, so that ordinarily the pauses in the song are relatively brief. It is in a group that the work song is to be heard at its best. When a group is digging and singing, picks are swung in unison. On a few occasions we have observed that one or two men took their strokes out of unison in order to sing certain exclamations or echoes during the pauses in the singing of their companions. This, however, is a rare procedure, for the most striking variations in both music and words can be introduced without breaking the unison of the strokes. [245] To call a song a pick song does not mean that it is not also a good song for general purposes. I Got a Rainbow, I Don’t Want No Trouble Wid de Walker, and other pick songs are quite effective when sung as solos with guitar accompaniment. On the other hand, many general songs can easily be converted into pick songs by slight changes in meter.[97] [97]For other discussions of work songs, see Natalie Curtis Burlin, Negro Folk Songs, vols. III and IV; Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, chapter VIII; R. Emmet Kennedy, Mellows; Odum and Johnson, The Negro and His Songs, chapter VIII. A few of the tunes presented in the following pages are the older Negro secular tunes. Stagolee and Railroad Bill are rarely heard now, but they were common twenty years ago, and their music is included in the present collection for whatever its preservation may be worth. The words of Stagolee, Railroad Bill and She Asked Me in de Parlor are reprinted in full from The Negro and His Songs, but only the first stanzas of the other songs are given, since the rest of the words can be found in the preceding chapters of the present volume. The songs in every case are written in the key in which they were sung. Stagolee Musical score Stag-o-lee, Stag-o-lee, What’s dat in yo’ grip? “Noth-in’ but my Sunday clothes, I’m gonna take a trip.” Oh, dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. Stagolee, Stagolee, what’s dat in yo’ grip? Nothin’ but my Sunday clothes, I’m gonna to take a trip, Oh, dat man, bad man, Stagolee done come. [246] Stagolee, Stagolee, where you been so long? I been out on de battle fiel’ shootin’ an’ havin’ fun. Oh, dat man, etc. Stagolee was a bully man, an’ ev’ybody knowed When dey seed Stagolee comin’ to give Stagolee de road. Stagolee started out, he give his wife his han’; “Goodby, darlin’, I’m goin’ to kill a man.” Stagolee killed a man an’ laid him on de flo’, What’s dat he kill him wid? Dat same ol’ fohty-fo’. Stagolee killed man an’ laid him on his side, What’s dat he kill him wid? Dat same ol’ fohty-five. Out of house an’ down de street Stagolee did run, In his hand he held a great big smok’n’ gun. Stagolee, Stagolee, I’ll tell you what I’ll do; If you’ll git me out’n dis trouble I’ll do as much for you. Ain’t it a pity, ain’t it a shame? Stagolee was shot, but he don’t want no name. Stagolee, Stagolee, look what you done done: Killed de best ol’ citerzen, now you’ll have to be hung. Stagolee cried to de jury, “Please don’t take my life, I have only three little children an’ one little lovin’ wife.” Railroad Bill Musical score Rail-road Bill might-y bad man, Shoot dem lights out de brake-man’s han’, Was look-in’ for Rail-road Bill. Railroad Bill mighty bad man, Shoot dem lights out o’ de brakeman’s han’, Was lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. [247] Railroad Bill mighty bad man, Shoot the lamps all off de stan’, An’ it’s lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. First on table, next on wall; Ol’ corn whiskey cause of it all, It’s lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Ol’ McMillan had a special train; When he got there was shower of rain, Wus lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Ev’ybody tol’ him he better turn back; Railroad Bill wus goin’ down track, An’ it’s lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Well, the policemen all dressed in blue, Comin’ down sidewalk two by two, Wus lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill had no wife, Always lookin’ fer somebody’s life, An’ it’s lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill was the worst ol’ coon: Killed McMillan by de light o’ de moon, It’s lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. Ol’ Culpepper went up on number five, Goin’ bring him back, dead or alive, Wus lookin’ fer Railroad Bill. She Asked Me in de Parlor Musical score Well, she asked me in her par-lor An’ she cooled me wid her fan, An’ she whis-pered to her moth-er, “O Ma, I love that dark-eyed man.” Well, she ask me in her parlor An’ she cooled me wid her fan, An’ she whispered to her mother, “Mama, I love that dark-eyed man.” [248] Well, I ask her mother for her An’ she said she was too young. Lawd, I wished I never had seen her An’ I wished she’d never been born. Well, I led her to de altar, An’ de preacher give his comman’, An’ she swore by God that made her That she never love another man. John Henry Musical score John Hen-ry was a steel-driv-in’ man, Ca’d his hammer all the time,... An’ be-fo’ he’d let the steam-drill beat him down, Die with the hammer in his han’, Die with the hammer in his han’. Goin’ Down That Lonesome Road Musical score Goin’ down that lone-some road, Oh, goin’ down that lone-some road, An’ I won’t be treat-ed this-a way. Springs on my bed done brok-en down, An’ I ain’t got no-where to lay my head. [249] Shoot That Buffalo Musical score Went down to Raleigh, Was nev-er there be-fo’, White folks on de feather bed, Nig-gers on de flo’. Shoot dat buf-fa, shoot dat lo, Shoot dat buf-fa-lo. I Got a Rainbow A Musical score Oh, ev-’ry-where I, where I look this morn-in’, It looks like rain, Lawd, O my Lawd, looks like rain, it looks like rain, Lawd, O my Lawd, looks like rain, Oh, ev-’ry-where I, where I look this morn-in’. I Got a Rainbow B Musical score Oh, ev-’ry-where I, Where I look dis morn-in’, Oh, ev-’ry-where I, Where I look dis morn-in’, It look like rain, Lawd, Lawd, looks like rain. I Don’t Want No Trouble Wid de Walker Musical score Oh, I don’t want no, Want no trouble wid de walk-er; Oh, I don’t want no, Want no trouble wid de walker. Wanta go home, Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home. [250] Reason I Stay on de Job So Long Musical score Reason I stay on de job so long, Gimme flam-donies an’ de cof-fee strong. Tol’ My Cap’n That My Feet Was Col’ Musical score Tol’ my cap’n that my feet was col’, “God damn yo’ feet, let the car wheel roll.” If I’d Known My Cap’n Was Blin’ Musical score If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’, dar-lin’, If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’, dar-lin’, If I’d a-known my cap’n was blin’, I wouldn’-a went to work till half-pas’ nine, dar-lin’. I Got a Muley Musical score I got a mul-ey, Mul-ey on the mountain, call him Jer-ry; Oh, I can ride him, Ride him an-y time I wanta, All day long, Lawd, Lawd, all day long. Shot My Pistol in the Heart of Town Musical score O - o - o - h, L - a - a - w-d, Shot my pis-tol in de heart o-town,......... Lawd, de big Chief holled, “Don’t you blow me down.” [252] CHAPTER XV TYPES OF PHONO-PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS OF NEGRO SINGERS We have referred often in these pages to the wealth of material found in the great variety and number of the Negro’s songs. We have appraised the collections which have been published and those which are to come as valuable source material for the study of folk life and art and especially for their value in the portrayal of representative Negro life. Adequate analysis and presentation of these values will be possible only after a number of the other collections have been completed and comprehensive studies made. There are other values not yet presented. For example, the scientific study of the Negro’s musical ability has barely begun, but it promises much. The work of Professor Carl E. Seashore and others has resulted in the formulation of various tests and methods for studying musical talent and singing ability. Many valuable studies have been reported from various psychological laboratories. One of the latest developments in this field is the phono-photographic method of recording voices. In this method the phono-photographic machine makes it possible to take pictures of sound waves of all kinds. Among other things, it registers the most delicate variations in pitch, variations which are often too subtle for the human ear to perceive. In short, it gives a picture of exactly what a voice or a musical instrument does. Naturally this method of sound wave analysis may be of untold value in the study of the human voice. It[253] enables the singer to see his voice in detail. It furnishes the scientist with data for the study of the qualities which make a voice good or poor. It opens up many possibilities, both practical and theoretical, as a method of voice analysis. Of special interest and importance is the application of this method to the study of Negro singers and Negro voices. It was therefore a fortunate turn of circumstances which made it possible for the authors of this volume to join Professor Seashore and Dr. Milton Metfessel of the University of Iowa in making extensive phono-photographic studies of various Negro singers during the fall of 1925, with headquarters at the University of North Carolina Institute for Research in Social Science. Professor Seashore was able to coöperate personally in the work at Hampton, while Dr. Metfessel remained throughout the entire period of the study.[98] [98]Dr. Metfessel, using the perfected machine which long years of work at the University of Iowa psychological laboratories have produced, was successful in obtaining a large number of satisfactory records. He also took moving pictures of the singers. Needless to say, we are indebted to him for the material of this chapter. Among the types of Negro singers whose voices were subjected to the phono-photographic process were practically all of the common types which we have been recording in the pages of this volume and of The Negro and His Songs. There were the typical laborers, working with pick and shovel. There was the lonely singer, with his morning yodel or “holler.” There were the skilled workers with voices more or less trained by practice and formal singing. There was the more nearly primitive type, swaying body and limb with singing. The noted quartet from Hampton Institute, as well as individual singers there, coöperated. Men and women from the North Carolina College for Negroes represented other types. Quartets[254] and individuals from the high schools at Chapel Hill and Raleigh, North Carolina, were still other types. Finally the voices of one hundred and fifty Negro children from the Orange County Training School at Chapel Hill and the Washington School at Raleigh were recorded. Types of songs included in the experiments were the gang work song, the pick-and-shovel song and various other work songs, the yodel, the “1926 model laugh,” the blues, formal quartet music, spirituals, and children’s songs. It would thus appear that both the selections and the numbers were adequate to make a valuable beginning in a new phase of the subject. The results of this study will be published fully later. The present chapter is in no sense a report of the results. It is intended merely to describe the phono-photographic study, to give some examples of records obtained during the study, and to indicate certain possibilities of this method as a scientific means of research into Negro singing abilities and qualities. The following explanation will suffice to acquaint the reader with the method of reading the photographic records presented in this chapter. Along the left side of each graph are the notes of the scale in half steps. When the heavy line which represents the voice rises or falls one space on the graph, the voice has changed a half tone in pitch. Time value is shown along the bottom of the graph. The vertical bars occurring every 5.55 spaces along the bottom mark off intervals of one second. If one were to sing a perfectly rigid tone, its photographic record would be a horizontal straight line. Such a thing is very rare, however, in any type of singing, for most sustained tones photograph as more or less irregular wavy lines. Indeed, a voice whose sustained tones photographed as a straight line would[255] not produce as good tones as one with rapid and regular variations of the vocal cords. A good singing voice possesses what is called the vibrato. In terms of the photographic records, the pitch vibrato consists of a rise and fall of pitch of about half a tone about six times a second. In Figure I are given samples of tones photographed by Seashore and Metfessel from the singing of Annie Laurie by Lowell Welles. The first represents the singing of the word “dew” in the line, “Where early fa’s the dew.” The second is the word “and” from the line, “And for bonnie Annie Laurie.” The vibrato is present in both tones. Note how the voice line varies above or below the note E on “dew” and F-sharp on “and,” sometimes as much as a quarter of a tone. Note also the smoothness and regularity of the pitch fluctuations. It is this smoothness of the vibrato which characterizes good singing. Singing photograph “AND” F♯ “DEW” E Fig. I To illustrate their scope, methods, and possibilities three specimens of photographic records of Negro voices are presented: a song, I Got a Muley,[99] by[256] Odell Walker; a yodel or “holler,” as it is commonly called, by Cleve Atwater; and Cleve’s “1926 Model Laugh.” [99]The tune is slightly different from the music of the song of the same name given in Chapter XIV. It is variously called I Got a Mule on the Mountain, I Got Mule Named Jerry, I Got a Muley, Jerry on Mountain. Figure II is the photographic notation of I Got a Muley. The music of the song as best it can be represented in ordinary notation is given below. Several interesting things are revealed by the song picture in Figure II.[100] For one thing, we have here a picture of some of those elusive slurs which are so common among Negro singers. Take the words “muley on a mount’n” in Figure II-A, for example. Musical score I GOT A MULEY, MULEY ON A MOUNT’N CALL ’IM JERRY; I GOT A MULEY, MULEY ON A MOUNT’N CALL’IM JERRY. I CAN RIDE HIM, RIDE’IM ANY TIME I WAN’ UH; I CAN RIDE HIM RIDE’IM ANY TIME I WAN’UH, LAWD, LAWD, ALL DAY LONG. When one hears these words as they were sung by Odell Walker, one is apt to feel that with the exception of the last syllable of “mount’n” they are all sung on the same pitch. The graph shows that this is not so. There are really drops in pitch of one and a half or two whole tones at two places in this phrase. Or take the word “ride,” as it occurs in the phrase, “ride ’im any time I wan’ uh,” which phrase occurs twice in the song. One can tell while listening to the song that there is some sort of slur present, but it is impossible to tell by means of the ear alone exactly what is happening. The graph reveals the fact that the singer[257] actually begins the word “ride” between D-sharp and E and carries it as high as G-sharp. The outstanding tone heard, however, is G-sharp. Other pitch changes not shown in the ordinary musical notation may be easily detected by the reader. [100]A measure on the graph is equivalent to approximately nine spaces on the horizontal scale. Note that the singer did not keep accurate time. His measures range from six to twelve spaces. The vibrato is present in places in the record of this song. In section A there is a trace of it on the word “muley” the first time it occurs. In section B there is an approach to it on the word “Jerry.” In section C it occurs on the word “ride” the first time it appears. In section D there is a tendency toward it on “Lawd, Lawd,” but it shows best in “long”, the last word of the song. A comparison with the examples of artistic singing in Figure I shows that our Negro workman’s vibrato is rough and irregular and that it does not maintain a steady general pitch level as does Welles’s vibrato. It must be borne in mind, however, that this particular song does not afford good opportunities for sustained tones and that the Negro singer’s vibrato might have shown to better advantage on a different song. In Figure III is a picture of a yodel or “holler.” It is the sort of thing which one hears from field hands as they go to work in the morning, or from some gay-spirited pick-and-shovel man as he begins digging on a frosty morning. No attempt is made to include the ordinary musical notation of the yodel, for it would give but a suggestion of the vocal idiosyncrasies involved in the execution of the yodel. The most remarkable thing about this record is the sudden changes of pitch which it portrays. In Figure III-A just at the beginning of the fifth second interval the voice takes a sudden drop. Then it rises from F to G in the octave above in about a third of a second. In section B of the yodel, near the end of the fifth second interval, the same spectacular rise occurs, this time from F-sharp to G-sharp in about one-tenth of a second. Still more remarkable are the several rapid rises and falls in pitch in section C. In the production of such sudden changes the vocal cords must undergo a snap. Even in speech, where pitch changes are very rapid, such sudden ascents and descents do not occur. [258] Chart Fig. II-A Chart Fig. II-B [259] Chart Fig. II-C Chart Fig. II-D [260] Chart Fig. III-A Chart Fig. III-B [261] Chart Fig. III-C Chart Fig. III-D [262] Chart Fig. IV-A Chart Fig. IV-B [263] It is also interesting to note that the vibrato is present at times in the yodel. It is fairly plain on C-sharp along the middle of section A and still better on G at the end of the same section. It also shows at the end of section B, continuing into section C; and the yodel ends with a semi-vibrato. There is an approach to it in several other places. The vibrato of our Negro worker, however, is rather erratic and wavering in comparison with the vibrato of the vocal artist in Figure I. Yet one must remember that our subjects, both in Figure II and Figure III, were Negro workers whose voices have never had a touch of formal training. In Figure IV we have a photographic record of a hearty Negro laugh. Its musical quality is at once evident. In the first three seconds of the laugh there is an unusual effect. It would not be called a vibrato because the pitch changes are too rapid and too extensive to give the vibrato effect. Near the beginning of the fifth second of the laugh the voice breaks up into a series of interrupted speech sounds. During the sixth second it suddenly becomes musical again and remains so for about two seconds. Then, after a rest, (see section the speech sounds reappear and continue intermittently to the end of the laugh. These observations indicate some of the possibilities of the phono-photographic method of studying Negro voices and Negro songs. When the complete results of[264] the recent study are ready for publication we may have data which will make it possible to compare scientifically the voices of different kinds of Negro singers as well as the voices of Negro and white singers. Other studies and correlations may be made through the articulation of the moving pictures of the singers, their faces, their bodily movements, their emotional expressions, and whatever reactions the camera may reveal. In nearly all instances where phono-photographic records were made of Negro voices in the recent study, moving pictures were made of the singers. In addition to these, moving pictures were made of groups of workmen while singing. Some remarkable examples of skill in movement, of coördination of song with work, of mixture of humor, pathos, and recklessness with work and song were brought to light. These have been incorporated into a series of three reels. Some of these pictures of facial expression during singing will be included in the report of the study when it is published in complete form. Many interesting questions may find their solutions if the scientific method is applied to the study of Negro singing ability. Is the vibrato a native endowment? Is the vibrato more frequent among Negroes than among whites? At what age does it appear in the voice?[101] What other qualities cause the rank and file of Negroes to excel as singers? Is the Negro’s capacity for harmony greater than the white man’s? Is his sense of rhythm better? These are some of the questions which science should be able to answer in the near future. [101]A study of the voices of white and Negro school children now being made by Milton Metfessel and Guy B. Johnson may throw some light upon some of these questions. [265] SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY[102] [102]This bibliography is not intended to cover all that has been written on Negro songs. It includes references to actual collections of songs and to a few other contributions which are of value to the serious student of Negro songs. Dozens of merely appreciative articles have been omitted. For a larger bibliography one may consult the latest issue of the Negro Year Book. BOOKS Abbot, F. H., and Swan, A. J., Eight Negro Songs. Enoch & Sons, New York, 1923. Eight songs from Bedford County, Virginia. Explanatory comments and notes on dialect are given for each song. Allen, W. F., and others, Slave Songs of the United States. New York, 1867. Words and music of 136 songs are given. Armstrong, M. F., Hampton and Its Students. New York, 1874. Fifty plantation songs. Ballanta, N. G. J., St. Helena Island Spirituals. G. Schirmer, New York, 1925. A collection of 115 spirituals from Penn School, St. Helena Island. This island is off the coast of South Carolina, and its semi-isolation makes it an interesting field for the study of Negro songs. Ballanta’s work is prefaced by a valuable but somewhat pedantic discussion of Negro music. Burlin, Natalie Curtis, Negro Folk-Songs. G. Schirmer, New York, 1918-19. Four small volumes of Negro songs recorded at Hampton Institute. Volumes I and II are spirituals, volumes III and IV are work songs and play songs. These songs are of special value in that the late Mrs. Burlin came nearer than any one else to the accurate reproduction of Negro songs in musical notation. Campbell, Olive Dame, and Sharp, Cecil J., English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. The student who is interested in the origin of Negro songs and their relation to English folk songs will find valuable data in this book. Cox, J. H., Folk Songs of the South. Harvard University Press, 1924. Most of these songs are songs of the whites of the mountains, but they are particularly valuable in that they throw light on the origin of many Negro songs. Fenner, T. P., Religious Folk Songs of the American Negro. Hampton Institute Press, 1924. (Arranged in 1909 by the Musical Directors of Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute[266] from the original edition by Thomas P. Fenner. Reprinted in 1924.) This volume contains the words and music of 153 religious songs. Fenner, T. P., and Rathbun, F. G., Cabin and Plantation Songs. New York, 1891. Old Negro plantation songs with music. Hallowell, Emily, Calhoun Plantation Songs. New York, 1910. A number of songs with music collected from the singing of Negroes on the Calhoun plantation. Harris, Joel Chandler, Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings. New York, 1880. Nine songs. Harris, Joel Chandler, Uncle Remus and His Friends. New York, 1892. Sixteen songs. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Army Life in a Black Regiment. Boston, 1870. Chapter IX of this book is devoted to Negro spirituals as they were sung in Col. Higginson’s regiment during the Civil War. Hobson, Anne, In Old Alabama. New York, 1903. Ten dialect stories and songs. Johnson, James Weldon, The Book of American Negro Spirituals. Viking Press, New York, 1925. A collection of sixty-one spirituals. Most of these songs have been published in other collections, but the musical arrangements in this volume are new. While the melodies of the old songs are retained intact, an effort has been made to improve the rhythmic qualities of the accompaniments. The preface of the book is devoted to the origin, development, and appreciation of Negro spirituals. Kennedy, R. Emmet, Black Cameos. A. & C. Boni, New York, 1924. A collection of twenty-eight stories, mostly humorous, with songs interwoven. The words and music of seventeen songs are given. Kennedy, R. Emmet, Mellows: Work Songs, Street Cries and Spirituals. A. & C. Boni, New York, 1925. Several spirituals and street songs from New Orleans. The author includes character sketches of his singers. His discussion of the relation of Negro songs to printed ballad sheets is especially interesting. Krehbiel, H. E., Afro-American Folk Songs. G. Schirmer, New York and London, 1914. A careful study of Negro folk songs from the point of view of the skilled musician. Songs and music[267] from Africa and other sources are analyzed and compared with American Negro productions. The music of sixty or more songs and dance airs is given. Marsh, J. B. T., The Story of the Jubilee Singers. Boston 1880. An account of the Jubilee Singers, with their songs. Odum, Howard W., and Johnson, Guy B., The Negro and His Songs. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1925. A study of the origin and characteristic of Negro songs from the historical and sociological point of view. The words of 200 songs are given. The songs are discussed under three general classes: spirituals, social songs, and work songs. Peterson, C. G., Creole Songs from New Orleans. New Orleans, 1902. Pike, G. D., The Jubilee Singers. Boston and New York, 1873. Sixty-one religious songs. Scarborough, Dorothy, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1925. One of the most important contributions yet made to the study of Negro songs. This book presents some 200 secular songs, including the music of most of them. Especially interesting is the chapter on “The Negro’s part in the Transmission of Traditional Songs and Ballads.” The lack of any sort of index somewhat decreases the value of the book for purposes of reference and comparison. Talley, Thomas W., Negro Folk Rhymes. Macmillan, New York, 1922. This volume contains about 350 rhymes and songs and a study of the origin, development, and characteristics of Negro rhymes. Besides a general index of songs, a comparative index is included. Work, John Wesley, Folk Songs of the American Negro. Fisk University Press, Nashville, 1915. The words of fifty-five songs and music of nine, together with a study of the origin and growth of certain songs. PERIODICALS Adventure Magazine. The files of this magazine for the last few years should be of considerable interest to the student of folk song. A department called “Old Songs That Men Have Sung” is conducted by Dr. R. W. Gordon, a Harvard-trained student of folk song. Many of the songs printed in this department are Negro songs or Negro adaptions. [268] Backus, E. M., “Negro Songs from Georgia,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 10, pp. 116, 202, 216; vol. 11, pp. 22, 60. Six religious songs. Backus, E. M., “Christmas Carols from Georgia,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 12, p. 272. Two songs. Barton, W. E., “Hymns of Negroes,” New England Magazine, vol. 19, pp. 669 et seq., 706 et seq. A number of songs with some musical notation and discussion. Bergen, Mrs. F. D., “On the Eastern Shore,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 2, pp. 296-298. Two fragments, with a brief discussion of the Negroes of the eastern shore of Maryland. Brown, J. M., “Songs of the Slave,” Lippincott’s, vol. 2, pp. 617-623. Several songs with brief comments. Cable, George W., “Creole Slave Songs,” Century, vol. 31, pp. 807-828. Twelve songs with some fragments, music of seven. Clarke, Mary Almsted, “Song Games of Negro Children in Virginia,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 3, pp. 288-290. Nine song games and rhymes. Cox, J. H., “John Hardy,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 32, p. 505 et seq. Here will be found Cox’s discussion of the John Hardy or John Henry story, together with several versions of the song. Garnett, L. A., “Spirituals,” Outlook, vol. 30, p. 589. Three religious songs. However, they appear to have been polished considerably by the writer. Haskell, M. A., “Negro Spirituals,” Century, vol. 36, pp. 577 et seq. About ten songs with music. Higginson, T. W., “Hymns of Negroes,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 19, pp. 685 et seq. Thirty-six religious and two secular songs, with musical notation. Lemmerman, K., “Improvised Negro Songs,” New Republic, vol. 13, pp. 214-215. Six religious songs or improvised fragments. Lomax, J. A., “Self-pity in Negro Folk Song,” Nation, vol. 105, pp. 141-145. About twenty songs, some new, others quoted from Perrow and Odum, with discussion. “Negro Hymn of Day of Judgment,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 9, p. 210. One religious song. [269] Niles, Abbe, “Blue Notes,” New Republic, vol. 45, pp. 292-3. A discussion of the significance of the blues and the music of the blues. The style is somewhat too verbose and technical for the average reader. Odum, Anna K., “Negro Folk Songs from Tennessee,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 27, pp. 255-265. Twenty-one religious and four secular songs. Odum, Howard W., “Religious Folk Songs of the Southern Negroes,” Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, vol. 3, pp. 265-365. About one hundred songs. Odum, Howard W., “Folk Song and Folk Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 35, pp. 223-249; 351-396. About 120 songs. Odum, Howard W., “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Country Gentleman, March, 1926, pp. 18-19, 49-50. Several religious songs with discussion. Odum, Howard W., “Down that Lonesome Road.” Country Gentleman, May, 1926, pp. 18-19, 79. Several secular songs, music of six, some new and some quoted from The Negro and His Songs and from the present collection. Peabody, Charles, “Notes on Negro Music,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 16, pp. 148-52. Observations on the technique of the Negro workman in the South, with some songs and music. Perkins, A. E., “Spirituals from the Far South,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 35, pp. 223-249. Forty-seven songs. Perrow, E. C., “Songs and Rhymes from the South,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 25, pp. 137-155; vol. 26, pp. 123-173; vol. 28, pp. 129-190. A general collection containing 118 Negro songs, mostly secular. Redfearn, S. F., “Songs from Georgia,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 34, pp. 121-124. One secular and three religious songs. Speers, M. W. F., “Negro Songs and Folk-Lore,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 23, pp. 435-439. One religious and one secular song. Steward, T. G., “Negro Imagery,” New Republic, vol. 12, p. 248. One religious improvisation, with discussion. [270] Thanet, Octave, “Cradle Songs of Negroes in North Carolina,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 7, p. 310. Two lullabies. Truitt, Florence, “Songs from Kentucky,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 36, pp. 376-379. Four white songs, one of which contains several verses often found in Negro songs. Webb, W. P., “Notes on Folk-Lore of Texas,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 28, pp. 290-299. Five secular songs. [271] INDEX TO SONGS PAGE A Creeper’s Been ’Roun’ Dis Do’ 149 A Nigger’s Hard to Fool 180 A Vampire of Your Own 143 All Boun’ in Prison 79 All Right 109 All Us Niggers ’hind de Bars 87 Angels Lookin’ at Me 198 Baby, Why Don’t You Treat Me Right? 148 Bad Man Lazarus 50 Bear Cat Down in Georgia 121 Berda, You Come Too Soon 128 Better’n I Has at Home 85 Billy Bob Russell 54 Bloodhoun’ on My Track 66 Bolin Jones 62 Boys, Put Yo’ Hands on It 107 Buffalo Bill 67 Can Any One Take Sweet Mama’s Place? 156 Captain, Captain, Let Wheelers Roll 102 Captain, I’ll Be Gone 100 Captain, I Wanta Go Home 45 Casey Jones 126 Chain Gang Blues 78 Chicken Never Roost Too High fo’ Me 133 Co’n Bread 181 Creepin’ ’Roun’ 63 Daddy Mine 155 Darlin’, Get on de Road 132 Das ’Nough Said 130 Dat Brown Gal Baby Done Turn Me Down 137 Dat Chocolate Man 161 Dat Leadin’ Houn’ 67 Dat Nigger o’ Mine Don’t Love Me No Mo’ 162 Dat Sly Gal[272] 164 De Chocolate Gal 153 De Co’t House in de Sky 184 De Devil’s Been to My House 193 De Goat’s Got a Smell 131 De Mulatto Gal 153 De Woman Am de Cause of It All A 142 B 143 De Women Don’t Love Me No Mo’ 141 Dem Chain Gang Houn’s 86 Dem Longin’, Wantin’ Blues 162 Dem Turrible Red Hot Blues 130 Dere’s a Lizzie After My Man 163 Dere’s Misery in Dis Lan’ 161 Dew-Drop Mine 149 Dey Got Each and de Udder’s Man 144 Dey’s Hangin’ ’roun’ Her Do’ 148 Diamond Joe 130 Didn’t Ol’ Pharaoh Get Lost? 191 Dig-a My Grave Wid a Silver Spade 129 Don’t Fool Wid Me 63 Don’t Wanta See Her No Mo’ 137 Don’t You Give Me No Cornbread 105 Don’t You Hear? 68 Don’t You Two-time Me 156 Dove Came Down by the Foot of My Bed 127 Dupree 55 Dupree’s Jail Song 123 Dupree Tol’ Betty 57 Everybody Call Me the Wages Man 116 “Free Labor” Gang Song 90 Give Me a Teasin’ Brown 146 Go ’Long Mule 177 Goin’ Back to de Gang 86 Goin’ Down Dat Lonesome Road[273] 46 Gonna Turn Back Pharaoh’s Army 191 Good Lawd, I Am Troubled 192 Good Morning, Mr. Epting 171 Goodby, Sing Hallelu 205 Goodby, Sookie 131 Got Me in the Calaboose 76 Great Scots, You Don’t Know What to Do 132 Gwine to Git a Home By an’ By 176 Have Everlastin’ Life 194 He Got My Gal 151 He-i-Heira 92 He Run Me In 131 He Tuck Her Away 149 He Wus de Gov’nor of Our Clan 127 Help Me Drive ’Em 109 Hi, Jenny, Ho, Jenny Johnson 185 Home Again, Home Again 150 Honey Baby 145 Hot Flambotia an’ Coffee Strong 112 Hump-back Mule 179 I Ain’t Done Nothin’ 69 I Ain’t Free 71 I Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Make a Fool Out o’ Me 128 I Ain’t No Stranger 159 I Am Ready For de Fight 64 I Belong to Steel-drivin’ Crew 110 I Bid You a Long Farewell 197 I Brung a Gal From Tennessee 137 I Calls My Jesus King Emanuel 205 I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ 40 I Done Sol’ My Soul to de Devil 158 I Don’t Feel Welcome Here 164 I Don’t Love Him No Mo’ 162 I Don’t Mind Bein’ in Jail 77 I Don’t Want No Trouble Wid de Walker[274] 113 I Don’t Want No Cornbread 114 I Don’t Want You All to Grieve After Me 197 I Got a Gal an’ I Can’t Git Her 147 I Got a Letter, Captain 82 I Got a Letter From My Man 158 I Got a Muley 120 I Got Another Daddy 165 I Got Chickens on My Back 128 I Got My Man 150 I Love Jesus 195 I Never Will Turn Back 200 I Rather Be in My Grave 38 I Steal Dat Corn 68 I Tol’ My Cap’n That My Feet Was Col’ 102 I Wants to Go to Heaven 203 I Went to de Jail House 79 I Went to See My Gal 147 I Wish I Was Dead 39 I Wish I Was Single Again 163 If Dere’s a Man in de Moon 143 If I Can Git to Georgia Line 75 If I’d A-known My Cap’n Was Blin’ 101 If You Want to See a Pretty Girl 145 I’m a Natural-bo’n Ram’ler 65 I’m Comin’ Back 85 I’m de Hot Stuff Man 65 I’m de Rough Stuff 69 I’m Fishin’ Boun’ 181 I’m Goin’ Back Home 96 I’m Goin’ Home, Buddie 43 I’m Goin’ On 112 I’m Goin’ Out West 124 I’m Gonna Get Me Another Man 165 I’m Gonna Have Me a Red Ball All My Own 132 In de Mornin’ Soon[275] 201 I’s a Natural-bo’n Eastman 68 I’s Done Spot My Nigger 150 I’s Dreamin’ of You 154 I’s Gonna Shine 204 I’s Havin’ a Hell of a Time 138 I’s Swingin’ in de Swinger 204 Jail House Wail 73 Jes’ Behol’ What a Number 194 Jes’ Fer a Day 87 John Henry (See Chapter XIII) 221-240 Judge Gonna Sentence Us So Long 80 Julia Long 125 July’s for the Red-bug 106 Kitty Kimo 187 Lawd, She Keep on Worryin’ Me 136 Lawd, Lawd, I’m on My Way 46 Lawdy, What I Gonna Do? 139 Layin’ Low 62 Left Wing Gordon (See Chapter XII) 206-221 Long, Tall, Brown-skin Girl 146 Lookin’ Over in Georgia 121 Mammy-in-law Done Turn Me Out 141 Missus in de Big House 117 Mule on the Mountain 119 My Black Jack 155 My Gal’s a High Bo’n Lady 145 My Girl She’s Gone and Left Me 136 My Home Ain’t Here, Captain 98 My Jane 144 My Man Am a Slap-stick Man 156 My Man He Got in Trouble 81 Never Turn Back 107 No Coon But You 183 No More 108 Nothin’ to Keep[276] 115 O Buckeye Rabbit 110 O Captain, Captain 94 O Lawd, Mamie 91 Oh, de Gospel Train’s A-comin’ 202 Occupied 164 Ol’ Black Mariah 87 On de Road Somewhere 155 On My Las’ Go-’round 128 Out in de Cabin 131 Outran Dat Cop 67 Pharaoh’s Army Got Drownded 190 Pity Po’ Boy 38 Please, Mr. Conductor 44 Po’ Homeless Boy 43 Po’ Little Girl Grievin’ 41 Po’ Nigger Got Nowhere to Go 39 Prisoner’s Song 83 Pull off Dem Shoes I Bought You 140 Pullman Porter 186 Rain or Shine 129 Raise a Rukus Tonight A 173 B 174 C 174 Reason I Stay on Job So Long 112 Reuben 66 Roscoe Bill 62 Save Me, Lawd 196 Section Boss 93 Shanghai Rooster 134 She’s Got Another Daddy 151 Ship My Po’ Body Home 37 Shoot, Good God, Shoot! 87 Shoot That Buffalo 123 Shootin’ Bill[277] 63 Shot My Pistol in the Heart o’ Town 70 Since I Laid My Burden Down 201 Slim Jim From Dark-town Alley 64 Some o’ Dese Days 139 Some o’ These Days 202 Stewball Was a Racer 133 ’Taint as Bad as I Said 75 Take Me Back Home 44 That Liar 168 That Ol’ Letter 43 The Judge He Sentence Me 82 The Sanctified 195 This Ol’ Hammer 111 Throw Myself Down in de Sea 38 Travelin’ Man 59 Trouble All My Days 40 Turn Yo’ Damper Down 126 U-h, U-h, Lawdy 110 War Jubilee Song 169 Wash My Overhalls 126 ’Way Up in the Mountain 104 We Are Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder 111 We Will Kneel ’Roun’ de Altar 193 What Can the Matter Be? 160 What You Gonna Do? 195 When He Grin 69 When I Git Home 203 When I Lay My Burden Down 200 When I Wore My Ap’on Low 157 When I’s Dead an’ Gone 197 Who Built de Ark? 191 Whoa, Mule 179 Who’s Goin’ to Buy Your Whiskey? 129 Will I Git Back Home?[278] 45 Woke up Wid My Back to the Wall 84 Worried Anyhow 160 Wring Jing Had a Little Ding 175 Yonder Come de Devil 130 You Calls Me in de Mornin’ 129 You Mus’ Shroud My Body 199 You Take de Stockin’, I Take de Sock 140 You Take de Yaller, I Take de Black 146 Transcriber’s Notes The text has been transcribed verbatim from the source document, including inconsistencies and (phonetic representations of) dialects and speech and pejorative and offensive language. Page 29, table: the percentages are as printed in the source document, but appear to be off slightly for brand C and by several percentage points for brands A and B. Page 255, The first represents ...: first and second are reversed compared to the illustration. Changes made: Footnotes have been moved to under the song or text paragraph in which they are referenced. Some minor inconsistencies and obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Several contractions such as aint’, dont’ and wont’ etc. have been changed to ain’t, don’t and won’t etc. Text in a dashed box was not present in the text as such, but has been transcribed from the accompanying illustration. Page 25: Love, careless, love changed to Love, careless love. Page 30: Lake Ponchartrain Blues changed to Lake Pontchartrain Blues. Page 66: I’m a greasy streak o’ lightin’ changed to I’m a greasy streak o’ lightnin’ (last verse but one). Page 111: trottin’ Sallie changed to Trottin’ Sallie (second verse). Page 226: O dat dress dat you wear so fine? changed to O’ dat dress dat you wear so fine? *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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Francis Johnson Webb was a grandson of Aaron Burr, yes the one who shot Hamilton. Webb wrote The Garies and Their Friends (1857) Language: English Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Scott and PG Distributed Proofreaders *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARIES AND THEIR FRIENDS *** Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Scott and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE GARIES AND THEIR FRIENDS Frank J. Webb 1857 Preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe TO THE LADY NOEL BYRON THIS BOOK IS, BY HER KIND PERMISSION, MOST AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, WITH PROFOUND RESPECT, BY HER GRATEFUL FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. The book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.—Are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress? The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of Philadelphia. This city, standing as it does on the frontier between free and slave territory, has accumulated naturally a large population of the mixed and African race. Being one of the nearest free cities of any considerable size to the slave territory, it has naturally been a resort of escaping fugitives, or of emancipated slaves. In this city they form a large class—have increased in numbers, wealth, and standing—they constitute a peculiar society of their own, presenting many social peculiarities worthy of interest and attention. The representations of their positions as to wealth and education are reliable, the incidents related are mostly true ones, woven together by a slight web of fiction. The scenes of the mob describe incidents of a peculiar stage of excitement, which existed in the city of Philadelphia years ago, when the first agitation of the slavery question developed an intense form of opposition to the free coloured people. Southern influence at that time stimulated scenes of mob violence in several Northern cities where the discussion was attempted. By prompt, undaunted resistance, however, this spirit was subdued, and the right of free inquiry established; so that discussion of the question, so far from being dangerous in Free States, is now begun to be allowed in the Slave States; and there are some subjects the mere discussion of which is a half-victory. The author takes pleasure in recommending this simple and truthfully-told story to the attention and interest of the friends of progress and humanity in England. (Signed) H.B. Stowe. ANDOVER, U.S., August 17, 1857. FROM LORD BROUGHAM. I have been requested by one who has long known the deep interest I have ever taken in the cause of Freedom, and in the elevation of the coloured race, to supply a few lines of introduction to Mr. Webb's book. It was the intention of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe to introduce this work to the British public, but I am truly sorry to learn that a severe domestic affliction, since her return to America, has postponed the fulfilment of her promise. I am, however, able to state her opinion of the book, expressed in a letter to one of her friends. She says:—"There are points in the book of which I think very highly. The style is simple and unambitious—the characters, most of them faithfully drawn from real life, are quite fresh, and the incident, which is also much of it fact, is often deeply interesting. "I shall do what I can with the preface. I would not do as much unless I thought the book of worth in itself. It shows what I long have wanted to show; what the free people of colour do attain, and what they can do in spite of all social obstacles." I hope and trust that Mr. Webb's book will meet with all the success to which its own merit, and the great interest of the subject, so well entitle it. On this, Mrs. Stowe's authority is naturally of the greatest weight; and I can only lament that this prefatory notice does not come accompanied with her further remarks and illustrations. 4, Grafton-street, July 29, 1857. * * * * * Note.—Since the above was written, the preface by Mrs. Stowe has been received. It was deemed best, however, to still retain the introduction so kindly given by Lord Brougham, whose deep interest in the freedom and welfare of the African race none feel more grateful for than does the author of the following pages. CONTENTS 1.—In which the Reader is introduced to a Family of Peculiar Construction 2.—A Glance at the Ellis Family 3.—Charlie's Trials 4.—In which Mr. Winston finds an Old Friend 5.—The Garies decide on a Change 6.—Pleasant News 7.—Mrs. Thomas has her Troubles 8.—Trouble in the Ellis Family 9.—Breaking up 10.—Another Parting 11.—The New Home 12.—Mr. Garie's Neighbour 13.—Hopes consummated 14.—Charlie at Warmouth 15.—Mrs. Stevens gains a Triumph 16.—Mr. Stevens makes a Discovery 17.—Plotting 18.—Mr. Stevens falls into Bad Hands 19.—The Alarm 20.—The Attack 21.—More Horrors 22.—An Anxious Day 23.—The Lost One Found 24.—Charlie distinguishes himself 25.—The Heir 26.—Home again 27.—Sudbury 28.—Charlie seeks Employment 29.—Clouds and Sunshine 30.—Many Years after 31.—The Thorn rankles 32.—Dear Old Ess again 33.—The Fatal Discovery 34.—"Murder will out" 35.—The Wedding 36.—And the Last CHAPTER I. In which the Reader is introduced to a Family of peculiar Construction. It was at the close of an afternoon in May, that a party might have been seen gathered around a table covered with all those delicacies that, in the household of a rich Southern planter, are regarded as almost necessaries of life. In the centre stood a dish of ripe strawberries, their plump red sides peeping through the covering of white sugar that had been plentifully sprinkled over them. Geeche limes, almost drowned in their own rich syrup, temptingly displayed their bronze-coloured forms just above the rim of the glass that contained them. Opposite, and as if to divert the gaze from lingering too long over their luscious beauty, was a dish of peaches preserved in brandy, a never-failing article in a Southern matron's catalogues of sweets. A silver basket filled with a variety of cakes was in close proximity to a plate of corn-flappers, which were piled upon it like a mountain, and from the brown tops of which trickled tiny rivulets of butter. All these dainties, mingling their various odours with the aroma of the tea and fine old java that came steaming forth from the richly chased silver pots, could not fail to produce a very appetising effect. There was nothing about Mr. Garie, the gentleman who sat at the head of the table, to attract more than ordinary attention. He had the ease of manner usual with persons whose education and associations have been of a highly refined character, and his countenance, on the whole, was pleasing, and indicative of habitual good temper. Opposite to him, and presiding at the tea-tray, sat a lady of marked beauty. The first thing that would have attracted attention on seeing her were her gloriously dark eyes. They were not entirely black, but of that seemingly changeful hue so often met with in persons of African extraction, which deepens and lightens with every varying emotion. Hers wore a subdued expression that sank into the heart and at once riveted those who saw her. Her hair, of jetty black, was arranged in braids; and through her light-brown complexion the faintest tinge of carmine was visible. As she turned to take her little girl from the arms of the servant, she displayed a fine profile and perfectly moulded form. No wonder that ten years before, when she was placed upon the auction-block at Savanah, she had brought so high a price. Mr. Garie had paid two thousand dollars for her, and was the envy of all the young bucks in the neighbourhood who had competed with him at the sale. Captivated by her beauty, he had esteemed himself fortunate in becoming her purchaser; and as time developed the goodness of her heart, and her mind enlarged through the instructions he assiduously gave her, he found the connection that might have been productive of many evils, had proved a boon to both; for whilst the astonishing progress she made in her education proved her worthy of the pains he took to instruct her, she returned threefold the tenderness and affection he lavished upon her. The little girl in her arms, and the boy at her side, showed no trace whatever of African origin. The girl had the chestnut hair and blue eyes of her father; but the boy had inherited the black hair and dark eyes of his mother. The critically learned in such matters, knowing his parentage, might have imagined they could detect the evidence of his mother's race, by the slightly mezzo-tinto expression of his eyes, and the rather African fulness of his lips; but the casual observer would have passed him by without dreaming that a drop of negro blood coursed through his veins. His face was expressive of much intelligence, and he now seemed to listen with an earnest interest to the conversation that was going on between his father and a dark-complexioned gentleman who sat beside him. "And so you say, Winston, that they never suspected you were coloured?" "I don't think they had the remotest idea of such a thing. At least, if they did, they must have conquered their prejudices most effectually, for they treated me with the most distinguished consideration. Old Mr. Priestly was like a father to me; and as for his daughter Clara and her aunt, they were politeness embodied. The old gentleman was so much immersed in business, that he was unable to bestow much attention upon me; so he turned me over to Miss Clara to be shown the lions. We went to the opera, the theatre, to museums, concerts, and I can't tell where all. The Sunday before I left I accompanied her to church, and after service, as we were coming out, she introduced me to Miss Van Cote and her mamma. Mrs. Van Cote was kind enough to invite me to her grand ball." "And did you go?" interrupted Mr. Garie. "Of course, I did—and what is more, as old Mr. Priestly has given up balls, he begged me to escort Clara and her aunt." "Well, Winston, that is too rich," exclaimed Mr. Garie, slapping his hand on the table, and laughing till he was red in the face; "too good, by Jove! Oh! I can't keep that. I must write to them, and say I forgot to mention in my note of introduction that you were a coloured gentleman. The old man will swear till everything turns blue; and as for Clara, what will become of her? A Fifth-avenue belle escorted to church and to balls by a coloured gentleman!" Here Mr. Garie indulged in another burst of laughter so side-shaking and merry, that the contagion spread even to the little girl in Mrs. Garie's arms, who almost choked herself with the tea her mother was giving her, and who had to be hustled and shaken for some time before she could be brought round again. "It will be a great triumph for me," said Mr. Garie. "The old man prides himself on being able to detect evidences of the least drop of African blood in any one; and makes long speeches about the natural antipathy of the Anglo-Saxon to anything with a drop of negro blood in its veins. Oh, I shall write him a glorious letter expressing my pleasure at his great change of sentiment, and my admiration of the fearless manner in which he displays his contempt for public opinion. How he will stare! I fancy I see him now, with his hair almost on end with disgust. It will do him good: it will convince him, I hope, that a man can be a gentleman even though he has African blood in his veins. I have had a series of quarrels with him," continued Mr. Garie; "I think he had his eye on me for Miss Clara, and that makes him particularly fierce about my present connection. He rather presumes on his former great intimacy with my father, and undertakes to lecture me occasionally when opportunity is afforded. He was greatly scandalized at my speaking of Emily as my wife; and seemed to think me cracked because I talked of endeavouring to procure a governess for my children, or of sending them abroad to be educated. He has a holy horror of everything approaching to amalgamation; and of all the men I ever met, cherishes the most unchristian prejudice against coloured people. He says, the existence of "a gentleman" with African blood in his veins, is a moral and physical impossibility, and that by no exertion can anything be made of that description of people. He is connected with a society for the deportation of free coloured people, and thinks they ought to be all sent to Africa, unless they are willing to become the property of some good master." "Oh, yes; it is quite a hobby of his," here interposed Mr. Winston. "He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form. Have you seen them?" "Yes, he sent them to me. I tried to get through one of them, but it was too heavy, I had to give it up. Besides, I had no patience with them; they abounded in mis-statements respecting the free coloured people. Why even here in the slave states—in the cities of Savanah and Charleston—they are much better situated than he describes them to be in New York; and since they can and do prosper here, where they have such tremendous difficulties to encounter, I know they cannot be in the condition he paints, in a state where they are relieved from many of the oppressions they labour under here. And, on questioning him on the subject, I found he was entirely unacquainted with coloured people; profoundly ignorant as to the real facts of their case. He had never been within a coloured church or school; did not even know that they had a literary society amongst them. Positively, I, living down here in Georgia, knew more about the character and condition of the coloured people of the Northern States, than he who lived right in the midst of them. Would you believe that beyond their laundress and a drunken negro that they occasionally employed to do odd jobs for them, they were actually unacquainted with any coloured people: and how unjust was it for him to form his opinion respecting a class numbering over twenty thousand in his own state, from the two individuals I have mentioned and the negro loafers he occasionally saw in the streets." "It is truly unfortunate," rejoined Mr. Winston, "for he covers his prejudices with such a pretended regard for the coloured people, that a person would be the more readily led to believe his statements respecting them to be correct; and he is really so positive about it, and apparently go deaf to all argument that I did not discuss the subject with him to any extent; he was so very kind to me that I did not want to run a tilt against his favourite opinions." "You wrote me he gave you letters to Philadelphia; was there one amongst them to the Mortons?" "Yes. They were very civil and invited me to a grand dinner they gave to the Belgian Charge d'Affaires. I also met there one or two scions of the first families of Virginia. The Belgian minister did not seem to be aware that slavery is a tabooed subject in polite circles, and he was continually bringing it forward until slaves, slavery, and black people in general became the principal topic of conversation, relieved by occasional discussion upon some new book or pictures, and remarks in praise of the viands before us. A very amusing thing occurred during dinner. A bright-faced little coloured boy who was assisting at the table, seemed to take uncommon interest in the conversation. An animated discussion had arisen as to the antiquity of the use of salad, one party maintaining that one of the oldest of the English poets had mentioned it in a poem, and the other as stoutly denying it. At last a reverend gentleman, whose remarks respecting the intelligence of the children of Ham had been particularly disparaging, asserted that nowhere in Chaucer, Spencer, nor any of the old English poets could anything relating to it be found. At this, the little waiter became so excited that he could no longer contain himself, and, despite the frowns and nods of our hostess, exclaimed, 'Yes it can, it's in Chaucer; here,' he continued, taking out a book from the book-case, 'here is the very volume,'[*] and turning over the leaves he pointed out the passage, to the great chagrin of the reverend gentleman, and to the amusement of the guests. The Belgian minister enjoyed it immensely. 'Ah,' said he, 'the child of Ham know more than the child of Shem, dis time.' Whereupon Mrs. Morton rejoined that in this case it was not so wonderful, owing to the frequent and intimate relations into which ham and salad were brought, and with this joke the subject was dismissed. I can't say I was particularly sorry when the company broke up." [Footnote * See Chaucer, "Flower and the Leaf."] "Oh, George, never mind the white people," here interposed Mrs. Garie. "Never mind them; tell us about the coloured folks; they are the ones I take the most interest in. We were so delighted with your letters, and so glad that you found Mrs. Ellis. Tell us all about that." "Oh, 'tis a long story, Em, and can't be told in a minute; it would take the whole evening to relate it all." "Look at the children, my dear, they are half asleep," said Mr. Garie. "Call nurse and see them safe into bed, and when you come back we will have the whole story." "Very well;" replied she, rising and calling the nurse. "Now remember, George, you are not to begin until I return, for I should be quite vexed to lose a word." "Oh, go on with the children, my dear, I'll guarantee he shall not say a word on the subject till you come back." With this assurance Mrs. Garie left the room, playfully shaking her finger at them as she went out, exclaiming, "Not a word, remember now, not a word." After she left them Mr. Garie remarked, "I have not seen Em as happy as she is this afternoon for some time. I don't know what has come over her lately; she scarcely ever smiles now, and yet she used to be the most cheerful creature in the world. I wish I knew what is the matter with her; sometimes I am quite distressed about her. She goes about the house looking so lost and gloomy, and does not seem to take the least interest in anything. You saw," continued he, "how silent she has been all tea time, and yet she has been more interested in what you have been saying than in anything that has transpired for months. Well, I suppose women will be so sometimes," he concluded, applying himself to the warm cakes that had just been set upon the table. "Perhaps she is not well," suggested Mr. Winston, "I think she looks a little pale." "Well, possibly you may be right, but I trust it is only a temporary lowness of spirits or something of that kind. Maybe she will get over it in a day or two;" and with this remark the conversation dropped, and the gentlemen proceeded to the demolition of the sweetmeats before them. And now, my reader, whilst they are finishing their meal, I will relate to you who Mr. Winston is, and how he came to be so familiarly seated at Mr. Garie's table. Mr. Winston had been a slave. Yes! that fine-looking gentleman seated near Mr. Garie and losing nothing by the comparison that their proximity would suggest, had been fifteen years before sold on the auction-block in the neighbouring town of Savanah—had been made to jump, show his teeth, shout to test his lungs, and had been handled and examined by professed negro traders and amateur buyers, with less gentleness and commiseration than every humane man would feel for a horse or an ox. Now do not doubt me—I mean that very gentleman, whose polished manners and irreproachable appearance might have led you to suppose him descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors. Yes—he was the offspring of a mulatto field-hand by her master. He who was now clothed in fine linen, had once rejoiced in a tow shirt that scarcely covered his nakedness, and had sustained life on a peck of corn a week, receiving the while kicks and curses from a tyrannical overseer. The death of his master had brought him to the auction-block, from which, both he and his mother were sold to separate owners. There they took their last embrace of each other—the mother tearless, but heart-broken—the boy with all the wildest manifestations of grief. His purchaser was a cotton broker from New Orleans, a warm-hearted, kind old man, who took a fancy to the boy's looks, and pitied him for his unfortunate separation from his mother. After paying for his new purchase, he drew him aside, and said, in a kind tone, "Come, my little man, stop crying; my boys never cry. If you behave yourself you shall have fine times with me. Stop crying now, and come with me; I am going to buy you a new suit of clothes." "I don't want new clothes—I want my mammy," exclaimed the child, with a fresh burst of grief. "Oh dear me!" said the fussy old gentleman, "why can't you stop—I don't want to hear you cry. Here," continued he, fumbling in his pocket—"here's a picayune." "Will that buy mother back?" said the child brightening up. "No, no, my little man, not quite—I wish it would. I'd purchase the old woman; but I can't—I'm not able to spare the money." "Then I don't want it," cried the boy, throwing the money on the ground. "If it won't buy mammy, I don't want it. I want my mammy, and nothing else." At length, by much kind language, and by the prospect of many fabulous events to occur hereafter, invented at the moment by the old gentleman, the boy was coaxed into a more quiescent state, and trudged along in the rear of Mr. Moyese—that was the name of his purchaser—to be fitted with the new suit of clothes. The next morning they started by the stage for Augusta. George, seated on the box with the driver, found much to amuse him; and the driver's merry chat and great admiration of George's new and gaily-bedizened suit, went a great way towards reconciling that young gentleman to his new situation. In a few days they arrived in New Orleans. There, under the kind care of Mr. Moyese, he began to exhibit great signs of intelligence. The atmosphere into which he was now thrown, the kindness of which he was hourly the recipient, called into vigour abilities that would have been stifled for ever beneath the blighting influences that surrounded him under his former master. The old gentleman had him taught to read and write, and his aptness was such as to highly gratify the kind old soul. In course of time, the temporary absence of an out-door clerk caused George's services to be required at the office for a few days, as errand-boy. Here he made himself so useful as to induce Mr. Moyese to keep him there permanently. After this he went through all the grades from errand-boy up to chief-clerk, which post he filled to the full satisfaction of his employer. His manners and person improved with his circumstances; and at the time he occupied the chief-clerk's desk, no one would have suspected him to be a slave, and few who did not know his history would have dreamed that he had a drop of African blood in his veins. He was unremitting in his attention to the duties of his station, and gained, by his assiduity and amiable deportment, the highest regard of his employer. A week before a certain New-year's-day, Mr. Moyese sat musing over some presents that had just been sent home, and which he was on the morrow to distribute amongst his nephews and nieces. "Why, bless me!" he suddenly exclaimed, turning them over, "why, I've entirely forgotten George! That will never do; I must get something for him. What shall it be? He has a fine watch, and I gave him a pin and ring last year. I really don't know what will be suitable," and he sat for some time rubbing his chin, apparently in deep deliberation. "Yes, I'll do it!" he exclaimed, starting up; "I'll do it! He has been a faithful fellow, and deserves it. I'll make him a present of himself! Now, how strange it is I never thought of that before—it's just the thing;—how surprised and delighted he will be!" and the old gentleman laughed a low, gentle, happy laugh, that had in it so little of selfish pleasure, that had you only heard him you must have loved him for it. Having made up his mind to surprise George in this agreeable manner, Mr. Moyese immediately wrote a note, which he despatched to his lawyers, Messrs. Ketchum and Lee, desiring them to make out a set of free papers for his boy George, and to have them ready for delivery on the morrow, as it was his custom to give his presents two or three days in advance of the coming year. The note found Mr. Ketchum deep in a disputed will case, upon the decision of which depended the freedom of some half-dozen slaves, who had been emancipated by the will of their late master; by which piece of posthumous benevolence his heirs had been greatly irritated, and were in consequence endeavouring to prove him insane. "Look at that, Lee," said he, tossing the note to his partner; "if that old Moyese isn't the most curious specimen of humanity in all New Orleans! He is going to give away clear fifteen hundred dollars as a New-year's gift!" "To whom?" asked Mr. Lee. "He has sent me orders," replied Mr. Ketchum, "to make out a set of free papers for his boy George." "Well, I can't say that I see so much in that," said Lee; "how can he expect to keep him? George is almost as white as you or I, and has the manners and appearance of a gentleman. He might walk off any day without the least fear of detection." "Very true," rejoined Ketchum, "but I don't think he would do it. He is very much attached to the old gentleman, and no doubt would remain with him as long as the old man lives. But I rather think the heirs would have to whistle for him after Moyese was put under ground. However," concluded Mr. Ketchum, "they won't have much opportunity to dispute the matter, as he will be a free man, no doubt, before he is forty-eight hours older." A day or two after this, Mr. Moyese entertained all his nephews and nieces at dinner, and each was gratified with some appropriate gift. The old man sat happily regarding the group that crowded round him, their faces beaming with delight. The claim for the seat of honour on Uncle Moyese's knee was clamorously disputed, and the old gentleman was endeavouring to settle it to the satisfaction of all parties, when a servant entered, and delivered a portentous-looking document, tied with red tape. "Oh, the papers—now, my dears, let uncle go. Gustave, let go your hold of my leg, or I can't get up. Amy, ring the bell, dear." This operation Mr. Moyese was obliged to lift her into the chair to effect, where she remained tugging at the bell-rope until she was lifted out again by the servant, who came running in great haste to answer a summons of such unusual vigour. "Tell George I want him," said Mr. Moyese. "He's gone down to the office; I hearn him say suffin bout de nordern mail as he went out—but I duno what it was"—and as he finished he vanished from the apartment, and might soon after have been seen with his mouth in close contact with the drumstick of a turkey. Mr. Moyese being now released from the children, took his way to the office, with the portentous red-tape document that was to so greatly change the condition of George Winston in his coat pocket. The old man sat down at his desk, smiling, as he balanced the papers in his hand, at the thought of the happiness he was about to confer on his favourite. He was thus engaged when the door opened, and George entered, bearing some newly-arrived orders from European correspondents, in reference to which he sought Mr. Moyese's instructions. "I think, sir," said he, modestly, "that we had better reply at once to Ditson, and send him the advance he requires, as he will not otherwise be able to fill these;" and as he concluded he laid the papers on the table, and stood waiting orders respecting them. Mr. Moyese laid down the packet, and after looking over the papers George had brought in, replied: "I think we had. Write to him to draw upon us for the amount he requires.—And, George," he continued, looking at him benevolently, "what would you like for a New-year's present?" "Anything you please, sir," was the respectful reply. "Well, George," resumed Mr. Moyese, "I have made up my mind to make you a present of——" here he paused and looked steadily at him for a few seconds; and then gravely handing him the papers, concluded, "of yourself, George! Now mind and don't throw my present away, my boy." George stood for some moments looking in a bewildered manner, first at his master, then at the papers. At last the reality of his good fortune broke fully upon him, and he sank into a chair, and unable to say more than: "God bless you, Mr. Moyese!" burst into tears. "Now you are a pretty fellow," said the old man, sobbing himself, "it's nothing to cry about—get home as fast as you can, you stupid cry-baby, and mind you are here early in the morning, sir, for I intend to pay you five hundred dollars a-year, and I mean you to earn it," and thus speaking he bustled out of the room, followed by George's repeated "God bless you!" That "God bless you" played about his ears at night, and soothed him to sleep; in dreams he saw it written in diamond letters on a golden crown, held towards him by a hand outstretched from the azure above. He fancied the birds sang it to him in his morning walk, and that he heard it in the ripple of the little stream that flowed at the foot of his garden. So he could afford to smile when his relatives talked about his mistaken generosity, and could take refuge in that fervent "God bless you!" Six years after this event Mr. Moyese died, leaving George a sufficient legacy to enable him to commence business on his own account. As soon as he had arranged his affairs, he started for his old home, to endeavour to gain by personal exertions what he had been unable to learn through the agency of others—a knowledge of the fate of his mother. He ascertained that she had been sold and re-sold, and had finally died in New Orleans, not more than three miles from where he had been living. He had not even the melancholy satisfaction of finding her grave. During his search for his mother he had become acquainted with Emily, the wife of Mr. Garie, and discovered that she was his cousin; and to this was owing the familiar footing on which we find him in the household where we first introduced him to our readers. Mr. Winston had just returned from a tour through the Northern States, where he had been in search of a place in which to establish himself in business. The introductions with which Mr. Garie had kindly favoured him, had enabled him to see enough of Northern society to convince him, that, amongst the whites, he could not form either social or business connections, should his identity with, the African race be discovered; and whilst, on the other hand, he would have found sufficiently refined associations amongst the people of colour to satisfy his social wants, he felt that he could not bear the isolation and contumely to which they were subjected. He, therefore, decided on leaving the United States, and on going to some country where, if he must struggle for success in life, he might do it without the additional embarrassments that would be thrown in his way in his native land, solely because he belonged to an oppressed race. CHAPTER II. A Glance at the Ellis Family. "I wish Charlie would come with that tea," exclaimed Mrs. Ellis, who sat finishing off some work, which had to go home that evening. "I wonder what can keep him so long away. He has been gone over an hour; it surely cannot take him that time to go to Watson's." "It is a great distance, mother," said Esther Ellis, who was busily plying her needle; "and I don't think he has been quite so long as you suppose." "Yes; he has been gone a good hour," repeated Mrs. Ellis. "It is now six o'clock, and it wanted three minutes to five when he left. I do hope he won't forget that I told him half black and half green—he is so forgetful!" And Mrs. Ellis rubbed her spectacles and looked peevishly out of the window as she concluded.—"Where can he be?" she resumed, looking in the direction in which he might be expected. "Oh, here he comes, and Caddy with him. They have just turned the corner—open the door and let them in." Esther arose, and on opening the door was almost knocked down by Charlie's abrupt entrance into the apartment, he being rather forcibly shoved in by his sister Caroline, who appeared to be in a high state of indignation. "Where do you think he was, mother? Where do you think I found him?" "Well, I can't say—I really don't know; in some mischief, I'll be bound." "He was on the lot playing marbles—and I've had such a time to get him home. Just look at his knees; they are worn through. And only think, mother, the tea was lying on the ground, and might have been carried off, if I had not happened to come that way. And then he has been fighting and struggling with me all the way home. See," continued she, baring her arm, "just look how he has scratched me," and as she spoke she held out the injured member for her mother's inspection. "Mother," said Charlie, in his justification, "she began to beat me before all the boys, before I had said a word to her, and I wasn't going to stand that. She is always storming at me. She don't give me any peace of my life." "Oh yes, mother," here interposed Esther; "Cad is too cross to him. I must say, that he would not be as bad as he is, if she would only let him alone." "Esther, please hush now; you have nothing to do with their quarrels. I'll settle all their differences. You always take his part whether he be right or wrong. I shall send him to bed without his tea, and to-morrow I will take his marbles from him; and if I see his knees showing through his pants again, I'll put a red patch on them—that's what I'll do. Now, sir, go to bed, and don't let me hear of you until morning." Mr. and Mrs. Ellis were at the head of a highly respectable and industrious coloured family. They had three children. Esther, the eldest, was a girl of considerable beauty, and amiable temper. Caroline, the second child, was plain in person, and of rather shrewish disposition; she was a most indefatigable housewife, and was never so happy as when in possession of a dust or scrubbing brush; she would have regarded a place where she could have lived in a perpetual state of house cleaning, as an earthly paradise. Between her and Master Charlie continued warfare existed, interrupted only by brief truces brought about by her necessity for his services as water-carrier. When a service of this character had been duly rewarded by a slice of bread and preserves, or some other dainty, hostilities would most probably be recommenced by Charlie's making an inroad upon the newly cleaned floor, and leaving the prints of his muddy boots thereon. The fact must here be candidly stated, that Charlie was not a tidy boy. He despised mats, and seldom or never wiped his feet on entering the house; he was happiest when he could don his most dilapidated unmentionables, as he could then sit down where he pleased without the fear of his mother before his eyes, and enter upon a game of marbles with his mind perfectly free from all harassing cares growing out of any possible accident to the aforesaid garments, so that he might give that attention to the game that its importance demanded. He was a bright-faced pretty boy, clever at his lessons, and a favourite both with tutors and scholars. He had withal a thorough boy's fondness for play, and was also characterised by all the thoughtlessness consequent thereon. He possessed a lively, affectionate disposition, and was generally at peace with all the world, his sister Caddy excepted. Caroline had recovered her breath, and her mind being soothed by the judgment that had been pronounced on Master Charlie, she began to bustle about to prepare tea. The shining copper tea-kettle was brought from the stove where it had been seething and singing for the last half-hour; then the tea-pot of china received its customary quantity of tea, which was set upon the stove to brew, and carefully placed behind the stove pipe that no accidental touch of the elbow might bring it to destruction. Plates, knives, and teacups came rattling forth from the closet; the butter was brought from the place where it had been placed to keep it cool, and a corn-cake was soon smoking on the table, and sending up its seducing odour into the room over-head to which Charlie had been recently banished, causing to that unfortunate young gentleman great physical discomfort. "Now, mother," said the bustling Caddy, "it's all ready. Come now and sit down whilst the cake is hot—do put up the sewing, Esther, and come!" Neither Esther nor her mother needed much pressing, and they were accordingly soon seated round the table on which their repast was spread. "Put away a slice of this cake for father," said Mrs. Ellis, "for he won't be home until late; he is obliged to attend a vestry meeting to-night." Mrs. Ellis sat for some time sipping the fragrant and refreshing tea. When the contents of two or three cups one after another had disappeared, and sundry slices of corn-bread had been deposited where much corn-bread had been deposited before, she began to think about Charlie, and to imagine that perhaps she had been rather hasty in sending him to bed without his supper. "What had Charlie to-day in his dinner-basket to take to school with him?" she inquired of Caddy. "Why, mother, I put in enough for a wolf; three or four slices of bread, with as many more of corn-beef, some cheese, one of those little pies, and all that bread-pudding which was left at dinner yesterday—he must have had enough." "But, mother, you know he always gives away the best part of his dinner," interposed Esther. "He supplies two or three boys with food. There is that dirty Kinch that he is so fond of, who never takes any dinner with him, and depends entirely upon Charlie. He must be hungry; do let him come down and get his tea, mother?" Notwithstanding the observations of Caroline that Esther was just persuading her mother to spoil the boy, that he would be worse than ever, and many other similar predictions. Esther and the tea combined won a signal triumph, and Charlie was called down from the room above, where he had been exchanging telegraphic communications with the before-mentioned Kinch, in hopes of receiving a commutation of sentence. Charlie was soon seated at the table with an ample allowance of corn-bread and tea, and he looked so demure, and conducted himself in such an exemplary manner, that one would have scarcely thought him given to marbles and dirty company. Having eaten to his satisfaction he quite ingratiated himself with Caddy by picking up all the crumbs he had spilled during tea, and throwing them upon the dust-heap. This last act was quite a stroke of policy, as even Caddy began to regard him as capable of reformation. The tea-things washed up and cleared away, the females busied themselves with their sewing, and Charlie immersed himself in his lessons for the morrow with a hearty goodwill and perseverance as if he had abjured marbles for ever. The hearty supper and persevering attention to study soon began to produce their customary effect upon Charlie. He could not get on with his lessons. Many of the state capitals positively refused to be found, and he was beginning to entertain the sage notion that probably some of the legislatures had come to the conclusion to dispense with them altogether, or had had them placed in such obscure places that they could not be found. The variously coloured states began to form a vast kaleidoscope, in which the lakes and rivers had been entirely swallowed up. Ranges of mountains disappeared, and gulfs and bays and islands were entirely lost. In fact, he was sleepy, and had already had two or three narrow escapes from butting over the candles; finally he fell from his chair, crushing Caddy's newly-trimmed bonnet, to the intense grief and indignation of that young lady, who inflicted summary vengeance upon him before he was sufficiently awake to be aware of what had happened. The work being finished, Mrs. Ellis and Caddy prepared to take it home to Mrs. Thomas, leaving Esther at home to receive her father on his return and give him his tea. Mrs. Ellis and Caddy wended their way towards the fashionable part of the city, looking in at the various shop-windows as they went. Numberless were the great bargains they saw there displayed, and divers were the discussions they held respecting them. "Oh, isn't that a pretty calico, mother, that with the green ground?" "'Tis pretty, but it won't wash, child; those colours always run." "Just look at that silk though—now that's cheap, you must acknowledge—only eighty-seven and a half cents; if I only had a dress of that I should be fixed." "Laws, Caddy!" replied Mrs. Ellis, "that stuff is as slazy as a washed cotton handkerchief, and coarse enough almost to sift sand through. It wouldn't last you any time. The silks they make now-a-days ain't worth anything; they don't wear well at all. Why," continued she, "when I was a girl they made silks that would stand on end—and one of them would last a life-time." They had now reached Chestnut-street, which was filled with gaily-dressed people, enjoying the balmy breath of a soft May evening. Mrs. Ellis and Caddy walked briskly onward, and were soon beyond the line of shops, and entered upon the aristocratic quarter into which many of its residents had retired, that they might be out of sight of the houses in which their fathers or grandfathers had made their fortunes. "Mother," said Caddy, "this is Mr. Grant's new house—isn't it a splendid place? They say it's like a palace inside. They are great people, them Grants. I saw in the newspaper yesterday that young Mr. Augustus Grant had been appointed an attache to the American legation at Paris; the newspapers say he is a rising man." "Well, he ought to be," rejoined Mrs. Ellis, "for his old grand-daddy made yeast enough to raise the whole family. Many a pennyworth has he sold me. Laws! how the poor old folk do get up! I think I can see the old man now, with his sleeves rolled up, dealing out his yeast. He wore one coat for about twenty years, and used to be always bragging about it." As they were thus talking, a door of one of the splendid mansions they were passing opened, and a fashionably-dressed young man came slowly down the steps, and walked on before them with a very measured step and peculiar gait. "That's young Dr. Whiston, mother," whispered Caddy; "he's courting young Miss Morton." "You don't say so!" replied the astonished Mrs. Ellis. "Why, I declare his grandfather laid her grandfather out! Old Whiston was an undertaker, and used to make the handsomest coffins of his time. And he is going to marry Miss Morton! What next, I'd like to know! He walks exactly like the old man. I used to mock him when I was a little girl. He had just that hop-and-go kind of gait, and he was the funniest man that ever lived. I've seen him at a funeral go into the parlour, and condole with the family, and talk about the dear departed until the tears rolled down his cheeks; and then he'd be down in the kitchen, eating and drinking, and laughing, and telling jokes about the corpses, before the tears were dry on his face. How he used to make money! He buried almost all the respectable people about town, and made a large fortune. He owned a burying-ground in Coates-street, and when the property in that vicinity became valuable, he turned the dead folks out, and built houses on the ground!" "I shouldn't say it was a very pleasant place to live in, if there are such things as ghosts," said Caddy, laughing; "I for one wouldn't like to live there—but here we are at Mr. Thomas's—how short the way has seemed!" Caroline gave a fierce rap at the door, which was opened by old Aunt Rachel, the fat cook, who had lived with the Thomases for a fabulous length of time. She was an old woman when Mrs. Ellis came as a girl into the family, and had given her many a cuff in days long past; in fact, notwithstanding Mrs. Ellis had been married many years, and had children almost as old as she herself was when she left Mr. Thomas, Aunt Rachel could never be induced to regard her otherwise than as a girl. "Oh, it's you, is it?" said she gruffly, as she opened the door; "don't you think better break de door down at once-rapping as if you was guine to tear off de knocker—is dat de way, gal, you comes to quality's houses? You lived here long nuff to larn better dan dat—and dis is twice I've been to de door in de last half-hour—if any one else comes dere they may stay outside. Shut de door after you, and come into de kitchen, and don't keep me standin' here all night," added she, puffing and blowing as she waddled back into her sanctum. Waiting until the irate old cook had recovered her breath, Mrs. Ellis modestly inquired if Mrs. Thomas was at home. "Go up and see," was the surly response. "You've been up stars often enuff to know de way—go long wid you, gal, and don't be botherin' me, 'case I don't feel like bein' bothered—now, mind I tell yer.—Here, you Cad, set down on dis stool, and let that cat alone; I don't let any one play with my cat," continued she, "and you'll jest let him alone, if you please, or I'll make you go sit in de entry till your mother's ready to go. I don't see what she has you brats tugging after her for whenever she comes here—she might jest as well leave yer at home to darn your stockings—I 'spect dey want it." Poor Caddy was boiling over with wrath; but deeming prudence the better part of valour, she did not venture upon any wordy contest with Aunt Rachel, but sat down upon the stool by the fire-place, in which a bright fire was blazing. Up the chimney an old smoke-jack was clicking, whirling, and making the most dismal noise imaginable. This old smoke-jack was Aunt Rachel's especial protege, and she obstinately and successfully defended it against all comers. She turned up her nose at all modern inventions designed for the same use as entirely beneath her notice. She had been accustomed to hearing its rattle for the last forty years, and would as soon have thought of committing suicide as consenting to its removal. She and her cat were admirably matched; he was as snappish and cross as she, and resented with distended claws and elevated back all attempts on the part of strangers to cultivate amicable relations with him. In fact, Tom's pugnacious disposition was clearly evidenced by his appearance; one side of his face having a very battered aspect, and the fur being torn off his back in several places. Caddy sat for some time surveying the old woman and her cat, in evident awe of both. She regarded also with great admiration the scrupulously clean and shining kitchen tins that garnished the walls and reflected the red light of the blazing fire. The wooden dresser was a miracle of whiteness, and ranged thereon was a set of old-fashioned blue china, on which was displayed the usual number of those unearthly figures which none but the Chinese can create. Tick, tick, went the old Dutch clock in the corner, and the smoke-jack kept up its whirring noise. Old Tom and Aunt Rachel were both napping; and so Caddy, having no other resource, went to sleep also. Mrs. Ellis found her way without any difficulty to Mrs. Thomas's room. Her gentle tap upon the door quite flurried that good lady, who (we speak it softly) was dressing her wig, a task she entrusted to no other mortal hands. She peeped out, and seeing who it was, immediately opened the door without hesitation. "Oh, it's you, is it? Come in, Ellen," said she; "I don't mind you." "I've brought the night-dresses home," said Mrs. Ellis, laying her bundle upon the table,—"I hope they'll suit." "Oh, no doubt they will. Did you bring the bill?" asked Mrs. Thomas. The bill was produced, and Mrs. Ellis sat down, whilst Mrs. Thomas counted out the money. This having been duly effected, and the bill carefully placed on the file, Mrs. Thomas also sat down, and commenced her usual lamentation over the state of her nerves, and the extravagance of the younger members of the family. On the latter subject she spoke very feelingly. "Such goings on, Ellen, are enough to set me crazy—so many nurses—and then we have to keep four horses—and it's company, company from Monday morning until Saturday night; the house is kept upside-down continually—money, money for everything—all going out, and nothing coming in!"—and the unfortunate Mrs. Thomas whined and groaned as if she had not at that moment an income of clear fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a sister who might die any day and leave her half as much more. Mrs. Thomas was the daughter of the respectable old gentleman whom Dr. Whiston's grandfather had prepared for his final resting-place. Her daughter had married into a once wealthy, but now decayed, Carolina family. In consideration of the wealth bequeathed by her grandfather (who was a maker of leather breeches, and speculator in general), Miss Thomas had received the offer of the poverty-stricken hand of Mr. Morton, and had accepted it with evident pleasure, as he was undoubtedly a member of one of the first families of the South, and could prove a distant connection with one of the noble families of England. They had several children, and their incessant wants had rendered it necessary that another servant should be kept. Now Mrs. Thomas had long had her eye on Charlie, with a view of incorporating him with the Thomas establishment, and thought this would be a favourable time to broach the subject to his mother: she therefore commenced by inquiring— "How have you got through the winter, Ellen? Everything has been so dear that even we have felt the effect of the high prices." "Oh, tolerably well, I thank you. Husband's business, it is true, has not been as brisk as usual, but we ought not to complain; now that we have got the house paid for, and the girls do so much sewing, we get on very nicely." "I should think three children must be something of a burthen—must be hard to provide for." "Oh no, not at all," rejoined Mrs. Ellis, who seemed rather surprised at Mrs. Thomas's uncommon solicitude respecting them. "We have never found the children a burthen, thank God—they're rather a comfort and a pleasure than otherwise." "I'm glad to hear you say so, Ellen—very glad, indeed, for I have been quite disturbed in mind respecting you during the winter. I really several times thought of sending to take Charlie off your hands: by-the-way, what is he doing now?" "He goes to school regularly—he hasn't missed a day all winter. You should just see his writing," continued Mrs. Ellis, warming up with a mother's pride in her only son—"he won't let the girls make out any of the bills, but does it all himself—he made out yours." Mrs. Thomas took down the file and looked at the bill again. "It's very neatly written, very neatly written, indeed; isn't it about time that he left school—don't you think he has education enough?" she inquired. "His father don't. He intends sending him to another school, after vacation, where they teach Latin and Greek, and a number of other branches." "Nonsense, nonsense, Ellen! If I were you, I wouldn't hear of it. There won't be a particle of good result to the child from any such acquirements. It isn't as though he was a white child. What use can Latin or Greek be to a coloured boy? None in the world—he'll have to be a common mechanic, or, perhaps, a servant, or barber, or something of that kind, and then what use would all his fine education be to him? Take my advice, Ellen, and don't have him taught things that will make him feel above the situation he, in all probability, will have to fill. Now," continued she, "I have a proposal to make to you: let him come and live with me awhile—I'll pay you well, and take good care of him; besides, he will be learning something here, good manners, &c. Not that he is not a well-mannered child; but, you know, Ellen, there is something every one learns by coming in daily contact with refined and educated people that cannot but be beneficial—come now, make up your mind to leave him with me, at least until the winter, when the schools again commence, and then, if his father is still resolved to send him back to school, why he can do so. Let me have him for the summer at least." Mrs. Ellis, who had always been accustomed to regard Mrs. Thomas as a miracle of wisdom, was, of course, greatly impressed with what she had said. She had lived many years in her family, and had left it to marry Mr. Ellis, a thrifty mechanic, who came from Savanah, her native city. She had great reverence for any opinion Mrs. Thomas expressed; and, after some further conversation on the subject, made up her mind to consent to the proposal, and left her with the intention of converting her husband to her way of thinking. On descending to the kitchen she awoke Caddy from a delicious dream, in which she had been presented with the black silk that they had seen in the shop window marked eighty-seven and a half cents a yard. In the dream she had determined to make it up with tight sleeves and infant waist, that being the most approved style at that period. "Five breadths are not enough for the skirt, and if I take six I must skimp the waist and cape," murmured she in her sleep. "Wake up, girl! What are you thinking about?" said her mother, giving her another shake. "Oh!" said Caddy, with a wild and disappointed look—"I was dreaming, wasn't I? I declare I thought I had that silk frock in the window." "The girls' heads are always running on finery—wake up, and come along, I'm going home." Caddy followed her mother out, leaving Aunt Rachel and Tom nodding at each other as they dozed before the fire. That night Mr. Ellis and his wife had a long conversation upon the proposal of Mrs. Thomas; and after divers objections raised by him, and set aside by her, it was decided that Charlie should be permitted to go there for the holidays at least; after which, his father resolved he should be sent to school again. Charlie, the next morning, looked very blank on being informed of his approaching fate. Caddy undertook with great alacrity to break the dismal tidings to him, and enlarged in a glowing manner upon what times he might expect from Aunt Rachel. "I guess she'll keep you straight;—you'll see sights up there! She is cross as sin—she'll make you wipe your feet when you go in and out, if no one else can." "Let him alone, Caddy," gently interposed Esther; "it is bad enough to be compelled to live in a house with that frightful old woman, without being annoyed about it beforehand. If I could help it, Charlie, you should not go." "I know you'd keep me home if you could—but old Cad, here, she always rejoices if anything happens to me. I'll be hanged if I stay there," said he. "I won't live at service—I'd rather be a sweep, or sell apples on the dock. I'm not going to be stuck up behind their carriage, dressed up like a monkey in a tail coat—I'll cut off my own head first." And with this sanguinary threat he left the house, with his school-books under his arm, intending to lay the case before his friend and adviser, the redoubtable and sympathising Kinch. CHAPTER III. Charlie's Trials. Charlie started for school with a heavy heart. Had it not been for his impending doom of service in Mr. Thomas's family, he would have been the happiest boy that ever carried a school-bag. It did not require a great deal to render this young gentleman happy. All that was necessary to make up a day of perfect joyfulness with him, was a dozen marbles, permission to wear his worst inexpressibles, and to be thoroughly up in his lessons. To-day he was possessed of all these requisites, but there was also in the perspective along array of skirmishes with Aunt Rachel, who, he knew, looked on him with an evil eye, and who had frequently expressed herself regarding him, in his presence, in terms by no means complimentary or affectionate; and the manner in which she had intimated her desire, on one or two occasions, to have an opportunity of reforming his personal habits, were by no means calculated to produce a happy frame of mind, now that the opportunity was about to be afforded her. Charlie sauntered on until he came to a lumber-yard, where he stopped and examined a corner of the fence very attentively. "Not gone by yet. I must wait for him," said he; and forthwith he commenced climbing the highest pile of boards, the top of which he reached at the imminent risk of his neck. Here he sat awaiting the advent of his friend Kinch, the absence of death's head and cross bones from the corner of the fence being a clear indication that he had not yet passed on his way to school. Soon, however, he was espied in the distance, and as he was quite a character in his way, we must describe him. His most prominent feature was a capacious hungry-looking mouth, within which glistened a row of perfect teeth. He had the merriest twinkling black eyes, and a nose so small and flat that it would have been a prize to any editor living, as it would have been a physical impossibility to have pulled it, no matter what outrage he had committed. His complexion was of a ruddy brown, and his hair, entirely innocent of a comb, was decorated with divers feathery tokens of his last night's rest. A cap with the front torn off, jauntily set on one side of his head, gave him a rakish and wide-awake air, his clothes were patched and torn in several places, and his shoes were already in an advanced stage of decay. As he approached the fence he took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and commenced to sketch the accustomed startling illustration which was to convey to Charlie the intelligence that he had already passed there on his way to school, when a quantity of sawdust came down in a shower on his head. As soon as the blinding storm had ceased, Kinch looked up and intimated to Charlie that it was quite late, and that there was a probability of their being after time at school. This information caused Charlie to make rather a hasty descent, in doing which his dinner-basket was upset, and its contents displayed at the feet of the voracious Kinch. "Now I'll be even with you for that sawdust," cried he, as he pocketed two boiled eggs, and bit an immense piece out of an apple-tart, which he would have demolished completely but for the prompt interposition of its owner. "Oh! my golly! Charlie, your mother makes good pies!" he exclaimed with rapture, as soon as he could get his mouth sufficiently clear to speak. "Give us another bite,—only a nibble." But Charlie knew by experience what Kinch's "nibbles" were, and he very wisely declined, saying sadly as he did so, "You won't get many more dinners from me, Kinch. I'm going to leave school." "No! you ain't though, are you?" asked the astonished Kinch. "You are not going, are you, really?" "Yes, really," replied Charlie, with a doleful look; "mother is going to put me out at service." "And do you intend to go?" asked Kinch, looking at him incredulously. "Why of course," was the reply. "How can I help going if father and mother say I must?" "I tell you what I should do," said Kinch, "if it was me. I should act so bad that the people would be glad to get rid of me. They hired me out to live once, and I led the people they put me with such a dance, that they was glad enough to send me home again." This observation brought them to the school-house, which was but a trifling distance from the residence of Mrs. Ellis. They entered the school at the last moment of grace, and Mr. Dicker looked at them severely as they took their seats. "Just saved ourselves," whispered Kinch; "a minute later and we would have been done for;" and with this closing remark he applied himself to his grammar, a very judicious move on his part, for he had not looked at his lesson, and there were but ten minutes to elapse before the class would be called. The lessons were droned through as lessons usually are at school. There was the average amount of flogging performed; cakes, nuts, and candy, confiscated; little boys on the back seats punched one another as little boys on the back seats always will do, and were flogged in consequence. Then the boy who never knew his lessons was graced with the fool's cap, and was pointed and stared at until the arrival of the play-hour relieved him from his disagreeable situation. "What kind of folks are these Thomases?" asked Kinch, as he sat beside Charlie in the playground munching the last of the apple-tart; "what kind of folks are they? Tell me that, and I can give you some good advice, may-be." "Old Mrs. Thomas is a little dried-up old woman, who wears spectacles and a wig. She isn't of much account—I don't mind her. She's not the trouble; it's of old Aunt Rachel, I'm thinking. Why, she has threatened to whip me when I've been there with mother, and she even talks to her sometimes as if she was a little girl. Lord only knows what she'll do to me when she has me there by myself. You should just see her and her cat. I really don't know," continued Charlie, "which is the worst looking. I hate them both like poison," and as he concluded, he bit into a piece of bread as fiercely as if he were already engaged in a desperate battle with aunt Rachel, and was biting her in self-defence. "Well," said Kinch, with the air of a person of vast experience in difficult cases, "I should drown the cat—I'd do that at once—as soon as I got there; then, let me ask you, has Aunt Rachel got corns?" "Corns! I wish you could see her shoes," replied Charlie. "Why you could sail down the river in 'em, they are so large. Yes, she has got corns, bunions, and rheumatism, and everything else." "Ah! then," said Kinch, "your way is clear enough if she has got corns. I should confine myself to operating on them. I should give my whole attention to her feet. When she attempts to take hold of you, do you jist come down on her corns, fling your shins about kinder wild, you know, and let her have it on both feet. You see I've tried that plan, and know by experience that it works well. Don't you see, you can pass that off as an accident, and it don't look well to be scratching and biting. As for the lady of the house, old Mrs. what's-her-name, do you just manage to knock her wig off before some company, and they'll send you home at once—they'll hardly give you time to get your hat." Charlie laid these directions aside in his mind for future application, and asked, "What did you do, Kinch, to get away from the people you were with?" "Don't ask me," said Kinch, laughing; "don't, boy, don't ask me—my conscience troubles me awful about it sometimes. I fell up stairs with dishes, and I fell down stairs with dishes. I spilled oil on the carpet, and broke a looking-glass; but it was all accidental—entirely accidental—they found I was too ''spensive,' and so they sent me home." "Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that—I wouldn't destroy anything—but I've made up my mind that I won't stay there at any rate. I don't mind work—I want to do something to assist father and mother; but I don't want to be any one's servant. I wish I was big enough to work at the shop." "How did your mother come to think of putting you there?" asked Kinch. "The Lord alone knows," was the reply. "I suppose old Mrs. Thomas told her it was the best thing that could be done for me, and mother thinks what she says is law and gospel. I believe old Mrs. Thomas thinks a coloured person can't get to Heaven, without first living at service a little while." The school bell ringing put an end to this important conversation, and the boys recommenced their lessons. When Charlie returned from school, the first person he saw on entering the house was Robberts, Mrs. Thomas's chief functionary, and the presiding genius of the wine cellar—when he was trusted with the key. Charlie learned, to his horror and dismay, that he had been sent by Mrs. Thomas to inquire into the possibility of obtaining his services immediately, as they were going to have a series of dinner parties, and it was thought that he could be rendered quite useful. "And must I go, mother?" he asked. "Yes, my son; I've told Robberts that you shall come up in the morning," replied Mrs. Ellis. Then turning to Robberts, she inquired, "How is Aunt Rachel?" At this question, the liveried gentleman from Mrs. Thomas's shook his head dismally, and answered: "Don't ask me, woman; don't ask me, if you please. That old sinner gets worse and worse every day she lives. These dinners we're 'spectin to have has just set her wild—she is mad as fury 'bout 'em—and she snaps me up just as if I was to blame. That is an awful old woman, now mind I tell you." As Mr. Robberts concluded, he took his hat and departed, giving Charlie the cheering intelligence that he should expect him early next morning. Charlie quite lost his appetite for supper in consequence of his approaching trials, and, laying aside his books with a sigh of regret, sat listlessly regarding his sisters; enlivened now and then by some cheerful remark from Caddy, such as:— "You'll have to keep your feet cleaner up there than you do at home, or you'll have aunt Rach in your wool half a dozen times a day. And you mustn't throw your cap and coat down where you please, on the chairs or tables—she'll bring you out of all that in a short time. I expect you'll have two or three bastings before you have been there a week, for she don't put up with any nonsense. Ah, boy," she concluded, chuckling, "you'll have a time of it—I don't envy you!" With these and similar enlivening anticipations, Caddy whiled away the time until it was the hour for Charlie to retire for the night, which he, did with a heavy heart. Early the following morning he was awakened by the indefatigable Caddy, and he found a small bundle of necessaries prepared, until his trunk of apparel could be sent to his new home. "Oh, Cad," he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes, "how I do hate to go up there! I'd rather take a good whipping than go." "Well, it is too late now to talk about it; hurry and get your clothes on—it is quite late—you ought to have been off an hour ago." When he came down stairs prepared to go, his mother "hoped that he was going to behave like a man," which exhortation had the effect of setting him crying at once; and then he had to be caressed by the tearful Esther, and, finally, started away with very red eyes, followed to the door by his mother and the girls, who stood looking after him for some moments. So hurried and unexpected had been his departure, that he had been unable to communicate with his friend Kinch. This weighed very heavily on his spirits, and he occupied the time on his way to Mrs. Thomas's in devising various plans to effect that object. On arriving, he gave a faint rap, that was responded to by Aunt Rachel, who saluted him with— "Oh, yer's come, has yer—wipe your feet, child, and come in quick. Shut the door after yer." "What shall I do with this?" timidly asked he, holding up his package of clothes. "Oh, dem's yer rags is dey—fling 'em anywhere, but don't bring 'em in my kitchen," said she. "Dere is enuff things in dere now—put 'em down here on this entry table, or dere, long side de knife-Board—any wheres but in de kitchen." Charlie mechanically obeyed, and then followed her into her sanctuary. "Have you had your breakfast?" she asked, in a surly tone. "'Cause if you haven't, you must eat quick, or you won't get any. I can't keep the breakfast things standing here all day." Charlie, to whom the long walk had given a good appetite, immediately sat down and ate a prodigious quantity of bread and butter, together with several slices of cold ham, washed down by two cups of tea; after which he rested his knife and fork, and informed Aunt Rachel that he had done. "Well, I think it's high time," responded she. "Why, boy, you'll breed a famine in de house if you stay here long enough. You'll have to do a heap of work to earn what you'll eat, if yer breakfast is a sample of yer dinner. Come, get up, child! and shell dese 'ere pease—time you get 'em done, old Mrs. Thomas will be down stairs." Charlie was thus engaged when Mrs. Thomas entered the kitchen. "Well, Charles—good morning," said she, in a bland voice. "I'm glad to see you here so soon. Has he had his breakfast, Aunt Rachel?" "Yes; and he eat like a wild animal—I never see'd a child eat more in my life," was Aunt Rachel's abrupt answer. "I'm glad he has a good appetite," said Mrs. Thomas, "it shows he has good health. Boys will eat; you can't expect them to work if they don't. But it is time I was at those custards. Charlie, put down those peas and go into the other room, and bring me a basket of eggs you will find on the table." "And be sure to overset the milk that's 'long side of it—yer hear?" added Aunt Rachel. Charlie thought to himself that he would like to accommodate her, but he denied himself that pleasure; on the ground that it might not be safe to do it. Mrs. Thomas was a housekeeper of the old school, and had a scientific knowledge of the manner in which all sorts of pies and puddings were compounded. She was so learned in custards and preserves that even Aunt Rachel sometimes deferred to her superior judgment in these matters. Carefully breaking the eggs, she skilfully separated the whites from the yolks, and gave the latter to Charlie to beat. At first he thought it great fun, and he hummed some of the popular melodies of the day, and kept time with his foot and the spatula. But pretty soon he exhausted his stock of tunes, and then the performances did not go off so well. His arm commenced aching, and he came to the sage conclusion, before he was relieved from his task, that those who eat the custards are much better off than those who prepare them. This task finished, he was pressed into service by Aunt Rachel, to pick and stone some raisins which she gave him, with the injunction either to sing or whistle all the time he was "at 'em;" and that if he stopped for a moment she should know he was eating them, and in that case she would visit him with condign punishment on the spot, for she didn't care a fig whose child he was. Thus, in the performance of first one little job and then another, the day wore away; and as the hour approached at which the guests were invited, Charlie, after being taken into the dining-room by Robberts, where he was greatly amazed at the display of silver, cut glass, and elegant china, was posted at the door to relieve the guests of their coats and hats, which duty he performed to the entire satisfaction of all parties concerned. At dinner, however, he was not so fortunate. He upset a plate of soup into a gentleman's lap, and damaged beyond repair one of the elegant china vegetable dishes. He took rather too deep an interest in the conversation for a person in his station; and, in fact, the bright boy alluded to by Mr. Winston, as having corrected the reverend gentleman respecting the quotation from Chaucer, was no other than our friend Charlie Ellis. In the evening, when the guests were departing, Charlie handed Mr. Winston his coat, admiring the texture and cut of it very much as he did so. Mr. Winston, amused at the boy's manner, asked— "What is your name, my little man?" "Charles Ellis," was the prompt reply. "I'm named after my father." "And where did your father come from, Charlie?" he asked, looking very much interested. "From Savanah, sir. Now tell me where you came from," replied Charles. "I came from New Orleans," said Mr. Winston, with a smile. "Now tell me," he continued, "where do you live when you are with your parents? I should like to see your father." Charlie quickly put his interrogator in possession of the desired information, after which Mr. Winston departed, soon followed by the other guests. Charlie lay for some time that night on his little cot before he could get to sleep; and amongst the many matters that so agitated his mind, was his wonder what one of Mrs. Thomas's guests could want with his father. Being unable however, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion respecting it, he turned over and went to sleep. CHAPTER IV. In which Mr. Winston finds an old Friend. In the early part of Mr. Winston's career, when he worked as a boy on the plantation of his father, he had frequently received great kindness at the hands of one Charles Ellis, who was often employed as carpenter about the premises. On one occasion, as a great favour, he had been permitted to accompany Ellis to his home in Savanah, which was but a few miles distant, where he remained during the Christmas holidays. This kindness he had never forgotten; and on his return to Georgia from New Orleans he sought for his old friend, and found he had removed to the North, but to which particular city he could not ascertain. As he walked homewards, the strong likeness of little Charlie to his old friend forced itself upon him, and the more he reflected upon it the more likely it appeared that the boy might be his child; and the identity of name and occupation between the father of Charlie and his old friend led to the belief that he was about to make some discovery respecting him. On his way to his hotel he passed the old State House, the bell of which was just striking ten. "It's too late to go to-night," said he, "it shall be the first thing I attend to in the morning;" and after walking on a short distance farther, he found himself at the door of his domicile. As he passed through the little knot of waiters who were gathered about the doors, one of them turning to another, asked, "Ain't that man a Southerner, and ain't he in your rooms, Ben?" "I think he's a Southerner," was the reply of Ben. "But why do you ask, Allen?" he enquired. "Because it's time he had subscribed something," replied Mr. Allen. "The funds of the Vigilance Committee are very low indeed; in fact, the four that we helped through last week have completely drained us. We must make a raise from some quarter, and we might as well try it on him." Mr. Winston was waiting for a light that he might retire to his room, and was quickly served by the individual who had been so confidentially talking with Mr. Allen. After giving Mr. Winston the light, Ben followed him into his room and busied himself in doing little nothings about the stove and wash-stand. "Let me unbutton your straps, sir," said he, stooping down and commencing on the buttons, which he was rather long in unclosing. "I know, sir, dat you Southern gentlemen ain't used to doing dese yer things for youself. I allus makes it a pint to show Southerners more 'tention dan I does to dese yer Northern folk, 'cause yer see I knows dey'r used to it, and can't get on widout it." "I am not one of that kind," said Winston, as Ben slowly unbuttoned the last strap. "I have been long accustomed to wait upon myself. I'll only trouble you to bring me up a glass of fresh water, and then I shall have done with you for the night." "Better let me make you up a little fire, the nights is werry cool," continued Ben. "I know you must feel 'em; I does myself; I'm from the South, too." "Are you?" replied Mr. Winston, with some interest; "from what part!" "From Tuckahoe county, Virginia; nice place dat." "Never having been there I can't say," rejoined Mr. Winston, smiling; "and how do you like the North? I suppose you are a runaway," continued he. "Oh, no sir! no sir!" replied Ben, "I was sot free—and I often wish," he added in a whining tone, "dat I was back agin on the old place—hain't got no kind marster to look after me here, and I has to work drefful hard sometimes. Ah," he concluded, drawing a long sigh, "if I was only back on de old place!" "I heartily wish you were!" said Mr. Winston, indignantly, "and wish moreover that you were to be tied up and whipped once a day for the rest of your life. Any man that prefers slavery to freedom deserves to be a slave—you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Go out of the room, sir, as quick as possible!" "Phew!" said the astonished and chagrined Ben, as he descended the stairs; "that was certainly a great miss," continued he, talking as correct English, and with as pure Northern an accent as any one could boast. "We have made a great mistake this time; a very queer kind of Southerner that is. I'm afraid we took the wrong pig by the ear;" and as he concluded, he betook himself to the group of white-aproned gentlemen before mentioned, to whom he related the incident that had just occurred. "Quite a severe fall that, I should say," remarked Mr. Allen. "Perhaps we have made a mistake and he is not a Southerner after all. Well he is registered from New Orleans, and I thought he was a good one to try it on." "It's a clear case we've missed it this time," exclaimed one of the party, "and I hope, Ben, when you found he was on the other side of the fence, you did not say too much." "Laws, no!" rejoined Ben, "do you think I'm a fool? As soon as I heard him say what he did, I was glad to get off—I felt cheap enough, now mind, I tell you any one could have bought me for a shilling." Now it must be here related that most of the waiters employed in this hotel were also connected with the Vigilance Committee of the Under-ground Railroad Company—a society formed for the assistance of fugitive slaves; by their efforts, and by the timely information it was often in their power to give, many a poor slave was enabled to escape from the clutches of his pursuers. The house in which they were employed was the great resort of Southerners, who occasionally brought with them their slippery property; and it frequently happened that these disappeared from the premises to parts unknown, aided in their flight by the very waiters who would afterwards exhibit the most profound ignorance as to their whereabouts. Such of the Southerners as brought no servants with them were made to contribute, unconsciously and most amusingly, to the escape of those of their friends. When a gentleman presented himself at the bar wearing boots entirely too small for him, with his hat so far down upon his forehead as almost to obscure his eyes, and whose mouth was filled with oaths and tobacco, he was generally looked upon as a favourable specimen to operate upon; and if he cursed the waiters, addressed any old man amongst them as "boy," and was continually drinking cock-tails and mint-juleps, they were sure of their man; and then would tell him the most astonishing and distressing tales of their destitution, expressing, almost with tears in their eyes, their deep desire to return to their former masters; whilst perhaps the person from whose mouth this tale of woe proceeded had been born in a neighbouring street, and had never been south of Mason and Dixon's[*] line. This flattering testimony in favour of "the peculiar institution" generally had the effect of extracting a dollar or two from the purse of the sympathetic Southerner; which money went immediately into the coffers of the Vigilance Committee. [Footnote *: The line dividing the free from the slave states.] It was this course of conduct they were about to pursue with Mr. Winston; not because he exhibited in person or manners any of the before-mentioned peculiarities, but from his being registered from New Orleans. The following morning, as soon as he had breakfasted, he started in search of Mr. Ellis. The address was 18, Little Green-street; and, by diligently inquiring, he at length discovered the required place. After climbing up a long flight of stairs on the outside of an old wooden building, he found himself before a door on which was written, "Charles Ellis, carpenter and joiner." On opening it, he ushered himself into the presence of an elderly coloured man, who was busily engaged in planing off a plank. As soon as Mr. Winston saw his face fully, he recognized him as his old friend. The hair had grown grey, and the form was also a trifle bent, but he would have known him amongst a thousand. Springing forward, he grasped his hand, exclaiming, "My dear old friend, don't you know me?" Mr. Ellis shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked at him intently for a few moments, but seemed no wiser from his scrutiny. The tears started to Mr. Winston's eyes as he said, "Many a kind word I'm indebted to you for—I am George Winston—don't you remember little George that used to live on the Carter estate?" "Why, bless me! it can't be that you are the little fellow that used to go home with me sometimes to Savanah, and that was sold to go to New Orleans?" "Yes, the same boy; I've been through a variety of changes since then." "I should think you had," smilingly replied Mr. Ellis; "and, judging from appearances, very favourable ones! Why, I took you for a white man—and you are a white man, as far as complexion is concerned. Laws, child!" he continued, laying his hand familiarly on Winston's shoulders, "how you have changed—I should never have known you! The last time I saw you, you were quite a shaver, running about in a long tow shirt, and regarding a hat and shoes as articles of luxury far beyond your reach. And now," said Mr. Ellis, gazing at him with admiring eyes, "just to look at you! Why, you are as fine a looking man as one would wish to see in a day's travel. I've often thought of you. It was only the other day I was talking to my wife, and wondering what had become of you. She, although a great deal older than your cousin Emily, used to be a sort of playmate of hers. Poor Emily! we heard she was sold at public sale in Savanah—did you ever learn what became of her?" "Oh, yes; I saw her about two months since, when on my way from New Orleans. You remember old Colonel Garie? Well, his son bought her, and is living with her. They have two children—she is very happy. I really love him; he is the most kind and affectionate fellow in the world; there is nothing he would not do to make her happy. Emily will be so delighted to know that I have seen your wife—but who is Mrs. Ellis?—any one that I know?" "I do not know that you are acquainted with her, but you should remember her mother, old Nanny Tobert, as she was called; she kept a little confectionery—almost every one in Savanah knew her." "I can't say I do," replied Winston, reflectively. "She came here," continued Mr. Ellis, "some years ago, and died soon after her arrival. Her daughter went to live with the Thomases, an old Philadelphia family, and it was from their house I married her." "Thomases?" repeated Mr. Winston; "that is where I saw your boy—he is the image of you." "And how came you there?" asked Ellis, with a look of surprise. "In the most natural manner possible. I was invited there to dinner yesterday—the bright face of your boy attracted my attention—so I inquired his name, and that led to the discovery of yourself." "And do the Thomases know you are a coloured man?" asked Mr. Ellis, almost speechless with astonishment. "I rather think not," laughingly rejoined Mr. Winston. "It is a great risk you run to be passing for white in that way," said Mr. Ellis, with a grave look. "But how did you manage to get introduced to that set? They are our very first people." "It is a long story," was Winston's reply; and he then, as briefly as he could, related all that had occurred to himself since they last met. "And now," continued he, as he finished his recital, "I want to know all about you and your family; and I also want to see something of the coloured people. Since I've been in the North I've met none but whites. I'm not going to return to New Orleans to remain. I'm here in search of a home. I wish to find some place to settle down in for life, where I shall not labour under as many disadvantages as I must struggle against in the South." "One thing I must tell you," rejoined Mr. Ellis; "if you should settle down here, you'll have to be either one thing or other—white or coloured. Either you must live exclusively amongst coloured people, or go to the whites and remain with them. But to do the latter, you must bear in mind that it must never be known that you have a drop of African blood in your veins, or you would be shunned as if you were a pestilence; no matter how fair in complexion or how white you may be." "I have not as yet decided on trying the experiment, and I hardly think it probable I shall," rejoined Winston. As he said this he took out his watch, and was astonished to find how very long his visit had been. He therefore gave his hand to Mr. Ellis, and promised to return at six o'clock and accompany him home to visit his family. As he was leaving the shop, Mr. Ellis remarked: "George, you have not said a word respecting your mother." His face flushed, and the tears started in his eyes, as he replied, in a broken voice, "She's dead! Only think, Ellis, she died within a stone's throw of me, and I searching for her all the while. I never speak of it unless compelled; it is too harrowing. It was a great trial to me; it almost broke my heart to think that she perished miserably so near me, whilst I was in the enjoyment of every luxury. Oh, if she could only have lived to see me as I am now!" continued he; "but He ordered it otherwise, and we must bow. 'Twas God's will it should be so. Good bye till evening. I shall see you again at six." Great was the surprise of Mrs. Ellis and her daughters on learning from Mr. Ellis, when he came home to dinner, of the events of the morning; and great was the agitation caused by the announcement of the fact, that his friend was to be their guest in the evening. Mrs. Ellis proposed inviting some of their acquaintances to meet him; but to this project her husband objected, saying he wanted to have a quiet evening with him, and to talk over old times; and that persons who were entire strangers to him would only be a restraint upon them. Caddy seemed quite put out by the announcement of the intended visit. She declared that nothing was fit to be seen, that the house was in a state of disorder shocking to behold, and that there was scarce a place in it fit to sit down in; and she forthwith began to prepare for an afternoon's vigorous scrubbing and cleaning. "Just let things remain as they are, will you, Caddy dear," said her father. "Please be quiet until I get out of the house," he continued, as she began to make unmistakeable demonstrations towards raising a dust. "In a few moments you shall have the house to yourself, only give me time to finish my dinner in peace." Esther, her mother, and their sewing were summarily banished to an upstairs room, whilst Caddy took undivided possession of the little parlour, which she soon brought into an astonishing state of cleanliness. The ornaments were arranged at exact distances from the corners of the mantelpiece, the looking-glass was polished, until it appeared to be without spot or blemish, and its gilt frame was newly adorned with cut paper to protect it from the flies. The best china was brought out, carefully dusted, and set upon the waiter, and all things within doors placed in a state of forwardness to receive their expected guest. The door-steps were, however, not as white and clean as they might be, and that circumstance pressed upon Caddy's mind. She therefore determined to give them a hasty wipe before retiring to dress for the evening. Having done this, and dressed herself to her satisfaction, she came down stairs to prepare the refreshments for tea. In doing this, she continually found herself exposing her new silk dress to great risks. She therefore donned an old petticoat over her skirt, and tied an old silk handkerchief over her head to protect her hair from flying particles of dust; and thus arrayed she passed the time in a state of great excitement, frequently looking out of the window to see if her father and their guest were approaching. In one of these excursions, she, to her intense indignation, found a beggar boy endeavouring to draw, with a piece of charcoal, an illustration of a horse-race upon her so recently cleaned door-steps. "You young villain," she almost screamed, "go away from there. How dare you make those marks upon the steps? Go off at once, or I'll give you to a constable." To these behests the daring young gentleman only returned a contemptuous laugh, and put his thumb to his nose in the most provoking manner. "Ain't you going?" continued the irate Caddy, almost choked with wrath at the sight of the steps, over which she had so recently toiled, scored in every direction with black marks. "Just wait till I come down, I'll give it to you, you audacious villain, you," she cried, as she closed the window; "I'll see if I can't move you!" Caddy hastily seized a broom, and descended the stairs with the intention of inflicting summary vengeance upon the dirty delinquent who had so rashly made himself liable to her wrath. Stealing softly down the alley beside the house, she sprang suddenly forward, and brought the broom with all her energy down upon the head of Mr. Winston, who was standing on the place just left by the beggar. She struck with such force as to completely crush his hat down over his eyes, and was about to repeat the blow, when her father caught her arm, and she became aware of the awful mistake she had made. "Why, my child!" exclaimed her father, "what on earth, is the matter with you, have you lost your senses?" and as he spoke, he held her at arm's length from him to get a better look at her. "What are you dressed up in this style for?" he continued, as he surveyed her from head to foot; and then bursting into a loud laugh at her comical appearance, he released her, and she made the quickest possible retreat into the house by the way she came out. Bushing breathless upstairs, she exclaimed, "Oh, mother, mother, I've done it now! They've come, and I've beat him over the head with a broom!" "Beat whom over the head with a broom?" asked Mrs. Ellis. "Oh, mother, I'm so ashamed, I don't know what to do with myself. I struck Mr. Winston with a broom. Mr. Winston, the gentleman father has brought home." "I really believe the child is crazy," said Mrs. Ellis, surveying the chagrined girl. "Beat Mr. Winston over the head with a broom! how came you to do it?" "Oh, mother, I made a great mistake; I thought he was a beggar." "He must be a very different looking person from what we have been led to expect," here interrupted Esther. "I understood father to say that he was very gentlemanlike in appearance." "So he is," replied Caddy. "But you just said you took him for a beggar?" replied her mother. "Oh, don't bother me, don't bother me! my head is all turned upside down. Do, Esther, go down and let them in—hear how furiously father is knocking! Oh, go—do go!" Esther quickly descended and opened the door for Winston and her father; and whilst the former was having the dust removed and his hat straightened, Mrs. Ellis came down and was introduced by her husband. She laughingly apologized for the ludicrous mistake Caddy had made, which afforded great amusement to all parties, and divers were the jokes perpetrated at her expense during the remainder of the evening. Her equanimity having been restored by Winston's assurances that he rather enjoyed the joke than otherwise—and an opportunity having been afforded her to obliterate the obnoxious marks from the door-steps—she exhibited great activity in forwarding all the arrangements for tea. They sat a long while round the table—much time that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been given to the demolition of the food before them, being occupied by the elders of the party in inquiries after mutual friends, and in relating the many incidents that had occurred since they last met. Tea being at length finished, and the things cleared away, Mrs. Ellis gave the girls permission to go out. "Where are you going?" asked their father. "To the library company's room—to-night is their last lecture." "I thought," said Winston, "that coloured persons were excluded from such places. I certainly have been told so several times." "It is quite true," replied Mr. Ellis; "at the lectures of the white library societies a coloured person would no more be permitted to enter than a donkey or a rattle-snake. This association they speak of is entirely composed of people of colour. They have a fine library, a debating club, chemical apparatus, collections of minerals, &c. They have been having a course of lectures delivered before them this winter, and to-night is the last of the course." "Wouldn't you like to go, Mr. Winston?" asked Mrs. Ellis, who had a mother's desire to secure so fine an escort for her daughters. "No, no—don't, George," quickly interposed Mr. Ellis; "I am selfish enough to want you entirely to myself to-night. The girls will find beaux enough, I'll warrant you." At this request the girls did not seem greatly pleased, and Miss Caddy, who already, in imagination, had excited the envy of all her female friends by the grand entree she was to make at the Lyceum, leaning on the arm of Winston, gave her father a by no means affectionate look, and tying her bonnet-strings with a hasty jerk, started out in company with her sister. "You appear to be very comfortable here, Ellis," said Mr. Winston, looking round the apartment. "If I am not too inquisitive—what rent do you pay for this house?" "It's mine!" replied Ellis, with an air of satisfaction; "house, ground, and all, bought and paid for since I settled here." "Why, you are getting on well! I suppose," remarked Winston, "that you are much better off than the majority of your coloured friends. From all I can learn, the free coloured people in the Northern cities are very badly off. I've been frequently told that they suffer dreadfully from want and privations of various kinds." "Oh, I see you have been swallowing the usual dose that is poured down Southern throats by those Northern negro-haters, who seem to think it a duty they owe the South to tell all manner of infamous lies upon us free coloured people. I really get so indignant and provoked sometimes, that I scarcely know what to do with myself. Badly off, and in want, indeed! Why, my dear sir, we not only support our own poor, but assist the whites to support theirs, and enemies are continually filling the public ear with the most distressing tales of our destitution! Only the other day the Colonization Society had the assurance to present a petition to the legislature of this State, asking for an appropriation to assist them in sending us all to Africa, that we might no longer remain a burthen upon the State—and they came very near getting it, too; had it not been for the timely assistance of young Denbigh, the son of Judge Denbigh, they would have succeeded, such was the gross ignorance that prevailed respecting our real condition, amongst the members of the legislature. He moved a postponement of the vote until he could have time to bring forward facts to support the ground that he had assumed in opposition to the appropriation being made. It was granted; and, in a speech that does him honour, he brought forward facts that proved us to be in a much superior condition to that in which our imaginative enemies had described us. Ay! he did more—he proved us to be in advance of the whites in wealth and general intelligence: for whilst it was one in fifteen amongst the whites unable to read and write, it was but one in eighteen amongst the coloured (I won't pretend to be correct about the figures, but that was about the relative proportions); and also, that we paid, in the shape of taxes upon our real estate, more than our proportion for the support of paupers, insane, convicts, &c." "Well," said the astonished Winston, "that is turning the tables completely. You must take me to visit amongst the coloured people; I want to see as much of them as possible during my stay." "I'll do what I can for you, George. I am unable to spare you much time just at present, but I'll put you in the hands of one who has abundance of it at his disposal—I will call with you and introduce you to Walters." "Who is Walters?" asked Mr. Winston. "A friend of mine—a dealer in real estate." "Oh, then he is a white man?" "Not by any means," laughingly replied Mr. Ellis. "He is as black as a man can conveniently be. He is very wealthy; some say that he is worth half a million of dollars. He owns, to my certain knowledge, one hundred brick houses. I met him the other day in a towering rage: it appears, that he owns ten thousand dollars' worth of stock, in a railroad extending from this to a neighbouring city. Having occasion to travel in it for some little distance, he got into the first-class cars; the conductor, seeing him there, ordered him out—he refused to go, and stated that he was a shareholder. The conductor replied, that he did not care how much stock he owned, he was a nigger, and that no nigger should ride in those cars; so he called help, and after a great deal of trouble they succeeded in ejecting him." "And he a stockholder! It was outrageous," exclaimed Winston. "And was there no redress?" "No, none, practically. He would have been obliged to institute a suit against the company; and, as public opinion now is, it would be impossible for him to obtain a verdict in his favour." The next day Winston was introduced to Mr. Walters, who expressed great pleasure in making his acquaintance, and spent a week in showing him everything of any interest connected with coloured people. Winston was greatly delighted with the acquaintances he made; and the kindness and hospitality with which he was received made a most agreeable impression upon him. It was during this period that he wrote the glowing letters to Mr. and Mrs. Garie, the effects of which will be discerned in the next chapter. CHAPTER V. The Garies decide on a Change. We must now return to the Garies, whom we left listening to Mr. Winston's description of what he saw in Philadelphia, and we need not add anything respecting it to what the reader has already gathered from the last chapter; our object being now to describe the effect his narrative produced. On the evening succeeding the departure of Winston for New Orleans, Mr. and Mrs. Garie were seated in a little arbour at a short distance from the house, and which commanded a magnificent prospect up and down the river. It was overshadowed by tall trees, from the topmost branches of which depended large bunches of Georgian moss, swayed to and fro by the soft spring breeze that came gently sweeping down the long avenue of magnolias, laden with the sweet breath of the flowers with which the trees were covered. A climbing rose and Cape jessamine had almost covered the arbour, and their intermingled blossoms, contrasting with the rich brown colour of the branches of which it was constructed, gave it an exceedingly beautiful and picturesque appearance. This arbour was their favourite resort in the afternoons of summer, as they could see from it the sun go down behind the low hills opposite, casting his gleams of golden light upon the tops of the trees that crowned their summits. Northward, where the chain of hills was broken, the waters of the river would be brilliant with waves of gold long after the other parts of it were shrouded in the gloom of twilight. Mr. and Mrs. Garie sat looking at the children, who were scampering about the garden in pursuit of a pet rabbit which had escaped, and seemed determined not to be caught upon any pretence whatever. "Are they not beautiful?" said Mr. Garie, with pride, as they bounded past him. "There are not two prettier children in all Georgia. You don't seem half proud enough of them," he continued, looking down upon his wife affectionately. Mrs. Garie, who was half reclining on the seat, and leaning her head upon his shoulder, replied, "Oh, yes, I am, Garie; I'm sure I love them dearly—oh, so dearly!" continued she, fervently—"and I only wish"—here she paused, as if she felt she had been going to say something that had better remain unspoken. "You only wish what, dear? You were going to say something," rejoined her husband. "Come, out with it, and let me hear what it was." "Oh, Garie, it was nothing of any consequence." "Consequence or no consequence, let me hear what it was, dear." "Well, as you insist on hearing it, I was about to say that I wish they were not little slaves." "Oh, Em! Em!" exclaimed he, reproachfully, "how can you speak in that manner? I thought, dear, that you regarded me in any other light than that of a master. What have I done to revive the recollection that any such relation existed between us? Am I not always kind and affectionate? Did you ever have a wish ungratified for a single day, if it was in my power to compass it? or have I ever been harsh or neglectful?" "Oh, no, dear, no—forgive me, Garie—do, pray, forgive me—you are kindness itself—believe me, I did not think to hurt your feelings by saying what I did. I know you do not treat me or them as though we were slaves. But I cannot help feeling that we are such—and it makes me very sad and unhappy sometimes. If anything should happen that you should be taken away suddenly, think what would be our fate. Heirs would spring up from somewhere, and we might be sold and separated for ever. Respecting myself I might be indifferent, but regarding the children I cannot feel so." "Tut, tut, Em! don't talk so gloomily. Do you know of any one, now, who has been hired to put me to death?" said he, smiling. "Don't talk so, dear; remember, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' It was only this morning I learned that Celeste—you remember Celeste, don't you?—I cannot recall her last name." "No, dear, I really can't say that I do remember whom you refer to." "I can bring her to your recollection, I think," continued she. "One afternoon last fall we were riding together on the Augusta-road, when you stopped to admire a very neat cottage, before the door of which two pretty children were playing." "Oh, yes, I remember something about it—I admired the children so excessively that you became quite jealous." "I don't remember that part of it," she continued. "But let me tell you my story. Last week the father of the children started for Washington; the cars ran off the track, and were precipitated down a high embankment, and he and some others were killed. Since his death it has been discovered that all his property was heavily mortgaged to old MacTurk, the worst man in the whole of Savannah; and he has taken possession of the place, and thrown her and the children into the slave-pen, from which they will be sold to the highest bidder at a sheriff's sale. Who can say that a similar fate may never be mine? These things press upon my spirit, and make me so gloomy and melancholy at times, that I wish it were possible to shun even myself. Lately, more than ever, have I felt disposed to beg you to break up here, and move off to some foreign country where there is no such thing as slavery. I have often thought how delightful it would be for us all to be living in that beautiful Italy you have so often described to me—or in France either. You said you liked both those places—why not live in one of them?" "No, no, Emily; I love America too much to ever think of living anywhere else. I am much too thorough a democrat ever to swear allegiance to a king. No, no—that would never do—give me a free country." "That is just what I say," rejoined Mrs. Garie; "that is exactly what I want; that is why I should like to get away from here, because this is not a free country—God knows it is not!" "Oh, you little traitor! How severely you talk, abusing your native land in such shocking style, it's really painful to hear you," said Mr. Garie in a jocular tone. "Oh, love," rejoined she, "don't joke, it's not a subject for jesting. It is heavier upon my heart than you dream of. Wouldn't you like to live in the free States? There is nothing particular to keep you here, and only think how much better it would be for the children: and Garie," she continued in a lower tone, nestling close to him as she spoke, and drawing his head towards her, "I think I am going to—" and she whispered some words in his ear, and as she finished she shook her head, and her long curls fell down in clusters over her face. Mr. Garie put the curls aside, and kissing her fondly, asked, "How long have you known it, dear?" "Not long, not very long," she replied. "And I have such a yearning that it should be born a free child. I do want that the first air it breathes should be that of freedom. It will kill me to have another child born here! its infant smiles would only be a reproach to me. Oh," continued she, in a tone of deep feeling, "it is a fearful thing to give birth to an inheritor of chains;" and she shuddered as she laid her head on her husband's bosom. Mr. Garie's brow grew thoughtful, and a pause in the conversation ensued. The sun had long since gone down, and here and there the stars were beginning to show their twinkling light. The moon, which had meanwhile been creeping higher and higher in the blue expanse above, now began to shed her pale, misty beams on the river below, the tiny waves of which broke in little circlets of silver on the shore almost at their feet. Mr. Garie was revolving in his mind the conversation he had so recently held with Mr. Winston respecting the free States. It had been suggested by him that the children should be sent to the North to be educated, but he had dismissed the notion, well knowing that the mother would be heart-broken at the idea of parting with her darlings. Until now, the thought of going to reside in the North had never been presented for his consideration. He was a Southerner in almost all his feelings, and had never had a scruple respecting the ownership of slaves. But now the fact that he was the master as well as the father of his children, and that whilst he resided where he did it was out of his power to manumit them; that in the event of his death they might be seized and sold by his heirs, whoever they might be, sent a thrill of horror through him. He had known all this before, but it had never stood out in such bold relief until now. "What are you thinking of, Garie?" asked his wife, looking up into his face. "I hope I have not vexed you by what I've said." "Oh, no, dear, not at all. I was only thinking whether you would be any happier if I acceded to your wishes and removed to the North. Here you live in good style—you have a luxurious home, troops of servants to wait upon you, a carriage at your disposal. In fact, everything for which you express a desire." "I know all that, Garie, and what I am about to say may seem ungrateful, but believe me, dear, I do not mean it to be so. I had much rather live on crusts and wear the coarsest clothes, and work night and day to earn them, than live here in luxury, wearing gilded chains. Carriages and fine clothes cannot create happiness. I have every physical comfort, and yet my heart is often heavy—oh, so very heavy; I know I am envied by many for my fine establishment; yet how joyfully would I give it all up and accept the meanest living for the children's freedom—and your love." "But, Emily, granted we should remove to the North, you would find annoyances there as well as here. There is a great deal of prejudice existing there against people of colour, which, often exposes them to great inconveniences." "Yes, dear, I know all that; I should expect that. But then on the other hand, remember what George said respecting the coloured people themselves; what a pleasant social circle they form, and how intelligent many of them are! Oh, Garie, how I have longed for friends!—we have visitors now and then, but none that I can call friends. The gentlemen who come to see you occasionally are polite to me, but, under existing circumstances, I feel that they cannot entertain for me the respect I think I deserve. I know they look down upon and despise me because I'm a coloured woman. Then there would be another advantage; I should have some female society—here I have none. The white ladies of the neighbourhood will not associate with me, although I am better educated, thanks to your care, than many of them, so it is only on rare occasions, when I can coax some of our more cultivated coloured acquaintances from Savannah to pay us a short visit, that I have any female society, and no woman can be happy without it. I have no parents, nor yet have you. We have nothing we greatly love to leave behind—no strong ties to break, and in consequence would be subjected to no great grief at leaving. If I only could persuade you to go!" said she, imploringly. "Well, Emily," replied he, in an undecided manner, "I'll think about it. I love you so well, that I believe I should be willing to make any sacrifice for your happiness. But it is getting damp and chilly, and you know," said he, smiling, "you must be more than usually careful of yourself now." The next evening, and many more besides, were spent in discussing the proposed change. Many objections to it were stated, weighed carefully, and finally set aside. Winston was written to and consulted, and though he expressed some surprise at the proposal, gave it his decided approval. He advised, at the same time, that the estate should not be sold, but be placed in the hands of some trustworthy person, to be managed in Mr. Garie's absence. Under the care of a first-rate overseer, it would not only yield a handsome income, but should they be dissatisfied with their Northern home, they would have the old place still in reserve; and with the knowledge that they had this to fall back upon, they could try their experiment of living in the North with their minds less harassed than they otherwise would be respecting the result. As Mr. Garie reflected more and more on the probable beneficial results of the project, his original disinclination to it diminished, until he finally determined on running the risk; and he felt fully rewarded for this concession to his wife's wishes when he saw her recover all her wonted serenity and sprightliness. They were soon in all the bustle and confusion consequent on preparing for a long journey. When Mr. Garie's determination to remove became known, great consternation prevailed on the plantation, and dismal forebodings were entertained by the slaves as to the result upon themselves. Divers were the lamentations heard on all sides, when they were positively convinced that "massa was gwine away for true;" but they were somewhat pacified, when they learned that no one was to be sold, and that the place would not change hands. For Mr. Garie was a very kind master, and his slaves were as happy as slaves can be under any circumstances. Not much less was the surprise which the contemplated change excited in the neighbourhood, and it was commented on pretty freely by his acquaintances. One of them—to whom he had in conversation partially opened his mind, and explained that his intended removal grew out of anxiety respecting the children, and his own desire that they might be where they could enjoy the advantages of schools, &c.—sneered almost to his face at what he termed his crack-brained notions; and subsequently, in relating to another person the conversation he had had with Mr. Garie, spoke of him as "a soft-headed fool, led by the nose by a yaller wench. Why can't he act," he said, "like other men who happen to have half-white children—breed them up for the market, and sell them?" and he might have added, "as I do," for he was well known to have so acted by two or three of his own tawny offspring. Mr. Garie, at the suggestion of Winston, wrote to Mr. Walters, to procure them a small, but neat and comfortable house, in Philadelphia; which, when procured, he was to commit to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, who were to have it furnished and made ready to receive him and his family on their arrival, as Mr. Garie desired to save his wife as much as possible, from the care and anxiety attendant upon the arrangement of a new residence. One most important matter, and on which depended the comfort and happiness of his people, was the selection of a proper overseer. On its becoming known that he required such a functionary, numbers of individuals who aspired to that dignified and honourable office applied forthwith; and as it was also known that the master was to be absent, and that, in consequence, the party having it under his entire control, could cut and slash without being interfered with, the value of the situation was greatly enhanced. It had also another irresistible attraction, the absence of the master would enable the overseer to engage in the customary picking and stealing operations, with less chance of detection. In consequence of all these advantages, there was no want of applicants. Great bony New England men, traitors to the air they first breathed, came anxiously forward to secure the prize. Mean, weasen-faced, poor white Georgians, who were able to show testimonials of their having produced large crops with a small number of hands, and who could tell to a fraction how long a slave could be worked on a given quantity of corn, also put in their claims for consideration. Short, thick-set men, with fierce faces, who gloried in the fact that they had at various times killed refractory negroes, also presented themselves to undergo the necessary examination. Mr. Garie sickened as he contemplated the motley mass of humanity that presented itself with such eagerness for the attainment of so degrading an office; and as he listened to their vulgar boastings and brutal language, he blushed to think that such men were his countrymen. Never until now had he had occasion for an overseer. He was not ambitious of being known to produce the largest crop to the acre, and his hands had never been driven to that shocking extent, so common with his neighbours. He had been his own manager, assisted by an old negro, called Ephraim—most generally known as Eph, and to him had been entrusted the task of immediately superintending the hands engaged in the cultivation of the estate. This old man was a great favourite with the children, and Clarence, who used to accompany him on his pony over the estate, regarded him as the most wonderful and accomplished coloured gentleman in existence. Eph was in a state of great perturbation at the anticipated change, and he earnestly sought to be permitted to accompany them to the North. Mr. Garie was, however, obliged to refuse his request, as he said, that it was impossible that the place could get on without him. An overseer being at last procured, whose appearance and manners betokened a better heart than that of any who had yet applied for the situation, and who was also highly-recommended for skill and honesty; nothing now remained to prevent Mr. Garie's early departure. CHAPTER VI. Pleasant News. One evening Mr. Ellis was reading the newspaper, and Mrs. Ellis and the girls were busily engaged in sewing, when who should come in but Mr. Walters, who had entered without ceremony at the front door, which had been left open owing to the unusual heat of the weather. "Here you all are, hard at work," exclaimed he, in his usual hearty manner, accepting at the same time the chair offered to him by Esther. "Come, now," continued he, "lay aside your work and newspapers, for I have great news to communicate." "Indeed, what is it?—what can it be?" cried the three females, almost in a breath; "do let us hear it!" "Oh," said Mr. Walters, in a provokingly slow tone, "I don't think I'll tell you to-night; it may injure your rest; it will keep till to-morrow." "Now, that is always the way with Mr. Walters," said Caddy, pettishly; "he always rouses one's curiosity, and then refuses to gratify it;—he is so tantalizing sometimes!" "I'll tell you this much," said he, looking slily at Caddy, "it is connected with a gentleman who had the misfortune to be taken for a beggar, and who was beaten over the head in consequence by a young lady of my acquaintance." "Now, father has been telling you that," exclaimed Caddy, looking confused, "and I don't thank him for it either; I hear of that everywhere I go—even the Burtons know of it." Mr. Walters now looked round the room, as though he missed some one, and finally exclaimed, "Where is Charlie? I thought I missed somebody—where is my boy?" "We have put him out to live at Mrs. Thomas's," answered Mrs. Ellis, hesitatingly, for she knew Mr. Walters' feelings respecting the common practice of sending little coloured boys to service. "It is a very good place for him," continued she—"a most excellent place." "That is too bad," rejoined Mr. Walters—"too bad; it is a shame to make a servant of a bright clever boy like that. Why, Ellis, man, how came you to consent to his going? The boy should be at school. It really does seem to me that you people who have good and smart boys take the very course to ruin them. The worst thing you can do with a boy of his age is to put him at service. Once get a boy into the habit of working for a stipend, and, depend upon it, when he arrives at manhood, he will think that if he can secure so much a month for the rest of his life he will be perfectly happy. How would you like him to be a subservient old numskull, like that old Robberts of theirs?" Here Esther interrupted Mr. Walters by saying, "I am very glad to hear you express yourself in that manner, Mr. Walters—very glad. Charlie is such a bright, active little fellow; I hate to have him living there as a servant. And he dislikes it, too, as much as any one can. I do wish mother would take him away." "Hush, Esther," said her mother, sharply; "your mother lived at service, and no one ever thought the worse of her for it." Esther looked abashed, and did not attempt to say anything farther. "Now, look here, Ellen," said Mr. Walters. (He called her Ellen, for he had been long intimate with the family.) "If you can't get on without the boy's earning something, why don't you do as white women and men do? Do you ever find them sending their boys out as servants? No; they rather give them a stock of matches, blacking, newspapers, or apples, and start them out to sell them. What is the result? The boy that learns to sell matches soon learns to sell other things; he learns to make bargains; he becomes a small trader, then a merchant, then a millionaire. Did you ever hear of any one who had made a fortune at service? Where would I or Ellis have been had we been hired out all our lives at so much a month? It begets a feeling of dependence to place a boy in such a situation; and, rely upon it, if he stays there long, it will spoil him for anything better all his days." Mrs. Ellis was here compelled to add, by way of justifying herself, that it was not their intention to let him remain there permanently; his father only having given his consent for him to serve during the vacation. "Well, don't let him stay there longer, I pray you," continued Walters. "A great many white people think that we are only fit for servants, and I must confess we do much to strengthen the opinion by permitting our children to occupy such situations when we are not in circumstances to compel us to do so. Mrs. Thomas may tell you that they respect their old servant Robberts as much as they do your husband; but they don't, nevertheless—I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible to have the same respect for the man who cleans your boots, that you have for the man who plans and builds your house." "Oh, well, Walters," here interposed Mr. Ellis, "I don't intend the boy to remain there, so don't get yourself into an unnecessary state of excitement about it. Let us hear what this great news is that you have brought." "Oh, I had almost forgotten it," laughingly replied Walters, at the same time fumbling in his pocket for a letter, which he at length produced. "Here," he continued, opening it, "is a letter I have received from a Mr. Garie, enclosing another from our friend Winston. This Mr. Garie writes me that he is coming to the North to settle, and desires me to procure them a house; and he says also that he has so far presumed upon an early acquaintance of his wife with Mrs. Ellis as to request that she will attend to the furnishing of it. You are to purchase all that is necessary to make them comfortable, and I am to foot the bills." "What, you don't mean Emily Winston's husband?" said the astonished Mrs. Ellis. "I can't say whose husband it is, but from Winston's letter," replied Mr. Walters, "I suppose he is the person alluded to." "That is news," continued Mrs. Ellis. "Only think, she was a little mite of a thing when I first knew her, and now she is a woman and the mother of two children. How time does fly. I must be getting quite old," concluded she, with a sigh. "Nonsense, Ellen," remarked Mr. Ellis, "you look surprisingly young, you are quite a girl yet. Why, it was only the other day I was asked if you were one of my daughters." Mrs. Ellis and the girls laughed at this sally of their father's, who asked Mr. Walters if he had as yet any house in view. "There is one of my houses in Winter-street that I think will just suit them. The former tenants moved out about a week since. If I can call for you to-morrow," he continued, turning to Mrs. Ellis, "will you accompany me there to take a look at the premises?" "It is a dreadful long walk," replied Mrs. Ellis. "How provoking it is to think, that because persons are coloured they are not permitted to ride in the omnibuses or other public conveyances! I do hope I shall live to see the time when we shall be treated as civilized creatures should be." "I suppose we shall be so treated when the Millennium comes," rejoined Walters, "not before, I am afraid; and as we have no reason to anticipate that it will arrive before to-morrow, we shall have to walk to Winter-street, or take a private conveyance. At any rate, I shall call for you to-morrow at ten. Good night—remember, at ten." "Well, this is a strange piece of intelligence," exclaimed Mrs. Ellis, as the door closed upon Mr. Walters. "I wonder what on earth can induce them to move on here. Their place, I am told, is a perfect paradise. In old Colonel Garie's time it was said to be the finest in Georgia. I wonder if he really intends to live here permanently?" "I can't say, my dear," replied Mrs. Ellis; "I am as much in the dark as you are." "Perhaps they are getting poor, Ellis, and are coming here because they can live cheaper." "Oh, no, wife; I don't think that can be the occasion of their removal. I rather imagine he purposes emancipating his children. He cannot do it legally in Georgia; and, you know, by bringing them here, and letting them remain six months, they are free—so says the law of some of the Southern States, and I think of Georgia." The next morning Mrs. Ellis, Caddy, and Mr. Walters, started for Winter-street; it was a very long walk, and when they arrived there, they were all pretty well exhausted. "Oh, dear," exclaimed Mrs. Ellis, after walking upstairs, "I am so tired, and there is not a chair in the house. I must rest here," said she, seating herself upon the stairs, and looking out upon the garden. "What a large yard! if ours were only as large as this, what a delightful place I could make of it! But there is no room to plant anything at our house, the garden is so very small." After they were all somewhat rested, they walked through the house and surveyed the rooms, making some favourable commentary upon each. "The house don't look as if it would want much cleaning," said Caddy, with a tone of regret. "So much the better, I should say," suggested Mr. Walters. "Not as Caddy views the matter," rejoined Mrs. Ellis. "She is so fond of house-cleaning, that I positively think she regards the cleanly state of the premises as rather a disadvantage than otherwise." They were all, however, very well pleased with the place; and on their way home they settled which should be the best bedroom, and where the children should sleep. They also calculated how much carpet and oilcloth would be necessary, and what style of furniture should be put in the parlour. "I think the letter said plain, neat furniture, and not too expensive, did it not?" asked Mrs. Ellis. "I think those were the very words," replied Caddy; "and, oh, mother, isn't it nice to have the buying of so many pretty things? I do so love to shop!" "Particularly with some one else's money," rejoined her mother, with a smile. "Yes, or one's own either, when one has it," continued Caddy; "I like to spend money under any circumstances." Thus in conversation relative to the house and its fixtures, they beguiled the time until they reached their home. On arriving there, Mrs. Ellis found Robberts awaiting her return with a very anxious countenance. He informed her that Mrs. Thomas wished to see her immediately; that Charlie had been giving that estimable lady a world of trouble; and that her presence was necessary to set things to rights. "What has he been doing?" asked Mrs. Ellis. "Oh, lots of things! He and aunt Rachel don't get on together at all; and last night he came nigh having the house burned down over our heads." "Why, Robberts, you don't tell me so! What a trial boys are," sighed Mrs. Ellis. "He got on first rate for a week or two; but since that he has been raising Satan. He and aunt Rachel had a regular brush yesterday, and he has actually lamed the old woman to that extent she won't be able to work for a week to come." "Dear, dear, what am I to do?" said the perplexed Mrs. Ellis; "I can't go up there immediately, I am too tired. Say to Mrs. Thomas I will come up this evening. I wonder," concluded she, "what has come over the boy." "Mother, you know how cross aunt Rachel is; I expect she has been ill-treating him. He is so good-natured, that he never would behave improperly to an old person unless goaded to it by some very harsh usage." "That's the way—go on, Esther, find some excuse for your angel," said Caddy, ironically. "Of course that lamb could not do anything wrong, and, according to your judgment, he never does; but, I tell you, he is as bad as any other boy—boys are boys. I expect he has been tracking over the floor after aunt Rachel has scrubbed it, or has been doing something equally provoking; he has been in mischief, depend upon it." Things had gone on very well with Master Charlie for the first two weeks after his introduction into the house of the fashionable descendant of the worthy maker of leathern breeches. His intelligence, combined with the quickness and good-humour with which he performed the duties assigned him, quite won the regard of the venerable lady who presided over that establishment. It is true she had detected him in several attempts upon the peace and well-being of aunt Rachel's Tom; but with Tom she had little sympathy, he having recently made several felonious descents upon her stores of cream and custards. In fact, it was not highly probable, if any of his schemes had resulted seriously to the spiteful protege of aunt Rachel, that Mrs. Thomas would have been overwhelmed with grief, or disposed to inflict any severe punishment on the author of the catastrophe. Unfortunately for Mrs. Thomas, Charlie, whilst going on an errand, had fallen in with his ancient friend and adviser—in short, he had met no less a person than the formerly all-sufficient Kinch. Great was the delight of both parties at this unexpected meeting, and warm, indeed, was the exchange of mutual congratulations on this auspicious event. Kinch, in the excess of his delight, threw his hat several feet in the air; nor did his feelings of pleasure undergo the least abatement when that dilapidated portion of his costume fell into a bed of newly-mixed lime, from which he rescued it with great difficulty and at no little personal risk. "Hallo! Kinch, old fellow, how are you?" cried Charlie; "I've been dying to see you—why haven't you been up?" "Why, I did come up often, but that old witch in the kitchen wouldn't let me see you—she abused me scandalous. I wanted to pull her turban off and throw it in the gutter. Why, she called me a dirty beggar, and threatened to throw cold water on me if I didn't go away. Phew! ain't she an old buster!" "Why, I never knew you were there." "Yes," continued Kinch; "and I saw you another time hung up behind the carriage. I declare, Charlie, you looked so like a little monkey, dressed up in that sky-blue coat and silver buttons, that I liked to have died a-laughing at you;" and Kinch was so overcome by the recollection of the event in question, that he was obliged to sit down upon a door-step to recover himself. "Oh, I do hate to wear this confounded livery!' said Charlie, dolefully—" the boys scream 'Johnny Coat-tail' after me in the streets, and call me 'blue jay,' and 'blue nigger,' and lots of other names. I feel that all that's wanting to make a complete monkey of me, is for some one to carry me about on an organ." "What do you wear it for, then?" asked Kinch. "Because I can't help myself, that's the reason. The boys plague me to that extent sometimes, that I feel like tearing the things into bits—but mother says I must wear it. Kinch," concluded he, significantly, "something will have to be done, I can't stand it." "You remember what I told you about the wig, don't you?" asked Kinch; and, on receiving an affirmative reply, he continued, "Just try that on, and see how it goes—you'll find it'll work like a charm; it's a regular footman-expatriator—just try it now; you'll see if it isn't the thing to do the business for you." "I'm determined to be as bad as I can," rejoined Charlie; "I'm tired enough of staying there: that old aunt Rach is a devil—I don't believe a saint from heaven could get on with her; I'm expecting we'll have a pitched battle every day." Beguiling the time with this and similar conversation, they reached the house to which Charlie had been despatched with a note; after which, he turned his steps homeward, still accompanied by the redoubtable Kinch. As ill luck would have it, they passed some boys who were engaged in a game of marbles, Charlie's favourite pastime, and, on Kinch's offering him the necessary stock to commence play, he launched into the game, regardless of the fact that the carriage was ordered for a drive within an hour, and that he was expected to fill his accustomed place in the rear of that splendid vehicle. Once immersed in the game, time flew rapidly on. Mrs. Thomas awaited his return until her patience was exhausted, when she started on her drive without him. As they were going through a quiet street, to her horror and surprise, prominent amidst a crowd of dirty boys, she discovered her little footman, with his elegant blue livery covered with dirt and sketches in white chalk; for, in the excitement of the game, Charlie had not observed that Kinch was engaged in drawing on the back of his coat his favourite illustration, to wit, a skull and cross-bones. "Isn't that our Charlie?" said she to her daughter, surveying the crowd of noisy boys through her eye-glass. "I really believe it is—that is certainly our livery; pull the check-string, and stop the carriage." Now Robberts had been pressed into service in consequence of Charlie's absence, and was in no very good humour at being compelled to air his rheumatic old shins behind the family-carriage. It can therefore be readily imagined with what delight he recognized the delinquent footman amidst the crowd, and with what alacrity he descended and pounced upon him just at the most critical moment of the game. Clutching fast hold of him by the collar of his coat, he dragged him to the carriage-window, and held him before the astonished eyes of his indignant mistress, who lifted up her hands in horror at the picture he presented. "Oh! you wretched boy," said she, "just look at your clothes, all covered with chalk-marks and bespattered with lime! Your livery is totally ruined—and your knees, too—only look at them—the dirt is completely ground into them." "But you haven't seed his back, marm," said Robberts; "he's got the pirate's flag drawn on it. That boy'll go straight to the devil—I know he will." All this time Charlie, to his great discomfiture, was being shaken and turned about by Robberts in the most unceremonious manner. Kinch, with his usual audacity, was meanwhile industriously engaged in tracing on Robbert's coat a similar picture to that he had so skilfully drawn on Charlie's, to the great delight of a crowd of boys who stood admiring spectators of his artistic performances. The coachman, however, observing this operation, brought it to a rather hasty conclusion by a well directed cut of the whip across the fingers of the daring young artist. This so enraged Kinch, that in default of any other missile, he threw his lime-covered cap at the head of the coachman; but, unfortunately for himself, the only result of his exertions was the lodgment of his cap in the topmost bough of a neighbouring tree, from whence it was rescued with great difficulty. "What shall we do with him?" asked Mrs. Thomas, in a despairing tone, as she looked at Charlie. "Put him with the coachman," suggested Mrs. Morton. "He can't sit there, the horses are so restive, and the seat is only constructed for one, and he would be in the coachman's way. I suppose he must find room on behind with Robberts." "I won't ride on the old carriage," cried Charlie, nerved by despair; "I won't stay here nohow. I'm going home to my mother;" and as he spoke he endeavoured to wrest himself from Robberts' grasp. "Put him in here," said Mrs. Thomas; "it would never do to let him go, for he will run home with some distressing tale of ill-treatment; no, we must keep him until I can send for his mother—put him in here." Much to Mrs. Morton's disgust, Charlie was bundled by Robberts into the bottom of the carriage, where he sat listening to the scolding of Mrs. Thomas and her daughter until they arrived at home. He remained in disgrace for several days after this adventure; but as Mrs. Thomas well knew that she could not readily fill his place with another, she made a virtue of necessity, and kindly looked over this first offence. The situation was, however, growing more and more intolerable. Aunt Rachel and he had daily skirmishes, in which he was very frequently worsted. He had held several hurried consultations with Kinch through the grating of the cellar window, and was greatly cheered and stimulated in the plans he intended to pursue by the advice and sympathy of his devoted friend. Master Kinch's efforts to console Charlie were not without great risk to himself, as he had on two or three occasions narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of Robberts, who well remembered Kinch's unprecedented attempt upon the sacredness of his livery; and what the result might have been had the latter fallen into his hands, we cannot contemplate without a shudder. These conferences between Kinch and Charlie produced their natural effect, and latterly it had been several times affirmed by aunt Rachel that, "Dat air boy was gittin' 'tirely too high—gittin' bove hissef 'pletely—dat he was gittin' more and more aggriwatin' every day—dat she itched to git at him—dat she 'spected nothin' else but what she'd be 'bliged to take hold o' him;" and she comported herself generally as if she was crazy for the conflict which she saw must sooner or later occur. Charlie, unable on these occasions to reply to her remarks without precipitating a conflict for which he did not feel prepared, sought to revenge himself upon the veteran Tom; and such was the state of his feelings, that he bribed Kinch, with a large lump of sugar and the leg of a turkey, to bring up his mother's Jerry, a fierce young cat, and they had the satisfaction of shutting him up in the wood-house with the belligerent Tom, who suffered a signal defeat at Jerry's claws, and was obliged to beat a hasty retreat through the window, with a seriously damaged eye, and with the fur torn off his back in numberless places. After this Charlie had the pleasure of hearing aunt Rachel frequently bewail the condition of her favourite, whose deplorable state she was inclined to ascribe to his influence, though she was unable to bring it home to him in such a manner as to insure his conviction. CHAPTER VII. Mrs. Thomas has her Troubles. Mrs. Thomas was affected, as silly women sometimes are, with an intense desire to be at the head of the ton. For this object she gave grand dinners and large evening parties, to which were invited all who, being two or three removes from the class whose members occupy the cobbler's bench or the huckster's stall, felt themselves at liberty to look down upon the rest of the world from the pinnacle on which they imagined themselves placed. At these social gatherings the conversation never turned upon pedigree, and if any of the guests chanced by accident to allude to their ancestors, they spoke of them as members of the family, who, at an early period of their lives, were engaged in mercantile pursuits. At such dinners Mrs. Thomas would sit for hours, mumbling dishes that disagreed with her; smiling at conversations carried on in villanous French, of which language she did not understand a word; and admiring the manners of addle-headed young men (who got tipsy at her evening parties), because they had been to Europe, and were therefore considered quite men of the world. These parties and dinners she could not be induced to forego, although the late hours and fatigue consequent thereon would place her on the sick-list for several days afterwards. As soon, however, as she recovered sufficiently to resume her place at the table, she would console herself with a dinner of boiled mutton and roasted turnips, as a slight compensation for the unwholesome French dishes she had compelled herself to swallow on the occasions before mentioned. Amongst the other modern fashions she had adopted, was that of setting apart one morning of the week for the reception of visitors; and she had mortally offended several of her oldest friends by obstinately refusing to admit them at any other time. Two or three difficulties had occurred with Robberts, in consequence of this new arrangement, as he could not be brought to see the propriety of saying to visitors that Mrs. Thomas was "not at home," when he knew she was at that very moment upstairs peeping over the banisters. His obstinacy on this point had induced her to try whether she could not train Charlie so as to fit him for the important office of uttering the fashionable and truthless "not at home" with unhesitating gravity and decorum; and, after a series of mishaps, she at last believed her object was effected, until an unlucky occurrence convinced her to the contrary. Mrs. Thomas, during the days on which she did not receive company, would have presented, to any one who might have had the honour to see that venerable lady, an entirely different appearance to that which she assumed on gala days. A white handkerchief supplied the place of the curling wig, and the tasty French cap was replaced by a muslin one, decorated with an immense border of ruffling, that flapped up and down over her silver spectacles in the most comical manner possible. A short flannel gown and a dimity petticoat of very antique pattern and scanty dimensions, completed her costume. Thus attired, and provided with a duster, she would make unexpected sallies into the various domestic departments, to see that everything was being properly conducted, and that no mal-practices were perpetrated at times when it was supposed she was elsewhere. She showed an intuitive knowledge of all traps set to give intimation of her approach, and would come upon aunt Rachel so stealthily as to induce her to declare, "Dat old Mrs. Thomas put her more in mind of a ghost dan of any other libin animal." One morning, whilst attired in the manner described, Mrs. Thomas had been particularly active in her excursions through the house, and had driven the servants to their wits' ends by her frequent descents upon them at the most unexpected times, thereby effectually depriving them of the short breathing intervals they were anxious to enjoy. Charlie in particular had been greatly harassed by her, and was sent flying from place to place until his legs were nearly run off, as he expressed it. And so, when Lord Cutanrun, who was travelling in America to give his estates in England an opportunity to recuperate, presented his card, Charlie, in revenge, showed him into the drawing-room, where he knew that Mrs. Thomas was busily engaged trimming an oil-lamp. Belying on the explicit order she had given to say that she was not at home, she did not even look up when his lordship entered, and as he advanced towards her, she extended to him a basin of dirty water, saying, "Here, take this." Receiving no response she looked up, and to her astonishment and horror beheld, not Charlie, but Lord Cutanrun. In the agitation consequent upon his unexpected appearance, she dropped the basin, the contents of which, splashing in all directions, sadly discoloured his lordship's light pants, and greatly damaged the elegant carpet. "Oh! my lord," she exclaimed, "I didn't—couldn't—wouldn't—" and, unable to ejaculate further, she fairly ran out of the apartment into the entry, where she nearly fell over Charlie, who was enjoying the confusion his conduct had created. "Oh! you limb!—you little wretch!" said she. "You knew I was not at home!" "Why, where are you now?" he asked, with the most provoking air of innocence. "If you ain't in the house now, you never was." "Never mind, sir," said she, "never mind. I'll settle with you for this. Don't stand there grinning at me; go upstairs and tell Mrs. Morton to come down immediately, and then get something to wipe up that water. O dear! my beautiful carpet! And for a lord to see me in such a plight! Oh! it's abominable! I'll give it to you, you scamp! You did it on purpose," continued the indignant Mrs. Thomas. "Don't deny it—I know you did. What are you standing there for? Why don't you call Mrs. Morton?" she concluded, as Charlie, chuckling over the result of his trick, walked leisurely upstairs. "That boy will be the death of me," she afterwards said, on relating the occurrence to her daughter. "Just to think, after all the trouble I've had teaching him when to admit people and when not, that he should serve me such a trick. I'm confident he did it purposely." Alas! for poor Mrs. Thomas; this was only the first of a series of annoyances that Charlie had in store, with which to test her patience and effect his own deliverance. A few days after, one of their grand dinners was to take place, and Charlie had been revolving in his mind the possibility of his finding some opportunity, on that occasion, to remove the old lady's wig; feeling confident that, could he accomplish that feat, he would be permitted to turn his back for ever on the mansion of Mrs. Thomas. Never had Mrs. Thomas appeared more radiant than at this dinner. All the guests whose attendance she had most desired were present, a new set of china had lately arrived from Paris, and she was in full anticipation of a grand triumph. Now, to Charlie had been assigned the important duty of removing the cover from the soup-tureen which was placed before his mistress, and the little rogue had settled upon that moment as the most favourable for the execution of his purpose. He therefore secretly affixed a nicely crooked pin to the elbow of his sleeve, and, as he lifted the cover, adroitly hooked it into her cap, to which he knew the wig was fastened, and in a twinkling had it off her head, and before she could recover from her astonishment and lay down the soup-ladle he had left the room. The guests stared and tittered at the grotesque figure she presented,—her head being covered with short white hair, and her face as red as a peony at the mortifying situation in which she was placed. As she rose from her chair Charlie presented himself, and handed her the wig, with an apology for the accident. In her haste to put it on, she turned it wrong side foremost; the laughter of the guests could now no longer be restrained, and in the midst of it Mrs. Thomas left the room. Encountering Charlie as she went, she almost demolished him in her wrath; not ceasing to belabour him till his outcries became so loud as to render her fearful that he would alarm the guests; and she then retired to her room, where she remained until the party broke up. It was her custom, after these grand entertainments, to make nocturnal surveys of the kitchen, to assure herself that none of the delicacies had been secreted by the servants for their personal use and refreshment. Charlie, aware of this, took his measures for an ample revenge for the beating he had received at her hands. At night, when all the rest of the family had retired, he hastily descended to the kitchen, and, by some process known only to himself, imprisoned the cat in a stone jar that always stood upon the dresser, and into which he was confident Mrs. Thomas would peep. He then stationed himself upon the stairs, to watch the result. He had not long to wait, for as soon as she thought the servants were asleep, she came softly into the kitchen, and, after peering about in various places, she at last lifted up the lid of the jar. Tom, tired of his long confinement, sprang out, and, in so doing, knocked the lamp out of her hand, the fluid from which ignited and ran over the floor. "Murder!—Fire!—Watch!" screamed the thoroughly frightened old woman. "Oh, help! help! fire!" At this terrible noise nearly every one in the household was aroused, and hurried to the spot whence it proceeded. They found Mrs. Thomas standing in the dark, with the lid of the jar in her hand, herself the personification of terror. The carpet was badly burned in several places, and the fragments of the lamp were scattered about the floor. "What has happened?" exclaimed Mr. Morton, who was the first to enter the kitchen. "What is all this frightful noise occasioned by?" "Oh, there is a man in the house!" answered Mrs. Thomas, her teeth chattering with fright. "There was a man in here—he has just sprung out," she continued, pointing to the bread-jar. "Pooh, pooh—that's nonsense, madam," replied the son-in-law. "Why an infant could not get in there, much less a man!" "I tell you it was a man then," angrily responded Mrs. Thomas; "and he is in the house somewhere now." "Such absurdity!" muttered Mr. Morton; adding, in a louder tone: "Why, my dear mamma, you've seen a mouse or something of the kind." "Mouse, indeed!" interrupted the old lady. "Do you think I'm in my dotage, and I don't know a man from a mouse?" Just then the cat, whose back had got severely singed in the melee, set up a most lamentable caterwauling; and, on being brought to light from the depths of a closet into which he had flown, his appearance immediately discovered the share he had had in the transaction. "It must have been the cat," said Robberts. "Only look at his back—why here the fur is singed off him! I'll bet anything," continued he, "that air boy has had something to do with this—for it's a clear case that the cat couldn't git into the jar, and then put the lid on hissef." Tom's inability to accomplish this feat being most readily admitted on all sides, inquiry was immediately made as to the whereabouts of Charlie; his absence from the scene being rather considered as evidence of participation, for, it was argued, if he had been unaware of what was to transpire, the noise would have drawn him to the spot at once, as he was always the first at hand in the event of any excitement. Robberts was despatched to see if he was in his bed, and returned with the intelligence that the bed had not even been opened. Search was immediately instituted, and he was discovered in the closet at the foot of the stairs. He was dragged forth, shaken, pummelled, and sent to bed, with the assurance that his mother should be sent for in the morning, to take him home, and keep him there. This being exactly the point to which he was desirous of bringing matters, he went to bed, and passed a most agreeable night. Aunt Rachel, being one of those sleepers that nothing short of an earthquake can rouse until their customary time for awaking, had slept soundly through the stirring events of the past night. She came down in the morning in quite a placid state of mind, expecting to enjoy a day of rest, as she had the night before sat up much beyond her usual time, to set matters to rights after the confusion consequent on the dinner party. What was her astonishment, therefore, on finding the kitchen she had left in a state of perfect order and cleanliness, in a condition that resembled the preparation for an annual house-cleaning. "Lord, bless us!" she exclaimed, looking round; "What on yarth has happened? I raly b'lieve dere's bin a fire in dis 'ere house, and I never knowed a word of it. Why I might have bin burnt up in my own bed! Dere's de lamp broke—carpet burnt—pots and skillets hauled out of the closet—ebery ting turned upside down; why dere's bin a reg'lar 'sturbance down here," she continued, as she surveyed the apartment. At this juncture, she espied Tom, who sat licking his paws before the fire, and presenting so altered an appearance, from the events of the night, as to have rendered him unrecognizable even by his best friend. "Strange cat in de house! Making himself quite at home at dat," said aunt Rachel, indignantly. Her wrath, already much excited, rose to the boiling point at what she deemed a most daring invasion of her domain. She, therefore, without ceremony, raised a broom, with which she belaboured the astonished Tom, who ran frantically from under one chair to another till he ensconced himself in a small closet, from which he pertinaciously refused to be dislodged. "Won't come out of dere, won't you?" said she. "I'll see if I can't make you den;" and poor Tom dodged behind pots and kettles to avoid the blows which were aimed at him; at last, thoroughly enraged by a hard knock on the back, he sprang fiercely into the face of his tormentor, who, completely upset by the suddenness of his attack, fell sprawling on the floor, screaming loudly for help. She was raised up by Robberts, who came running to her assistance, and, on being questioned as to the cause of her outcries, replied:— "Dere's a strange cat in de house—wild cat too, I raly b'lieve;" and spying Tom at that moment beneath the table, she made another dash at him for a renewal of hostilities. "Why that's Tom," exclaimed Robberts; "don't you know your own cat?" "Oh," she replied, "dat ar isn't Tom now, is it? Why, what's the matter wid him?" Robberts then gave her a detailed account of the transactions of the previous night, in which account the share Charlie had taken was greatly enlarged and embellished; and the wrathful old woman was listening to the conclusion when Charlie entered. Hardly had he got into the room, when, without any preliminary discussion, aunt Rachel—to use her own words—pitched into him to give him particular fits. Now Charlie, not being disposed to receive "particular fits," made some efforts to return the hard compliments that were being showered upon him, and the advice of Kinch providentially occurring to him—respecting an attack upon the understanding of his venerable antagonist—he brought his hard shoes down with great force upon her pet corn, and by this coup de pied completely demolished her. With a loud scream she let him go; and sitting down upon the floor, declared herself lamed for life, beyond the possibility of recovery. At this stage of the proceedings, Robberts came to the rescue of his aged coadjutor, and seized hold of Charlie, who forthwith commenced so brisk an attack upon his rheumatic shins, as to cause him to beat a hurried retreat, leaving Charlie sole master of the field. The noise that these scuffles occasioned brought Mrs. Thomas into the kitchen, and Charlie was marched off by her into an upstairs room, where he was kept in "durance vile" until the arrival of his mother. Mrs. Thomas had a strong liking for Charlie—not as a boy, but as a footman. He was active and intelligent, and until quite recently, extremely tractable and obedient; more than all, he was a very good-looking boy, and when dressed in the Thomas livery, presented a highly-respectable appearance. She therefore determined to be magnanimous—to look over past events, and to show a Christian and forgiving spirit towards his delinquencies. She sent for Mrs. Ellis, with the intention of desiring her to use her maternal influence to induce him to apologize to aunt Rachel for his assault upon her corns, which apology Mrs. Thomas was willing to guarantee should be accepted; as for the indignities that had been inflicted on herself, she thought it most politic to regard them in the light of accidents, and to say as little about that part of the affair as possible. When Mrs. Ellis made her appearance on the day subsequent to the events just narrated, Mrs. Thomas enlarged to her upon the serious damage that aunt Rachel had received, and the urgent necessity that something should be done to mollify that important individual. When Charlie was brought into the presence of his mother and Mrs. Thomas, the latter informed him, that, wicked as had been his conduct towards herself, she was willing, for his mother's sake, to look over it; but that he must humble himself in dust and ashes before the reigning sovereign of the culinary kingdom, who, making the most of the injury inflicted on her toe, had declared herself unfit for service, and was at that moment ensconced in a large easy-chair, listening to the music of her favourite smoke-jack, whilst a temporary cook was getting up the dinner, under her immediate supervision and direction. "Charlie, I'm quite ashamed of you," said his mother, after listening to Mrs. Thomas's lengthy statement. "What has come over you, child?"—Charlie stood biting his nails, and looking very sullen, but vouchsafed them no answer.—"Mrs. Thomas is so kind as to forgive you, and says she will look over the whole affair, if you will beg aunt Rachel's pardon. Come, now," continued Mrs. Ellis, coaxingly, "do, that's a good boy." "Yes, do," added Mrs. Thomas, "and I will buy you a handsome new suit of livery." This was too much for Charlie; the promise of another suit of the detested livery quite overcame him, and he burst into tears. "Why, what ails the boy? He's the most incomprehensible child I ever saw! The idea of crying at the promise of a new suit of clothes!—any other child would have been delighted," concluded Mrs. Thomas. "I don't want your old button-covered uniform," said Charlie, "and I won't wear it, neither! And as for aunt Rachel, I don't care how much she is hurt—I'm only sorry I didn't smash her other toe; and I'll see her skinned, and be skinned myself, before I'll ask her pardon!" Both Mrs. Thomas and Charlie's mother stood aghast at this unexpected declaration; and the result of a long conference, held by the two, was that Charlie should be taken home, Mrs. Ellis being unable to withstand his tears and entreaties. As he passed through the kitchen on his way out, he made a face at aunt Rachel, who, in return, threw at him one of the turnips she was peeling. It missed the object for which it was intended, and came plump into the eye of Robberts, giving to that respectable individual for some time thereafter the appearance of a prize-fighter in livery. Charlie started for home in the highest spirits, which, however, became considerably lower on his discovering his mother's view of his late exploits was very different from his own. Mrs. Ellis's fondness and admiration of her son, although almost amounting to weakness, were yet insufficient to prevent her from feeling that his conduct, even after making due allowance for the provocation he had received, could not be wholly excused as mere boyish impetuosity and love of mischievous fun. She knew that his father would feel it his duty, not only to reprimand him, but to inflict some chastisement; and this thought was the more painful to her from the consciousness, that but for her own weak compliance with Mrs. Thomas's request, her boy would not have been placed in circumstances which his judgment and self-command had proved insufficient to carry him through. The day, therefore, passed less agreeably than Charlie had anticipated; for now that he was removed from the scene of his trials, he could not disguise from himself that his behaviour under them had been very different from what it ought to have been, and this had the salutary effect of bringing him into a somewhat humbler frame of mind. When his father returned in the evening, therefore, Charlie appeared so crest-fallen that even Caddy could scarcely help commiserating him, especially as his subdued state during the day had kept him from committing any of those offences against tidiness which so frequently exasperated her. Mr. Ellis, though very strict on what he thought points of duty, had much command of temper, and was an affectionate father. He listened, therefore, with attention to the details of Charlie's grievances, as well as of his misdemeanours, and some credit is due to him for the unshaken gravity he preserved throughout. Although he secretly acquitted his son of any really bad intention, he thought it incumbent on him to make Charlie feel in some degree the evil consequences of his unruly behaviour. After giving him a serious lecture, and pointing out the impropriety of taking such measures to deliver himself from the bondage in which his parents themselves had thought fit to place him, without even appealing to them, he insisted on his making the apologies due both to Mrs. Thomas and aunt Rachel (although he was fully aware that both had only got their deserts); and, further, intimated that he would not be reinstated in his parents' good graces until he had proved, by his good conduct and docility, that he was really sorry for his misbehaviour. It was a severe trial to Charlie to make these apologies; but he well knew that what his father had decided upon must be done—so he made a virtue of necessity, and, accompanied by his mother, on the following day performed his penance with as good a grace as he was able; and, in consideration of this submission, his father, when he came home in the evening, greeted him with all his usual kindness, and the recollection of this unlucky affair was at once banished from the family circle. CHAPTER VIII. Trouble in the Ellis Family. Since the receipt of Mr. Garie's letter, Mrs. Ellis and Caddy had been busily engaged in putting the house in a state of preparation for their reception. Caddy, whilst superintending its decoration, felt herself in Elysium. For the first time in her life she had the supreme satisfaction of having two unfortunate house-cleaners entirely at her disposal; consequently, she drove them about and worried them to an extent unparalleled in any of their former experience. She sought for and discovered on the windows (which they had fondly regarded as miracles of cleanliness) sundry streaks and smears, and detected infinite small spots of paint and whitewash on the newly-scrubbed floors. She followed them upstairs and downstairs, and tormented them to that extent, that Charlie gave it as his private opinion that he should not be in the least surprised, on going up there, to find that the two old women had made away with Caddy, and hidden her remains in the coal-bin. Whilst she was thus engaged, to Charlie was assigned the duty of transporting to Winter-street her diurnal portion of food, without a hearty share of which she found it impossible to maintain herself in a state of efficiency; her labours in chasing the women about the house being of a rather exhausting nature. When he made the visits in question, Charlie was generally reconnoitred by his sister from a window over the door, and was compelled to put his shoes through a system of purification, devised by her for his especial benefit. It consisted of three courses of scraper, and two of mat; this being considered by her as strictly necessary to bring his shoes to such a state of cleanliness as would entitle him to admission into the premises of which she was the temporary mistress. Charlie, on two or three occasions finding a window open, made stealthy descents upon the premises without first having duly observed these quarantine regulations; whereupon he was attacked by Caddy, who, with the assistance of the minions under her command, so shook and pummelled him as to cause his precipitate retreat through the same opening by which he had entered, and that, too, in so short a space of time as to make the whole manoeuvre appear to him in the light of a well-executed but involuntary feat of ground and lofty tumbling. One afternoon he started with his sister's dinner, consisting of a dish of which she was particularly fond, and its arrival was therefore looked for with unusual anxiety. Charlie, having gorged himself to an almost alarming extent, did not make the haste that the case evidently demanded; and as he several times stopped to act as umpire in disputed games of marbles (in the rules of which he was regarded as an authority), he necessarily consumed a great deal of time on the way. Caddy's patience was severely tried by the long delay, and her temper, at no time the most amiable, gathered bitterness from the unprecedented length of her fast. Therefore, when he at length appeared, walking leisurely up Winter-street, swinging the kettle about in the most reckless manner, and setting it down on the pavement to play leap-frog over the fire-plugs, her wrath reached a point that boded no good to the young trifler. Now, whilst Charlie had been giving his attention to the difficulties growing out of the games of marbles, he did not observe that one of the disputants was possessed of a tin kettle, in appearance very similar to his own, by the side of which, in the excitement of the moment, he deposited his own whilst giving a practical illustration of his view of the point under consideration. Having accomplished this to his entire satisfaction, he resumed what he supposed was his kettle, and went his way rejoicing. Now, if Caddy Ellis had a fondness for one dish more than any other, it was for haricot, with plenty of carrots; and knowing she was to have this for her dinner, she, to use her own pointed expression, "had laid herself out to have a good meal." She had even abstained from her customary lunch that she might have an appetite worthy of the occasion; and accordingly, long ere the dinner hour approached, she was hungry as a wolf. Notwithstanding this fact, when Charlie made his appearance at the door, she insisted on his going through all the accustomed forms with the mat and scraper before entering the house; an act of self-sacrifice on her part entirely uncalled for, as the day was remarkably fine, and Charlie's boots unusually clean. He received two or three by no means gentle shoves and pokes as he entered, which he bore with unusual indifference, making not the slightest effort at retaliation, as was his usual practice. The fact is, Charlie was, as lions are supposed to be, quite disinclined for a fight after a hearty meal, so he followed Caddy upstairs to the second story. Here she had got up an extempore dining-table, by placing a pasting board across two chairs. Seating herself upon a stool, she jerked off the lid of the kettle, and, to her horror and dismay, found not the favourite haricot, but a piece of cheese-rind, a crust of dry bread, and a cold potatoe. Charlie, who was amusing himself by examining the flowers in the new carpet, did not observe the look of surprise and disgust that came over the countenance of his sister, as she took out, piece by piece, the remains of some schoolboy's repast. "Look here," she at last burst forth, "do you call this my dinner?" "Yes," said Charlie, in a deliberate tone, "and a very good one too, I should say; if you can't eat that dinner, you ought to starve; it's one of mother's best haricots." "You don't call this cold potatoe and cheese-rind haricot, do you?" asked Caddy, angrily. At this Charlie looked up, and saw before her the refuse scraps, which she had indignantly emptied upon the table. He could scarcely believe his eyes; he got up and looked in the kettle, but found no haricot. "Well," said he, with surprise, "if that don't beat me! I saw mother fill it with haricot myself; I'm clean beat about it." "Tell me what you've done with it, then," almost screamed the angry girl. "I really don't know what has become of it," he answered, with a bewildered air. "I saw—I saw—I—I—" "You saw—you saw," replied the indignant Caddy, imitating his tone; and taking up the kettle, she began to examine it more closely. "Why, this isn't even our kettle; look at this lid. I'm sure it's not ours. You've been stopping somewhere to play, and exchanged it with some other boy, that's just what you've done." Just then it occurred to Charlie that at the place where he had adjusted the dispute about the marbles, he had observed in the hands of one of the boys a kettle similar to his own; and it flashed across his mind that he had then and there made the unfortunate exchange. He broke his suspicion to Caddy in the gentlest manner, at the same time edging his way to the door to escape the storm that he saw was brewing. The loss of her dinner—and of such a dinner—so enraged the hungry girl, as to cause her to seize a brush lying near and begin to belabour him without mercy. In his endeavour to escape from her his foot was caught in the carpet, and he was violently precipitated down the long flight of stairs. His screams brought the whole party to his assistance; even Kinch, who was sitting on the step outside, threw off his usual dread of Caddy, and rushed into the house. "Oh, take me up," piteously cried Charlie; "oh, take me up, I'm almost killed." In raising him, one of the old women took hold of his arm, which caused him to scream again. "Don't touch my arm, please don't touch my arm; I'm sure it's broke." "No, no, it's not broke, only sprained, or a little twisted," said she; and, seizing it as she spoke, she gave it a pull and a wrench, for the purpose of making it all right again; at this Charlie's face turned deathly pale, and he fainted outright. "Run for a doctor," cried the now thoroughly-alarmed Caddy; "run for the doctor! my brother's dead!" and bursting into tears, she exclaimed, "Oh, I've killed my brother, I've killed my brother!" "Don't make so much fuss, child," soothingly replied one of the old women: "he's worth half a dozen dead folk yet. Lor bless you, child, he's only fainted." Water was procured and thrown in his face, and before Kinch returned with the doctor, he was quite restored to consciousness. "Don't cry, my little man," said the physician, as he took out his knife and ripped up the sleeve of Charlie's coat. "Don't cry; let me examine your arm." Stripping up the shirt-sleeve, he felt it carefully over, and shaking his head (physicians always shake their heads) pronounced the arm broken, and that, too, in an extremely bad place. At this information Charlie began again to cry, and Caddy broke forth into such yells of despair as almost to drive them distracted. The physician kindly procured a carriage, and saw Charlie comfortably placed therein; and held in the arms of Kinch, with the lamenting and disheartened Caddy on the opposite seat, he was slowly driven home. The house was quite thrown into confusion by their arrival under such circumstances; Mrs. Ellis, for a wonder, did not faint, but proceeded at once to do what was necessary. Mr. Ellis was sent for, and he immediately despatched Kinch for Dr. Burdett, their family physician, who came without a moment's delay. He examined Charlie's arm, and at first thought it would be necessary to amputate it. At the mere mention of the word amputate, Caddy set up such a series of lamentable howls as to cause her immediate ejectment from the apartment. Dr. Burdett called in Dr. Diggs for a consultation, and between them it was decided that an attempt should be made to save the injured member. "Now, Charlie," said Dr. Burdett, "I'm afraid we must hurt you, my boy—but if you have any desire to keep this arm you must try to bear it." "I'll bear anything to save my arm, doctor; I can't spare that," said he, manfully. "I'll want it by-and-by to help take care of mother and the girls." "You're a brave little fellow," said Dr. Diggs, patting him on the head, "so then we'll go at it at once." "Stop," cried Charlie, "let mother put her arm round my neck so, and Es, you hold the good hand. Now then, I'm all right—fire away!" and clenching his lips hard, he waited for the doctor to commence the operation of setting his arm. Charlie's mother tried to look as stoical as possible, but the corners of her mouth would twitch, and there was a nervous trembling of her under-lip; but she commanded herself, and only when Charlie gave a slight groan of pain, stooped and kissed his forehead; and when she raised her head again, there was a tear resting on the face of her son that was not his own. Esther was the picture of despair, and she wept bitterly for the misfortune which had befallen her pet brother; and when the operation was over, refused to answer poor Caddy's questions respecting Charlie's injuries, and scolded her with a warmth and volubility that was quite surprising to them all. "You must not be too hard on Caddy," remarked Mr. Ellis. "She feels bad enough, I'll warrant you. It is a lesson that will not, I trust, be thrown away upon her; it will teach her to command her temper in future." Caddy was in truth quite crushed by the misfortune she had occasioned, and fell into such a state of depression and apathy as to be scarcely heard about the house; indeed, so subdued was she, that Kinch went in and out without wiping his feet, and tracked the mud all over the stair-carpet, and yet she uttered no word of remonstrance. Poor little Charlie suffered much, and was in a high fever. The knocker was tied up, the windows darkened, and all walked about the house with sad and anxious countenances. Day after day the fever increased, until he grew delirious, and raved in the most distressing manner. The unfortunate haricot was still on his mind, and he was persecuted by men with strange-shaped heads and carrot eyes. Sometimes he imagined himself pursued by Caddy, and would cry in the most piteous manner to have her prevented from beating him. Then his mind strayed off to the marble-ground, where he would play imaginary games, and laugh over his success in such a wild and frightful manner as to draw tears from the eyes of all around him. He was greatly changed; the bright colour had fled from his cheek; his head had been shaved, and he was thin and wan, and at times they were obliged to watch him, and restrain him from tossing about, to the great peril of his broken arm. At last his situation became so critical that Dr. Burdett began to entertain but slight hopes of his recovery; and one morning, in the presence of Caddy, hinted as much to Mr. Ellis. "Oh, doctor, doctor," exclaimed the distracted girl, "don't say that! oh, try and save him! How could I live with the thought that I had killed my brother! oh, I can't live a day if he dies! Will God ever forgive me? Oh, what a wretch I have been! Oh, do think of something that will help him! He mustn't die, you must save him!" and crying passionately, she threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief. They did their best to pacify her, but all their efforts were in vain, until Mr. Ellis suggested, that since she could not control her feelings, she must be sent to stay with her aunt, as her lamentations and outcries agitated her suffering brother and made his condition worse. The idea of being excluded from the family circle at such a moment had more effect on Caddy than all previous remonstrances. She implored to have the sentence suspended for a time at least, that she might try to exert more self-command; and Mr. Ellis, who really pitied her, well knowing that her heart was not in fault, however reprehensible she was in point of temper, consented; and Caddy's behaviour from that moment proved the sincerity of her promises; and though she could not quite restrain occasional outbursts of senseless lamentation, still, when she felt such fits of despair coming on, she wisely retired to some remote corner of the house, and did not re-appear till she had regained her composure. The crisis was at length over, and Charlie was pronounced out of danger. No one was more elated by this announcement than our friend Kinch, who had, in fact, grown quite ashy in his complexion from confinement and grief, and was now thrown by this intelligence into the highest possible spirits. Charlie, although faint and weak, was able to recognize his friends, and derived great satisfaction from the various devices of Kinch to entertain him. That young gentleman quite distinguished himself by the variety and extent of his resources. He devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie felt obliged to applaud by knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. On the whole, he was so overjoyed as to be led to commit all manner of eccentricities, and conducted himself generally in such a ridiculous manner, that Charlie laughed himself into a state of prostration, and Kinch was, in consequence, banished from the sick-room, to be re-admitted only on giving his promise to abstain from being as funny as he could any more. After the lapse of a short time Charlie was permitted to sit up, and held regular levees of his schoolmates and little friends. He declared it was quite a luxury to have a broken arm, as it was a source of so much amusement. The old ladies brought him jellies and blanc-mange, and he was petted and caressed to such an unparalleled extent, as to cause his delighted mother to aver that she lived in great fear of his being spoiled beyond remedy. At length he was permitted to come downstairs and sit by the window for a few hours each day. Whilst thus amusing himself one morning, a handsome carriage stopped before their house, and from it descended a fat and benevolent-looking old lady, who knocked at the door and rattled the latch as if she had been in the daily habit of visiting there, and felt quite sure of a hearty welcome. She was let in by Esther, and, on sitting down, asked if Mrs. Ellis was at home. Whilst Esther was gone to summon her mother, the lady looked round the room, and espying Charlie, said, "Oh, there you are—I'm glad to see you; I hope you are improving." "Yes, ma'am," politely replied Charlie, wondering all the time who their visitor could be. "You don't seem to remember me—you ought to do so; children seldom forget any one who makes them a pleasant promise." As she spoke, a glimmer of recollection shot across Charlie's mind, and he exclaimed, "You are the lady who came to visit the school." "Yes; and I promised you a book for your aptness, and," continued she, taking from her reticule a splendidly-bound copy of "Robinson Crusoe," "here it is." Mrs. Ellis, as soon as she was informed that a stranger lady was below, left Caddy to superintend alone the whitewashing of Charlie's sick-room, and having hastily donned another gown and a more tasty cap, descended to see who the visitor could be. "You must excuse my not rising," said Mrs. Bird, for that was the lady's name; "it is rather a difficulty for me to get up and down often—so," continued she, with a smile, "you must excuse my seeming rudeness." Mrs. Ellis answered, that any apology was entirely unnecessary, and begged she would keep her seat. "I've come," said Mrs. Bird, "to pay your little man a visit. I was so much pleased with the manner in which he recited his exercises on the day of examination, that I promised him a book, and on going to the school to present it, I heard of his unfortunate accident. He looks very much changed—he has had a very severe time, I presume?" "Yes, a very severe one. We had almost given him over, but it pleased God to restore him," replied Mrs. Ellis, in a thankful tone. "He is very weak yet," she continued, "and it will be a long time before he is entirely recovered." "Who is your physician?" asked Mrs. Bird. "Doctor Burdett," was the reply; "he has been our physician for years, and is a very kind friend of our family." "And of mine, too," rejoined Mrs. Bird; "he visits my house every summer. What does he think of the arm?" she asked. "He thinks in time it will be as strong as ever, and recommends sending Charlie into the country for the summer; but," said Mrs. Ellis, "we are quite at a loss where to send him." "Oh! let me take him," said Mrs. Bird—"I should be delighted to have him. I've got a beautiful place—he can have a horse to ride, and there are wide fields to scamper over! Only let me have him, and I'll guarantee to restore him to health in a short time." "You're very kind," replied Mrs. Ellis—"I'm afraid he would only be a burthen to you—be a great deal of trouble, and be able to do but little work." "Work! Why, dear woman," replied Mrs. Bird, with some astonishment, "I don't want him to work—I've plenty of servants; I only want him to enjoy himself, and gather as much strength as possible. Come, make up your mind to let him go with me, and I'll send him home as stout as I am." At the bare idea of Charlie's being brought to such a state of obesity, Kinch, who, during the interview, had been in the back part of the room, making all manner of faces, was obliged to leave the apartment, to prevent a serious explosion of laughter, and after their visitor had departed he was found rolling about the floor in a tempest of mirth. After considerable conversation relative to the project, Mrs. Bird took her leave, promising to call soon again, and advising Mrs. Ellis to accept her offer. Mrs. Ellis consulted Dr. Burdett, who pronounced it a most fortunate circumstance, and said the boy could not be in better hands; and as Charlie appeared nothing loth, it was decided he should go to Warmouth, to the great grief of Kinch, who thought it a most unheard-of proceeding, and he regarded Mrs. Bird thenceforth as his personal enemy, and a wilful disturber of his peace. CHAPTER IX. Breaking up. The time for the departure of the Garies having been fixed, all in the house were soon engaged in the bustle of preparation. Boxes were packed with books, pictures, and linen; plate and china were wrapped and swaddled, to prevent breakage and bruises; carpets were taken up, and packed away; curtains taken down, and looking-glasses covered. Only a small part of the house was left in a furnished state for the use of the overseer, who was a young bachelor, and did not require much space. In superintending all these arrangements Mrs. Garie displayed great activity; her former cheerfulness of manner had entirely returned, and Mr. Garie often listened with delight to the quick pattering of her feet, as she tripped lightly through the hall, and up and down the long stairs. The birds that sang about the windows were not more cheerful than herself, and when Mr. Garie heard her merry voice singing her lively songs, as in days gone by, he experienced a feeling of satisfaction at the pleasant result of his acquiescence in her wishes. He had consented to it as an act of justice due to her and the children; there was no pleasure to himself growing out of the intended change, beyond that of gratifying Emily, and securing freedom to her and the children. He knew enough of the North to feel convinced that he could not expect to live there openly with Emily, without being exposed to ill-natured comments, and closing upon himself the doors of many friends who had formerly received him with open arms. The virtuous dignity of the Northerner would be shocked, not so much at his having children by a woman of colour, but by his living with her in the midst of them, and acknowledging her as his wife. In the community where he now resided, such things were more common; the only point in which he differed from many other Southern gentlemen in this matter was in his constancy to Emily and the children, and the more than ordinary kindness and affection with which he treated them. Mr. Garie had for many years led a very retired life, receiving an occasional gentleman visitor; but this retirement had been entirely voluntary, therefore by no means disagreeable; but in the new home he had accepted, he felt that he might be shunned, and the reflection was anything but agreeable. Moreover, he was about to leave a place endeared to him by a thousand associations. Here he had passed the whole of his life, except about four years spent in travelling through Europe and America. Mr. Garie was seated in a room where there were many things to recall days long since departed. The desk at which he was writing was once his father's, and he well remembered the methodical manner in which every drawer was carefully kept; over it hung a full-length portrait of his mother, and it seemed, as he gazed at it, that it was only yesterday that she had taken his little hand in her own, and walked with him down the long avenue of magnolias that were waving their flower-spangled branches in the morning breeze, and loading it with fragrance. Near him was the table on which her work-basket used to stand. He remembered how important he felt when permitted to hold the skeins of silk for her to wind, and how he would watch her stitch, stitch, hour after hour, at the screen that now stood beside the fire-place; the colours were faded, but the recollection of the pleasant smiles she would cast upon him from time to time, as she looked up from her work, was as fresh in his memory as if it were but yesterday. Mr. Garie was assorting and arranging the papers that the desk contained, when he heard the rattle of wheels along the avenue, and looking out of the window, he saw a carriage approaching. The coachman was guiding his horses with one hand, and with the other he was endeavouring to keep a large, old-fashioned trunk from falling from the top. This was by no means an easy matter, as the horses appeared quite restive, and fully required his undivided attention. The rather unsteady motion of the carriage caused its inmate to put his head out of the window, and Mr. Garie recognized his uncle John, who lived in the north-western part of the state, on the borders of Alabama. He immediately left his desk, and hastened to the door to receive him. "This is an unexpected visit, but none the less pleasant on that account," said Mr. Garie, his face lighting up with surprise and pleasure as uncle John alighted. "I had not the least expectation of being honoured by a visit from you. What has brought you into this part of the country? Business, of course? I can't conceive it possible that you should have ventured so far from home, at this early season, for the mere purpose of paying me a visit." "You may take all the honour to yourself this time," smilingly replied uncle John, "for I have come over for your especial benefit; and if I accomplish the object of my journey, I shall consider the time anything but thrown away." "Let me take your coat; and, Eph, see you to that trunk," said Mr. Garie. "You see everything is topsy-turvy with us, uncle John. We look like moving, don't we?" "Like that or an annual house-cleaning," he replied, as he picked his way through rolls of carpet and matting, and between half-packed boxes; in doing which, he had several narrow escapes from the nails that protruded from them on all sides. "It's getting very warm; let me have something to drink," said he, wiping his face as he took his seat; "a julep—plenty of brandy and ice, and but little mint." Eph, on receiving this order, departed in great haste in search of Mrs. Garie, as he knew that, whilst concocting one julep, she might be prevailed upon to mix another, and Eph had himself a warm liking for that peculiar Southern mixture, which liking he never lost any opportunity to gratify. Emily hurried downstairs, on hearing of the arrival of uncle John, for he was regarded by her as a friend. She had always received from him marked kindness and respect, and upon the arrival of Mr. Garie's visitors, there was none she received with as much pleasure. Quickly mixing the drink, she carried it into the room where he and her husband were sitting. She was warmly greeted by the kind-hearted old man, who, in reply to her question if he had come to make them a farewell visit, said he hoped not: he trusted to make them many more in the same place. "I'm afraid you won't have an opportunity," she replied. "In less than a week we expect to be on our way to New York.—I must go," continued she, "and have a room prepared for you, and hunt up the children. You'll scarcely know them, they have grown so much since you were here. I'll soon send them," and she hurried off to make uncle John's room comfortable. "I was never more surprised in my life," said the old gentleman, depositing the glass upon the table, after draining it of its contents—"never more surprised than when I received your letter, in which you stated your intention of going to the North to live. A more ridiculous whim it is impossible to conceive—the idea is perfectly absurd! To leave a fine old place like this, where you have everything around you so nice and comfortable, to go north, and settle amongst a parcel of strange Yankees! My dear boy, you must give it up. I'm no longer your guardian—the law don't provide one for people of thirty years and upwards—so it is out of my power to say you shall not do it; but I am here to use all my powers of persuasion to induce you to relinquish the project." "Uncle John, you don't seem to understand the matter. It is not a whim, by any means—it is a determination arising from a strict sense of duty; I feel that it is an act of justice to Emily and the children. I don't pretend to be better than most men; but my conscience will not permit me to be the owner of my own flesh and blood. I'm going north, because I wish to emancipate and educate my children—you know I can't do it here. At first I was as disinclined to favour the project as you are; but I am now convinced it is my duty, and, I must add, that my inclination runs in the same direction." "Look here, Clarence, my boy," here interrupted uncle John; "you can't expect to live there as you do here; the prejudice against persons of colour is much stronger in some of the Northern cities than it is amongst us Southerners. You can't live with Emily there as you do here; you will be in everybody's mouth. You won't be able to sustain your old connections with your Northern friends—you'll find that they will cut you dead." "I've looked at it well, uncle John. I've counted the cost, and have made up my mind to meet with many disagreeable things. If my old friends choose to turn their backs on me because my wife happens to belong to an oppressed race, that is not my fault. I don't feel that I have committed any sin by making the choice I have; and so their conduct or opinions won't influence my happiness much." "Listen to me, Clary, for a moment," rejoined the old gentleman. "As long as you live here in Georgia you can sustain your present connection with impunity, and if you should ever want to break it off, you could do so by sending her and the children away; it would be no more than other men have done, and are doing every day. But go to the North, and it becomes a different thing. Your connection with Emily will inevitably become a matter of notoriety, and then you would find it difficult to shake her off there, as you could here, in case you wanted to marry another woman." "Oh, uncle, uncle, how can you speak so indifferently about my doing such an ungenerous act; to characterize it in the very mildest terms. I feel that Emily is as much my wife in the eyes of God, as if a thousand clergymen had united us. It is not my fault that we are not legally married; it is the fault of the laws. My father did not feel that my mother was any more his wife, than I do that Emily is mine." "Hush, hush; that is all nonsense, boy; and, besides, it is paying a very poor compliment to your mother to rank her with your mulatto mistress. I like Emily very much; she has been kind, affectionate, and faithful to you. Yet I really can't see the propriety of your making a shipwreck of your whole life on her account. Now," continued uncle John, with great earnestness, "I hoped for better things from you. You have talents and wealth; you belong to one of the oldest and best families in the State. When I am gone, you will be the last of our name; I had hoped that you would have done something to keep it from sinking into obscurity. There is no honour in the State to which you might not have aspired with a fair chance of success; but if you carry out your absurd determination, you will ruin yourself effectually." "Well; I shall be ruined then, for I am determined to go. I feel it my duty to carry out my design," said Mr. Garie. "Well, well, Clary," rejoined his uncle, "I've done my duty to my brother's son. I own, that although I cannot agree with you in your project, I can and do honour the unselfish motive that prompts it. You will always find me your friend under all circumstances, and now," concluded he, "it's off my mind." The children were brought in and duly admired; a box of miniature carpenter's tools was produced; also, a wonderful man with a string through his waist—which string, when pulled, caused him to throw his arms and legs about in a most astonishing manner. The little folks were highly delighted with these presents, which, uncle John had purchased at Augusta; they scampered off, and soon had every small specimen of sable humanity on the place at their heels, in ecstatic admiration of the wonderful articles of which they had so recently acquired possession. As uncle John had absolutely refused all other refreshment than the julep before mentioned, dinner was ordered at a much earlier hour than usual. He ate very heartily, as was his custom; and, moreover, persisted in stuffing the children (as old gentlemen will do sometimes) until their mother was compelled to interfere to prevent their having a bilious attack in consequence. Whilst the gentlemen were sitting over their desert, Mr. Garie asked his uncle, if he had not a sister, with whom there was some mystery connected. "No mystery," replied uncle John. "Your aunt made a very low marriage, and father cut her off from the family entirely. It happened when I was very young; she was the eldest of us all; there were four of us, as you know—your father, Bernard, I, and this sister of whom we are speaking. She has been dead for some years; she married a carpenter whom father employed on the place—a poor white man from New York. I have heard it said, that he was handsome, but drunken and vicious. They left one child—a boy; I believe he is alive in the North somewhere, or was, a few years since." "And did she never make any overtures for a reconciliation?" "She did, some years before father's death, but he was inexorable; he returned her letter, and died without seeing or forgiving her," replied uncle John. "Poor thing; I suppose they were very poor?" "I suppose they were. I have no sympathy for her. She deserved her fate, for marrying a greasy mechanic, in opposition to her father's commands, when she might have connected herself with any of the highest families in the State." The gentlemen remained a long while that night, sipping their wine, smoking cigars, and discussing the probable result of the contemplated change. Uncle John seemed to have the worst forebodings as to the ultimate consequences, and gave it as his decided opinion, that they would all return to the old place in less than a year. "You'll soon get tired of it," said he; "everything is so different there. Here you can get on well in your present relations; but mark me, you'll find nothing but disappointment and trouble where you are going." The next morning he departed for his home; he kissed the children affectionately, and shook hands warmly with their mother. After getting into the carriage, he held out his hand again to his nephew, saying:— "I am afraid you are going to be disappointed; but I hope you may not. Good bye, good bye—God bless you!" and his blue eyes looked very watery, as he was driven from the door. That day, a letter arrived from Savannah, informing them that the ship in which they had engaged passage would be ready to sail in a few days; and they, therefore, determined that the first instalment of boxes and trunks should be sent to the city forthwith; and to Eph was assigned the melancholy duty of superintending their removal. "Let me go with him, pa," begged little Clarence, who heard his father giving Eph his instructions. "Oh, no," replied Mr. Garie; "the cart will be full of goods, there will be no room for you." "But, pa, I can ride my pony; and, besides, you might let me go, for I shan't have many more chances to ride him—do let me go." "Oh, yes, massa, let him go. Why dat ar chile can take care of his pony all by hissef. You should just seed dem two de oder day. You see de pony felt kinder big dat day, an' tuck a heap o' airs on hissef, an' tried to trow him—twarn't no go—Massa Clary conquered him 'pletely. Mighty smart boy, dat," continued Eph, looking at little Clarence, admiringly, "mighty smart. I let him shoot off my pistol toder day, and he pat de ball smack through de bull's eye—dat boy is gwine to be a perfect Ramrod." "Oh, pa," laughingly interrupted little Clarence; "I've been telling him of what you read to me about Nimrod being a great hunter." "That's quite a mistake, Eph," said Mr. Garie, joining in the laugh. "Well, I knowed it was suffin," said Eph, scratching his head; "suffin with a rod to it; I was all right on that pint—but you'r gwine to let him go, ain't yer, massa?" "I suppose, I must," replied Mr. Garie; "but mind now that no accident occurs to young Ramrod." "I'll take care o' dat," said Eph, who hastened off to prepare the horses, followed by the delighted Clarence. That evening, after his return from Savannah, Clarence kept his little sister's eyes expanded to an unprecedented extent by his narration of the wonderful occurrences attendant on his trip to town, and also of what he had seen in the vessel. He produced an immense orange, also a vast store of almonds and raisins, which had been given him by the good-natured steward. "But Em," said he, "we are going to sleep in such funny little places; even pa and mamma have got to sleep on little shelves stuck up against the wall; and they've got a thing that swings from the ceiling that they keep the tumblers and wine-glasses in—every glass has got a little hole for itself. Oh, it's so nice!" "And have they got any nice shady trees on the ship?" asked the wondering little Em. "Oh, no—what nonsense!" answered Clarence, swelling with the importance conferred by his superior knowledge. "Why, no, Em; who ever heard of such a thing as trees on a ship? they couldn't have trees on a ship if they wanted—there's no earth for them to grow in. But I'll tell you what they've got—they've got masts a great deal higher than any tree, and I'm going to climb clear up to the top when we go to live on the ship." "I wouldn't," said Em; "you might fall down like Ben did from the tree, and then you'd have to have your head sewed up as he had." The probability that an occurrence of this nature might be the result of his attempt to climb the mast seemed to have considerable weight with Master Clarence, so he relieved his sister's mind at once by relinquishing the project. The morning for departure at length arrived. Eph brought the carriage to the door at an early hour, and sat upon the box the picture of despair. He did not descend from his eminence to assist in any of the little arrangements for the journey, being very fearful that the seat he occupied might be resumed by its rightful owner, he having had a lengthy contest with the sable official who acted as coachman, and who had striven manfully, on this occasion, to take possession of his usual elevated station on the family equipage. This, Eph would by no means permit, as he declared, "He was gwine to let nobody drive Massa dat day but hissef." It was a mournful parting. The slaves crowded around the carriage kissing and embracing the children, and forcing upon them little tokens of remembrance. Blind Jacob, the patriarch of the place, came and passed his hands over the face of little Em for the last time, as he had done almost every week since her birth, that, to use his own language, "he might see how de piccaninny growed." His bleared and sightless eyes were turned to heaven to ask a blessing on the little ones and their parents. "Why, daddy Jake, you should not take it so hard," said Mr. Garie, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "You'll see us all again some day." "No, no, massa, I'se feared I won't; I'se gettin' mighty old, massa, and I'se gwine home soon. I hopes I'll meet you all up yonder," said he, pointing heavenward. "I don't 'spect to see any of you here agin." Many of the slaves were in tears, and all deeply lamented the departure of their master and his family, for Mr. Garie had always been the kindest of owners, and Mrs. Garie was, if possible, more beloved than himself. She was first at every sick-bed, and had been comforter-general to all the afflicted and distressed in the place. At last the carriage rolled away, and in a few hours they reached Savannah, and immediately went on board the vessel. CHAPTER X. Another Parting. Mrs. Ellis had been for some time engaged in arranging and replenishing Charlie's wardrobe, preparatory to his journey to Warmouth with Mrs. Bird. An entire new suit of grey cloth had been ordered of the tailor, to whom Mrs. Ellis gave strict injunctions not to make them too small. Notwithstanding the unfavourable results of several experiments, Mrs. Ellis adhered with wonderful tenacity to the idea that a boy's clothes could never be made too large, and, therefore, when Charlie had a new suit, it always appeared as if it had been made for some portly gentleman, and sent home to Charlie by mistake. This last suit formed no exception to the others, and Charlie surveyed with dismay its ample dimensions as it hung from the back of the chair. "Oh, gemini!" said he, "but that jacket is a rouser! I tell you what, mother, you'll have to get out a search-warrant to find me in that jacket; now, mind, I tell you!" "Nonsense!" replied Mrs. Ellis, "it don't look a bit too large; put it on." Charlie took up the coat, and in a twinkling had it on over his other. His hands were almost completely lost in the excessively long sleeves, which hung down so far that the tips of his fingers were barely visible. "Oh, mother!" he exclaimed, "just look at these sleeves—if such a thing were to happen that any one were to offer me a half dollar, they would change their mind before I could get my hand out to take it; and it will almost go twice round me, it is so large in the waist." "Oh, you can turn the sleeves up; and as for the waist—you'll soon grow to it; it will be tight enough for you before long, I'll warrant," said Mrs. Ellis. "But, mother," rejoined Charlie, "that is just what you said about the other blue suit, and it was entirely worn out before you had let down the tucks in the trowsers." "Never mind the blue suit," persisted Mrs. Ellis, entirely unbiassed by this statement of facts. "You'll grow faster this time—you're going into the country, you must remember—boys always grow fast in the country; go into the other room and try on the trowsers." Charlie retired into another room with the trowsers in question. Here he was joined by Kinch, who went into fits of laughter over Charlie's pea-jacket, as he offensively called the new coat. "Why, Charlie," said he, "it fits you like a shirt on a bean-pole, or rather it's like a sentry's box—it don't touch you any where. But get into these pants," said he, almost choking with the laughter that Charlie's vexed look caused him to suppress—"get into the pants;" at the same time tying a string round Charlie's neck. "What are you doing that for?" exclaimed Charlie, in an irritated tone; "I shouldn't have thought you would make fun of me!" "Oh," said Kinch, assuming a solemn look, "don't they always tie a rope round a man's body when they are going to lower him into a pit? and how on earth do you ever expect we shall find you in the legs of them trowsers, unless something is fastened to you?" Here Charlie was obliged to join in the laugh that Kinch could no longer restrain. "Stop that playing, boys," cried Mrs. Ellis, as their noisy mirth reached her in the adjoining room; "you forget I am waiting for you." Charlie hastily drew on the trousers, and found that their dimensions fully justified the precaution Kinch was desirous of taking to secure him from sinking into oblivion. "Oh, I can't wear these things," said Charlie, tears of vexation starting from his eyes. "Why, they are so large I can't even keep them up; and just look at the legs, will you—they'll have to be turned up a quarter of a yard at least." "Here," said Kinch, seizing a large pillow, "I'll stuff this in. Oh, golly, how you look! if you ain't a sight to see!" and he shouted with laughter as he surveyed Charlie, to whom the pillow had imparted the appearance of a London alderman. "If you don't look like Squire Baker now, I'll give it up. You are as big as old Daddy Downhill. You are a regular Daniel Lambert!" The idea of looking like Squire Baker and Daddy Downhill, who were the "fat men" of their acquaintance, amused Charlie as much as it did his companion, and making the house ring with their mirth, they entered the room where Mr. Ellis and the girls had joined Mrs. Ellis. "What on earth is the matter with the child?" exclaimed Mr. Ellis, as he gazed upon the grotesque figure Charlie presented. "What has the boy been doing to himself?" Hereupon Kinch explained how matters stood, to the infinite amusement of all parties. "Oh, Ellen," said Mr. Ellis, "you must have them altered; they're a mile too big for him. I really believe they would fit me." "They do look rather large," said Mrs. Ellis, reluctantly; "but it seems such a waste to take them in, as he grows so fast." "He would not grow enough in two years to fill that suit," rejoined Mr. Ellis; "and he will have worn them out in less than six months;" and so, to the infinite satisfaction of Charlie, it was concluded that they should be sent back to the tailor's for the evidently necessary alterations. The day for Charlie's departure at last arrived. Kinch, who had been up since two o'clock in the morning, was found by Caddy at the early hour of five waiting upon the door-step to accompany his friend to the wharf. Beside him lay a bag, in which there appeared to be some living object. "What have you got in here?" asked Caddy, as she gave the bag a punch with the broom she was using. "It's a present for Charlie," replied Kinch, opening the bag, and displaying, to the astonished gaze of Caddy, a very young pig. "Why," said she, laughing, "you don't expect he can take that with him, do you?" "Why not?" asked Kinch, taking up the bag and carrying it into the house. "It's just the thing to take into the country; Charlie can fatten him and sell him for a lot of money." It was as much as Mrs. Ellis could do to convince Charlie and Kinch of the impracticability of their scheme of carrying off to Warmouth the pig in question. She suggested, as it was the exclusive property of Kinch, and he was so exceedingly anxious to make Charlie a parting gift, that she should purchase it, which she did, on the spot; and Kinch invested all the money in a large cross-bow, wherewith Charlie was to shoot game sufficient to supply both Kinch and his own parents. Had Charlie been on his way to the scaffold, he could not have been followed by a more solemn face than that presented by Kinch as he trudged on with him in the rear the porter who carried the trunk. "I wish you were not going," said he, as he put his arm affectionately over Charlie's shoulder, "I shall be so lonesome when you are gone; and what is more, I know I shall get licked every day in school, for who will help me with my sums?" "Oh, any of the boys will, they all like you, Kinch; and if you only study a little harder, you can do them yourself," was Charlie's encouraging reply. On arriving at the boat, they found. Mrs. Bird waiting for them; so Charlie hastily kissed his mother and sisters, and made endless promises not to be mischievous, and, above all, to be as tidy as possible. Then tearing himself away from them, and turning to Kinch, he exclaimed, "I'll be back to see you all again soon, so don't cry old fellow;" and at the same time thrusting his hand into his pocket, he drew out a number of marbles, which he gave him, his own lips quivering all the while. At last his attempts to suppress his tears and look like a man grew entirely futile, and he cried heartily as Mrs. Bird took his hand and drew him on board the steamer. As it slowly moved from the pier and glided up the river, Charlie stood looking with tearful eyes at his mother and sisters, who, with Kinch, waved their handkerchiefs as long as they could distinguish him, and then he saw them move away with the crowd. Mrs. Bird, who had been conversing with a lady who accompanied her a short distance on her journey, came and took her little protege by the hand, and led him to a seat near her in the after part of the boat, informing him, as she did so, that they would shortly exchange the steamer for the cars, and she thought he had better remain near her. After some time they approached the little town where the passengers took the train for New York. Mrs. Bird, who had taken leave of her friend, held Charlie fast by the hand, and they entered the cars together. He looked a little pale and weak from the excitement of parting and the novelty of his situation. Mrs. Bird, observing his pallid look, placed him on a seat, and propped him up with shawls and cushions, making him as comfortable as possible. The train had not long started, when the conductor came through to inspect the tickets, and quite started with surprise at seeing Charlie stretched at full length upon the velvet cushion. "What are you doing here?" exclaimed he, at the same time shaking him roughly, to arouse him from the slight slumber into which he had fallen. "Come, get up: you must go out of this." "What do you mean by such conduct?" asked Mrs. Bird, very much surprised. "Don't wake him; I've got his ticket; the child is sick." "I don't care whether he's sick or well—he can't ride in here. We don't allow niggers to ride in this car, no how you can fix it—so come, youngster," said he, gruffly, to the now aroused boy, "you must travel out of this." "He shall do no such thing," replied Mrs. Bird, in a decided tone; "I've paid fall price for his ticket, and he shall ride here; you have no legal right to eject him." "I've got no time to jaw about rights, legal or illegal—all I care to know is, that I've my orders not to let niggers ride in these cars, and I expect to obey, so you see there is no use to make any fuss about it." "Charlie," said Mrs. Bird, "sit here;" and she moved aside, so as to seat him between herself and the window. "Now," said she, "move him if you think best." "I'll tell you what it is, old woman," doggedly remarked the conductor: "you can't play that game with me. I've made up my mind that no more niggers shall ride in this car, and I'll have him out of here, cost what it may." The passengers now began to cluster around the contending parties, and to take sides in the controversy. In the end, the conductor stopped the train, and called in one or two of the Irish brake-men to assist him, if necessary, in enforcing his orders. "You had better let the boy go into the negro car, madam," said one of the gentlemen, respectfully; "it is perfectly useless to contend with these ruffians. I saw a coloured man ejected from here last week, and severely injured; and, in the present state of public feeling, if anything happened to you or the child, you would be entirely without redress. The directors of this railroad control the State; and there is no such thing as justice to be obtained in any of the State courts in a matter in which they are concerned. If you will accept of my arm, I will accompany you to the other car—if you will not permit the child to go there alone, you had better go quietly with him." "Oh, what is the use of so much talk about it? Why don't you hustle the old thing out," remarked a bystander, the respectability of whose appearance contrasted broadly with his manners; "she is some crack-brained abolitionist. Making so much fuss about a little nigger! Let her go into the nigger car—she'll be more at home there." Mrs. Bird, seeing the uselessness of contention, accepted the proffered escort of the gentleman before mentioned, and was followed out of the cars by the conductor and his blackguard assistants, all of them highly elated by the victory they had won over a defenceless old woman and a feeble little boy. Mrs. Bird shrunk back, as they opened the door of the car that had been set apart for coloured persons, and such objectionable whites as were not admitted to the first-class cars. "Oh, what a wretched place!" she exclaimed, as she surveyed the rough pine timbers and dirty floor; "I would not force a dog to ride in such a filthy place." "Oh, don't stay here, ma'am; never mind me—I shall get on by myself well enough, I dare say," said Charlie; "it is too nasty a place for you to stay in." "No, my child," she replied; "I'll remain with you. I could not think of permitting you to be alone in your present state of health. I declare," she continued, "it's enough to make any one an abolitionist, or anything else of the kind, to see how inoffensive coloured people are treated!" That evening they went on board the steamer that was to convey them to Warmouth, where they arrived very early the following morning. Charlie was charmed with the appearance of the pretty little town, as they rode through it in Mrs. Bird's carriage, which awaited them at the landing. At the door of her residence they were met by two cherry-faced maids, who seemed highly delighted at the arrival of their mistress. "Now, Charlie," said Mrs. Bird, as she sat down in her large arm-chair, and looked round her snug little parlour with an air of great satisfaction—"now we are at home, and you must try and make yourself as happy as possible. Betsey," said she, turning to one of the women, "here is a nice little fellow, whom I have brought with me to remain during the summer, of whom I want you to take the best care; for," continued she, looking at him compassionately, "the poor child has had the misfortune to break his arm recently, and he has not been strong since. The physician thought the country would be the best place for him, and so I've brought him here to stay with us. Tell Reuben to carry his trunk into the little maple chamber, and by-and-by, after I have rested, I will take a walk over the place with him." "Here are two letters for you," said Betsey, taking them from the mantelpiece, and handing them to her mistress. Mrs. Bird opened one, of which she read a part, and then laid it down, as being apparently of no importance. The other, however, seemed to have a great effect upon her, as she exclaimed, hurriedly, "Tell Reuben not to unharness the horses—I must go to Francisville immediately—dear Mrs. Hinton is very ill, and not expected to recover. You must take good care of Charlie until I return. If I do not come back to-night, you will know that she is worse, and that I am compelled to remain there;" and, on the carriage being brought to the door, she departed in haste to visit her sick friend. CHAPTER XI The New Home. When Mrs. Garie embarked, she entertained the idea so prevalent among fresh-water sailors, that she was to be an exception to the rule of Father Neptune, in accordance with which all who intrude for the first time upon his domain are compelled to pay tribute to his greatness, and humbly bow in acknowledgment of his power. Mrs. Garie had determined not to be sea-sick upon any account whatever, being fully persuaded she could brave the ocean with impunity, and was, accordingly, very brisk and blithe-looking, as she walked up and down upon the deck of the vessel. In the course of a few hours they sailed out of the harbour, and were soon in the open sea. She began to find out how mistaken she had been, as unmistakable symptoms convinced her of the vanity of all human calculations. "Why, you are not going to be ill, Em, after all your valiant declarations!" exclaimed Mr. Garie, supporting her unsteady steps, as they paced to and fro. "Oh, no, no!" said she, in a firm tone; "I don't intend to give up to any such nonsense. I believe that people can keep up if they try. I do feel a little fatigued and nervous; it's caused, no doubt, by the long drive of this morning—although I think it singular that a drive should affect me in this manner." Thus speaking, she sat down by the bulwarks of the vessel, and a despairing look gradually crept over her face. At last she suddenly rose, to look at the water, as we may imagine. The effect of her scrutiny, however, was, that she asked feebly to be assisted to her state-room, where she remained until their arrival in the harbour of New York. The children suffered only for a short time, and as their father escaped entirely, he was able to watch that they got into no mischief. They were both great favourites with the captain and steward, and, between the two, were so stuffed and crammed with sweets as to place their health in considerable jeopardy. It was a delightful morning when they sailed into the harbour of New York. The waters were dancing and rippling in the morning sun, and the gaily-painted ferry-boats were skimming swiftly across its surface in their trips to and from the city, which was just awaking to its daily life of bustling toil. "What an immense city it is!" said Mrs. Garie—"how full of life and bustle! Why there are more ships at one pier here than there are in the whole port of Savanah!" "Yes, dear," rejoined her husband; "and what is more, there always will be. Our folks in Georgia are not waked up yet; and when they do arouse themselves from their slumber, it will be too late. But we don't see half the shipping from here—this is only one side of the city—there is much more on the other. Look over there," continued he, pointing to Jersey city,—"that is where we take the cars for Philadelphia; and if we get up to dock in three or four hours, we shall be in time for the mid-day train." In less time than they anticipated they were alongside the wharf; the trunks were brought up, and all things for present use were safely packed together and despatched, under the steward's care, to the office of the railroad. Mr. and Mrs. Garie, after bidding good-bye to the captain, followed with the children, who were thrown into a great state of excitement by the noise and bustle of the crowded thoroughfare. "How this whirl and confusion distracts me," said Mrs. Garie, looking out of the carriage-window. "I hope Philadelphia is not as noisy a place as this." "Oh, no," replied Mr. Garie; "it is one of the most quiet and clean cities in the world, whilst this is the noisiest and dirtiest. I always hurry out of New York; it is to me such a disagreeable place, with its extortionate hackmen and filthy streets." On arriving at the little steamer in which they crossed the ferry, they found it about to start, and therefore had to hurry on board with all possible speed. Under the circumstances, the hackman felt that it would be flying in the face of Providence if he did not extort a large fare, and he therefore charged an extravagant price. Mr. Garie paid him, as he had no time to parley, and barely succeeded in slipping a douceur into the steward's hand, when the boat pushed off from the pier. In a few moments they had crossed the river, and were soon comfortably seated in the cars whirling over the track to Philadelphia. As the conductor came through to examine the tickets, he paused for a moment before Mrs. Garie and the children. As he passed on, his assistant inquired, "Isn't that a nigger?" "Yes, a half-white one," was the reply. "Why don't you order her out, then?—she has no business to ride in here," continued the first speaker. "I guess we had better let her alone," suggested the conductor, "particularly as no one has complained; and there might be a row if she turned out to be the nurse to those children. The whole party are Southerners, that's clear; and these Southerners are mighty touchy about their niggers sometimes, and kick and cut like the devil about them. I guess we had better let her alone, unless some one complains about her being there." As they drove through the streets of Philadelphia on the way to their new home, Mrs. Garie gave rent to many expressions of delight at the appearance of the city. "Oh, what a sweet place! everything is so bright and fresh-looking; why the pavement and doorsteps look as if they were cleaned twice a day. Just look at that house, how spotless it is; I hope ours resembles that. Ours is a new house, is it not?" she inquired. "Not entirely; it has been occupied before, but only for a short time, I believe," was her husband's reply. It had grown quite dark by the time they arrived at Winter-street, where Caddy had been anxiously holding watch and ward in company with the servants who had been procured for them. A bright light was burning in the entry as the coachman stopped at the door. "This is No. 27," said he, opening the door of the carriage, "shall I ring?" "Yes, do," replied Mr. Garie; but whilst he was endeavouring to open the gate of the little garden in front, Caddy, who had heard the carriage stop, bounded out to welcome them. "This is Mr. Garie, I suppose," said she, as he alighted. "Yes, I am; and you, I suppose, are the daughter of Mr. Ellis?" "Yes, sir; I'm sorry mother is not here to welcome you; she was here until very late last night expecting your arrival, and was here again this morning," said Caddy, taking at the same time one of the little carpet bags. "Give me the little girl, I can take care of her too," she continued; and with little Em on one arm and the carpet bag on the other, she led the way into the house. "We did not make up any fire," said she, "the weather is very warm to us. I don't know how it may feel to you, though." "It is a little chilly," replied Mrs. Garie, as she sat down upon the sofa, and looked round the room with a smile of pleasure, and added, "All this place wants, to make it the most bewitching of rooms, is a little fire." Caddy hurried the new servants from place to place remorselessly, and set them to prepare the table and get the things ready for tea. She waylaid a party of labourers, who chanced to be coming that way, and hired them to carry all the luggage upstairs—had the desired fire made—mixed up some corn-bread, and had tea on the table in a twinkling. They all ate very heartily, and Caddy was greatly praised for her activity. "You are quite a housekeeper," said Mrs. Garie to Caddy. "Do you like it?" "Oh, yes," she replied. "I see to the house at home almost entirely; mother and Esther are so much engaged in sewing, that they are glad enough to leave it in my hands, and I'd much rather do that than sew." "I hope," said Mrs. Garie, "that your mother will permit you to remain with us until we get entirely settled." "I know she will," confidently replied Caddy. "She will be up here in the morning. She will know you have arrived by my not having gone home this evening." The children had now fallen asleep with their heads in close proximity to their plates, and Mrs. Garie declared that she felt very much fatigued and slightly indisposed, and thought the sooner she retired the better it would be for her. She accordingly went up to the room, which she had already seen and greatly admired, and was soon in the land of dreams. As is always the case on such occasions, the children's night-dresses could not be found. Clarence was put to bed in one of his father's shirts, in which he was almost lost, and little Em was temporarily accommodated with a calico short gown of Caddy's, and, in default of a nightcap, had her head tied up in a Madras handkerchief, which gave her, when her back was turned, very much the air of an old Creole who had been by some mysterious means deprived of her due growth. The next morning Mrs. Garie was so much indisposed at to be unable to rise, and took her breakfast in bed. Her husband had finished his meal, and was sitting in the parlour, when he observed a middle-aged coloured lady coming into the garden. "Look, Caddy," cried he, "isn't this your mother?" "Oh, yes, that is she," replied Caddy, and ran and opened the door, exclaiming, "Oh, mother, they're come;" and as she spoke, Mr. Garie came into the entry and shook hands heartily with her. "I'm so much indebted to you," said he, "for arranging everything so nicely for us—there is not a thing we would wish to alter." "I am very glad you are pleased; we did our best to make it comfortable," was her reply. "And you succeeded beyond our expectation; but do come up," continued he, "Emily will be delighted to see you. She is quite unwell this morning; has not even got up yet;" and leading the way upstairs, he ushered Mrs. Ellis into the bedroom. "Why, can this be you?" said she, surveying Emily with surprise and pleasure. "If I had met you anywhere, I should never have known you. How you have altered! You were not so tall as my Caddy when I saw you last; and here you are with two children—and pretty little things they are too!" said she, kissing little Em, who was seated on the bed with her brother, and sharing with him the remains of her mother's chocolate. "And you look much younger that I expected to see you," replied Mrs. Garie. "Draw a chair up to the bed, and let us have a talk about old times. You must excuse my lying down; I don't intend to get up to-day; I feel quite indisposed." Mrs. Ellis took off her bonnet, and prepared for a long chat; whilst Mr. Garie, looking at his watch, declared it was getting late, and started for down town, where he had to transact some business. "You can scarcely think, Ellen, how much I feel indebted to you for all you have done for us; and we are so distressed to hear about Charlie's accident. You must have had a great deal of trouble." "Oh, no, none to speak of—and had it been ever so much, I should have been just as pleased to have done it; I was so glad you were coming. What did put it in your heads to come here to live?" continued Mrs. Ellis. "Oh, cousin George Winston praised the place so highly, and you know how disagreeable Georgia is to live in. My mind was never at rest there respecting these," said she, pointing to the children; "so that I fairly teased Garie into it. Did you recognize George?" "No, I didn't remember much about him. I should never have taken him for a coloured man; had I met him in the street, I should have supposed him to be a wealthy white Southerner. What a gentleman he is in his appearance and manners," said Mrs. Ellis. "Yes, he is all that—my husband thinks there is no one like him. But we won't talk about him now; I want you to tell me all about yourself and family, and then I'll tell you everything respecting my own fortunes." Hereupon ensued long narratives from both parties, which occupied the greater part of the morning. Mr. Garie, on leaving the house, slowly wended his way to the residence of Mr. Walters. As he passed into the lower part of the city, his attention was arrested by the number of coloured children he saw skipping merrily along with their bags of books on their arms. "This," said he to himself, "don't much resemble Georgia."[*] [Footnote *: It is a penal offence in Georgia to teach coloured children to read.] After walking some distance he took out a card, and read, 257, Easton-street; and on inquiry found himself in the very street. He proceeded to inspect the numbers, and was quite perplexed by their confusion and irregularity. A coloured boy happening to pass at the time, he asked him: "Which way do the numbers run, my little man?" The boy looked up waggishly, and replied: "They don't run at all; they are permanently affixed to each door." "But," said Mr. Garie, half-provoked, yet compelled to smile at the boy's pompous wit, "you know what I mean; I cannot find the number I wish; the street is not correctly numbered." "The street is not numbered at all," rejoined the boy, "but the houses are," and he skipped lightly away. Mr. Garie was finally set right about the numbers, and found himself at length before the door of Mr. Walters's house. "Quite a handsome residence," said he, as he surveyed the stately house, with its spotless marble steps and shining silver door-plate. On ringing, his summons was quickly answered by a well-dressed servant, who informed him that Mr. Walters was at home, and ushered him into the parlour. The elegance of the room took Mr. Garie completely by surprise, as its furniture indicated not only great wealth, but cultivated taste and refined habits. The richly-papered walls were adorned by paintings from the hands of well-known foreign and native artists. Rich vases and well-executed bronzes were placed in the most favourable situations in the apartment; the elegantly-carved walnut table was covered with those charming little bijoux which the French only are capable of conceiving, and which are only at the command of such purchasers as are possessed of more money than they otherwise can conveniently spend. Mr. Garie threw himself into a luxuriously-cushioned chair, and was soon so absorbed in contemplating the likeness of a negro officer which hung opposite, that he did not hear the soft tread of Mr. Walters as he entered the room. The latter, stepping slowly forward, caught the eye of Mr. Garie, who started up, astonished at the commanding figure before him. "Mr. Garie, I presume?" said Mr. Walters. "Yes," he replied, and added, as he extended his hand; "I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Walters, I suppose?" Mr. Walters bowed low as he accepted the proffered hand, and courteously requested his visitor to be seated. As Mr. Garie resumed his seat, he could not repress a look of surprise, which Mr. Walters apparently perceived, for a smile slightly curled his lip as he also took a seat opposite his visitor. Mr. Walters was above six feet in height, and exceedingly well-proportioned; of jet-black complexion, and smooth glossy skin. His head was covered with a quantity of woolly hair, which was combed back from a broad but not very high forehead. His eyes were small, black, and piercing, and set deep in his head. His aquiline nose, thin lips, and broad chin, were the very reverse of African in their shape, and gave his face a very singular appearance. In repose, his countenance was severe in its expression; but when engaged in agreeable conversation, the thin sarcastic-looking lips would part, displaying a set of dazzlingly white teeth, and the small black eyes would sparkle with animation. The neatness and care with which he was dressed added to the attractiveness of his appearance. His linen was the perfection of whiteness, and his snowy vest lost nothing by its contact therewith. A long black frock coat, black pants, and highly-polished boots, completed his attire. "I hope," said he, "your house suits you; it is one of my own, and has never been rented except for a short time to a careful tenant, who was waiting for his own house to be finished. I think you will find it comfortable." "Oh, perfectly so, I am quite sure. I must thank you for the prompt manner in which you have arranged everything for us. It seems more like coming to an old home than to a new residence," replied Mr. Garie. "I am delighted to hear you say so," said Mr. Walters. "I shall be most happy to call and pay my respects to Mrs. Garie when agreeable to her. Depend upon it, we will do all in our power to make our quiet city pleasant to you both." Mr. Garie thanked him, and after some further conversation, rose to depart. As he was leaving the room, he stopped before the picture which had so engaged his attention, when Mr. Walters entered. "So you, too, are attracted by that picture," said Mr. Walters, with a smile. "All white men look at it with interest. A black man in the uniform of a general officer is something so unusual that they cannot pass it with a glance." "It is, indeed, rather a novelty," replied Mr. Garie, "particularly to a person from my part of the country. Who is it?" "That is Toussaint l'Ouverture," replied Mr. Walters; "and I have every reason to believe it to be a correct likeness. It was presented to an American merchant by Toussaint himself—a present in return for some kindness shown him. This merchant's son, not having the regard for the picture that his father entertained for it, sold it to me. That," continued Mr. Walters, "looks like a man of intelligence. It is entirely different from any likeness I ever saw of him. The portraits generally represent him as a monkey-faced person, with a handkerchief about his head." "This," said Mr. Garie, "gives me an idea of the man that accords with his actions." Thus speaking, he continued looking at the picture for a short time, and then took his departure, after requesting Mr. Walters to call upon him at an early opportunity. CHAPTER XII. Mr. Garie's Neighbour. We must now introduce our readers into the back parlour of the house belonging to Mr. Garie's next-door neighbour, Mr. Thomas Stevens. We find this gentleman standing at a window that overlooked his garden, enjoying a fragrant Havannah. His appearance was not by any means prepossessing; he was rather above than below the middle height, with round shoulders, and long, thin arms, finished off by disagreeable-looking hands. His head was bald on the top, and the thin greyish-red hair, that grew more thickly about his ears, was coaxed up to that quarter, where an attempt had been made to effect such a union between the cords of the hair from each side as should cover the place in question. The object, however, remained unaccomplished; as the hair was either very obstinate and would not be induced to lie as desired, or from extreme modesty objected to such an elevated position, and, in consequence, stopped half-way, as if undecided whether to lie flat or remain erect, producing the effect that would have been presented had he been decorated with a pair of horns. His baldness might have given an air of benevolence to his face, but for the shaggy eyebrows that over-shadowed his cunning-looking grey eyes. His cheekbones were high, and the cadaverous skin was so tightly drawn across them, as to give it a very parchment-like appearance. Around his thin compressed lips there was a continual nervous twitching, that added greatly to the sinister aspect of his face. On the whole, he was a person from whom you would instinctively shrink; and had he been president or director of a bank in which you had money deposited, his general aspect would not have given you additional confidence in the stable character or just administration of its affairs. Mr. George Stevens was a pettifogging attorney, who derived a tolerable income from a rather disreputable legal practice picked up among the courts that held their sessions in the various halls of the State-house. He was known in the profession as Slippery George, from the easy manner in which he glided out of scrapes that would have been fatal to the reputation of any other lawyer. Did a man break into a house, and escape without being actually caught on the spot with the goods in his possession, Stevens was always able to prove an alibi by a long array of witnesses. In fact, he was considered by the swell gentry of the city as their especial friend and protector, and by the members of the bar generally as anything but an ornament to the profession. He had had rather a fatiguing day's labour, and on the evening of which we write, was indulging in his usual cigar, and amusing himself at the same time by observing the gambols of Clarence and little Em, who were enjoying a romp in their father's garden. "Come here, Jule," said he, "and look at our new neighbour's children—rather pretty, ain't they?" He was joined by a diminutive red-faced woman, with hair and eyes very much like his own, and a face that wore a peevish, pinched expression. "Rather good-looking," she replied, after observing them for a few minutes, and then added, "Have you seen their parents?" "No, not yet," was the reply. "I met Walters in the street this morning, who informed me they are from the South, and very rich; we must try and cultivate them—ask the children in to play with ours, and strike up an intimacy in that way, the rest will follow naturally, you know. By the way, Jule," continued he, "how I hate that nigger Walters, with his grand airs. I wanted some money of him the other day on rather ticklish securities for a client of mine, and the black wretch kept me standing in his hall for at least five minutes, and then refused me, with some not very complimentary remarks upon my assurance in offering him such securities. It made me so mad I could have choked him—it is bad enough to be treated with hauteur by a white man, but contempt from a nigger is almost unendurable." "Why didn't you resent it in some way? I never would have submitted to anything of the kind from him," interrupted Mrs. Stevens. "Oh, I don't dare to just now; I have to be as mild as milk with him. You forget about the mortgage; don't you know he has me in a tight place there, and I don't see how to get out of it either. If I am called Slippery George, I tell you what, Jule, there's not a better man of business in the whole of Philadelphia than that same Walters, nigger as he is; and no one offends him without paying dear for it in some way or other. I'll tell you something he did last week. He went up to Trenton on business, and at the hotel they refused to give him dinner because of his colour, and told him they did not permit niggers to eat at their tables. What does he do but buy the house over the landlord's head. The lease had just expired, and the landlord was anxious to negotiate another; he was also making some arrangements with his creditors, which could not be effected unless he was enabled to renew the lease of the premises he occupied. On learning that the house had been sold, he came down to the city to negotiate with the new owner, and to his astonishment found him to be the very man he had refused a meal to the week before. Blunt happened to be in Walters's office at the time the fellow called. Walters, he says, drew himself up to his full height, and looked like an ebony statue. "Sir," said he, "I came to your house and asked for a meal, for which I was able to pay; you not only refused it to me, but heaped upon me words such as fall only from the lips of blackguards. You refuse to have me in your house—I object to have you in mine: you will, therefore, quit the premises immediately." The fellow sneaked out quite crestfallen, and his creditors have broken him up completely. "I tell you what, Jule, if I was a black," continued he, "living in a country like this, I'd sacrifice conscience and everything else to the acquisition of wealth." As he concluded, he turned from the window and sat down by a small table, upon which a lighted lamp had been placed, and where a few law papers were awaiting a perusal. A little boy and girl were sitting opposite to him. The boy was playing with a small fly-trap, wherein he had already imprisoned a vast number of buzzing sufferers. In appearance he bore a close resemblance to his father; he had the same red hair and sallow complexion, but his grey eyes had a dull leaden hue. "Do let them go, George, do!" said the little girl, in a pleading tone. "You'll kill them, shut up there." "I don't care if I do," replied he, doggedly; "I can catch more—look here;" and as he spoke he permitted a few of the imprisoned insects to creep partly out, and then brought the lid down upon them with a force that completely demolished them. The little girl shuddered at this wanton exhibition of cruelty, and offered him a paper of candy if he would liberate his prisoners, which he did rather reluctantly, but promising himself to replenish the box at the first opportunity. "Ah!" said he, in a tone of exultation, "father took me with him to the jail to-day, and I saw all the people locked up. I mean to be a jailer some of these days. Wouldn't you like to keep a jail, Liz?" continued he, his leaden eyes receiving a slight accession of brightness at the idea. "Oh, no!" replied she; "I would let all the people go, if I kept the jail." A more complete contrast than this little girl presented to her parents and brother, cannot be imagined. She had very dark chestnut hair, and mild blue eyes, and a round, full face, which, in expression, was sweetness itself. She was about six years old, and her brother's junior by an equal number of years. Her mother loved her, but thought her tame and spiritless in her disposition; and her father cherished as much affection for her as he was capable of feeling for any one but himself. Mrs. Stevens, however, doted on their eldest hope, who was as disagreeable as a thoroughly spoiled and naturally evil-disposed boy could be. As the evenings had now become quite warm, Mr. Garie frequently took a chair and enjoyed his evening cigar upon the door-step of his house; and as Mr. Stevens thought his steps equally suited to this purpose, it was very natural he should resort there with the same object. Mr. Stevens found no difficulty in frequently bringing about short neighbourly conversations with Mr. Garie. The little folk, taking their cue from their parents, soon became intimate, and ran in and out of each other's houses in the most familiar manner possible. Lizzy Stevens and little Em joined hearts immediately, and their intimacy had already been cemented by frequent consultations on the various ailments wherewith they supposed their dolls afflicted. Clarence got on only tolerably with George Stevens; he entertained for him that deference that one boy always has for another who is his superior in any boyish pastime; but there was little affection lost between them—they cared very little for each other's society. Mrs. Garie, since her arrival, had been much confined to her room, in consequence of her protracted indisposition. Mrs. Stevens had several times intimated to Mr. Garie her intention of paying his wife a visit; but never having received any very decided encouragement, she had not pressed the matter, though her curiosity was aroused, and she was desirous of seeing what kind of person Mrs. Garie could be. Her son George in his visits had never been permitted farther than the front parlour; and all the information that could be drawn from little Lizzy, who was frequently in Mrs. Garie's bedroom, was that "she was a pretty lady, with great large eyes." One evening, when Mr. Garie was occupying his accustomed seat, he was accosted from the other side by Mrs. Stevens, who, as usual, was very particular in her inquiries after the state of his wife's health; and on learning that she was so much improved as to be down-stairs, suggested that, perhaps, she would be willing to receive her. "No doubt she will," rejoined Mr. Garie; and he immediately entered the house to announce the intended visit. The lamps were not lighted when Mrs. Stevens was introduced, and faces could not, therefore, be clearly distinguished. "My dear," said Mr. Garie, "this is our neighbour, Mrs. Stevens." "Will you excuse me for not rising?" said Mrs. Garie, extending her hand to her visitor. "I have been quite ill, or I should have been most happy to have received you before. My little folks are in your house a great deal—I hope you do not find them troublesome." "Oh, by no means! I quite dote on your little Emily, she is such a sweet child—so very affectionate. It is a great comfort to have such a child near for my own to associate with—they have got quite intimate, as I hope we soon shall be." Mrs. Garie thanked her for the kindness implied in the wish, and said she trusted they should be so. "And how do you like your house?" asked Mrs. Stevens; "it is on the same plan as ours, and we find ours very convenient. They both formerly belonged to Walters; my husband purchased of him. Do you intend to buy?" "It is very probable we shall, if we continue to like Philadelphia," answered Mr. Garie. "I'm delighted to hear that," rejoined she—"very glad, indeed. It quite relieves my mind about one thing: ever since Mr. Stevens purchased our house we have been tormented with the suspicion that Walters would put a family of niggers in this; and if there is one thing in this world I detest more than another, it is coloured people, I think." Mr. Garie here interrupted her by making some remark quite foreign to the subject, with the intention, no doubt, of drawing her off this topic. The attempt was, however, an utter failure, for she continued—"I think all those that are not slaves ought to be sent out of the country back to Africa, where they belong: they are, without exception, the most ignorant, idle, miserable set I ever saw." "I think," said Mr. Garie, "I can show you at least one exception, and that too without much trouble. Sarah," he cried, "bring me a light." "Oh," said Mrs. Stevens, "I suppose you refer to Walters—it is true he is an exception; but he is the only coloured person I ever saw that could make the least pretension to anything like refinement or respectability. "Let me show you another," said Mr. Garie, as he took the lamp from the servant and placed it upon the table near his wife. As the light fell on her face, their visitor saw that she belonged to the very class that she had been abusing in such unmeasured terms and so petrified was she with confusion at the faux pas she had committed, that she was entirely unable to improvise the slightest apology. Mrs. Garie, who had been reclining on the lounge, partially raised herself and gave Mrs. Stevens a withering look. "I presume, madam," said she, in a hurried and agitated tone, "that you are very ignorant of the people upon whom you have just been heaping such unmerited abuse, and therefore I shall not think so hardly of you as I should, did I deem your language dictated by pure hatred; but, be its origin what it may, it is quite evident that our farther acquaintance could be productive of no pleasure to either of us—you will, therefore, permit me," continued she, rising with great dignity, "to wish you good evening;" and thus speaking, she left the room. Mrs. Stevens was completely demolished by this unexpected denouement of her long-meditated visit, and could only feebly remark to Mr. Garie that it was getting late, and she would go; and rising, she suffered herself to be politely bowed out of the house. In her intense anxiety to relate to her husband the scene which had just occurred, she could not take time to go round and through the gate, but leaped lightly over the low fence that divided the gardens, and rushed precipitately into the presence of her husband. "Good heavens! George, what do you think?" she exclaimed; "I've had such a surprise!" "I should think that you had, judging from appearances," replied he. "Why, your eyes are almost starting out of your head! What on earth has happened?" he asked, as he took the shade off the lamp to get a better view of his amiable partner. "You would not guess in a year," she rejoined; "I never would have dreamed it—I never was so struck in my life!" "Struck with what? Do talk sensibly, Jule, and say what all this is about," interrupted her husband, in an impatient manner. "Come, out with it—what has happened?" "Why, would you have thought it," said she; "Mrs. Garie is a nigger woman—a real nigger—she would be known as such anywhere?" It was now Mr. Stevens's turn to be surprised. "Why, Jule," he exclaimed, "you astonish me! Come, now, you're joking—you don't mean a real black nigger?" "Oh, no, not jet black—but she's dark enough. She is as dark as that Sarah we employed as cook some time ago." "You don't say so! Wonders will never cease—and he such a gentleman, too!" resumed her husband. "Yes; and it's completely sickening," continued Mrs. Stevens, "to see them together; he calls her my dear, and is as tender and affectionate to her as if she was a Circassian—and she nothing but a nigger—faugh! it's disgusting." Little Clarence had been standing near, unnoticed by either of them during this conversation, and they were therefore greatly surprised when he exclaimed, with a burst of tears, "My mother is not a nigger any more than you are! How dare you call her such a bad name? I'll tell my father!" Mr. Stevens gave a low whistle, and looking at his wife, pointed to the door. Mrs. Stevens laid her hand on the shoulder of Clarence, and led him to the door, saying, as she did so, "Don't come in here any more—I don't wish you to come into my house;" and then closing it, returned to her husband. "You know, George," said she, "that I went in to pay her a short visit. I hadn't the remotest idea that she was a coloured woman, and I commenced giving my opinion respecting niggers very freely, when suddenly her husband called for a light, and I then saw to whom I had been talking. You may imagine my astonishment—I was completely dumb—and it would have done you good to have seen the air with which she left the room, after as good as telling me to leave the house." "Well," said Mr. Stevens, "this is what may be safely termed an unexpected event. But, Jule," he continued, "you had better pack these young folks off to bed, and then you can tell me the rest of it." Clarence stood for some time on the steps of the house from which he had been so unkindly ejected, with his little heart swelling with indignation. He had often heard the term nigger used in its reproachful sense, but never before had it been applied to him or his, at least in his presence. It was the first blow the child received from the prejudice whose relentless hand was destined to crush him in after-years. It was his custom, when any little grief pressed upon his childish heart, to go and pour out his troubles on the breast of his mother; but he instinctively shrunk from confiding this to her; for, child as he was, he knew it would make her very unhappy. He therefore gently stole into the house, crept quietly up to his room, lay down, and sobbed himself to sleep. CHAPTER XIII. Hopes consummated. To Emily Winston we have always accorded the title of Mrs. Garie; whilst, in reality, she had no legal claim to it whatever. Previous to their emigration from Georgia, Mr. Garie had, on one or two occasions, attempted, but without success, to make her legally his wife. He ascertained that, even if he could have found a clergyman willing to expose himself to persecution by marrying them, the ceremony itself would have no legal weight, as a marriage between a white and a mulatto was not recognized as valid by the laws of the state; and he had, therefore, been compelled to dismiss the matter from his mind, until an opportunity should offer for the accomplishment of their wishes. Now, however, that they had removed to the north, where they would have no legal difficulties to encounter, he determined to put his former intention into execution. Although Emily had always maintained a studied silence on the subject, he knew that it was the darling wish of her heart to be legally united to him; so he unhesitatingly proceeded to arrange matters for the consummation of what he felt assured would promote the happiness of both. He therefore wrote to Dr. Blackly, a distinguished clergyman of the city, requesting him to perform the ceremony, and received from him an assurance that he would be present at the appointed time. Matters having progressed thus far, he thought it time to inform Emily of what he had done. On the evening succeeding the receipt of an answer from the Rev. Dr. Blackly—after the children had been sent to bed—he called her to him, and, taking her hand, sat down beside her on the sofa. "Emily," said he, as he drew her closer to him, "my dear, faithful Emily! I am about to do you an act of justice—one, too, that I feel will increase the happiness of us both. I am going to marry you, my darling! I am about to give you a lawful claim to what you have already won by your faithfulness and devotion. You know I tried, more than once, whilst in the south, to accomplish this, but, owing to the cruel and unjust laws existing there, I was unsuccessful. But now, love, no such difficulty exists; and here," continued he, "is an answer to the note I have written to Dr. Blackly, asking him to come next Wednesday night, and perform the ceremony.—You are willing, are you not, Emily?" he asked. "Willing!" she exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with emotion—"willing! Oh, God! if you only knew how I have longed for it! It has been my earnest desire for years!" and, bursting into tears, she leaned, sobbing, on his shoulder. After a few moments she raised her head, and, looking searchingly in his face, she asked: "But do you do this after full reflection on the consequences to ensue? Are you willing to sustain all the odium, to endure all the contumely, to which your acknowledged union with one of my unfortunate race will subject you? Clarence! it will be a severe trial—a greater one than any you have yet endured for me—and one for which I fear my love will prove but a poor recompense! I have thought more of these things lately; I am older now in years and experience. There was a time when I was vain enough to think that my affection was all that was necessary for your happiness; but men, I know, require more to fill their cup of content than the undivided affection of a woman, no matter how fervently beloved. You have talents, and, I have sometimes thought, ambition. Oh, Clarence! how it would grieve me, in after-years, to know that you regretted that for me you had sacrificed all those views and hopes that are cherished by the generality of your sex! Have you weighed it well?" "Yes, Emily—well," replied Mr. Garie; "and you know the conclusion. My past should be a guarantee for the future. I had the world before me, and chose you—and with, you I am contented to share my lot; and feel that I receive, in your affection, a full reward for any of the so-called sacrifices I may make. So, dry your tears, my dear," concluded he, "and let us hope for nothing but an increase of happiness as the result." After a few moments of silence, he resumed: "It will be necessary, Emily, to have a couple of witnesses. Now, whom would you prefer? I would suggest Mrs. Ellis and her husband. They are old friends, and persons on whose prudence we can rely. It would not do to have the matter talked about, as it would expose us to disagreeable comments." Mrs. Garie agreed perfectly with him as to the selection of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis; and immediately despatched a note to Mrs. Ellis, asking her to call at their house on the morrow. When she came, Emily informed her, with some confusion of manner, of the intended marriage, and asked her attendance as witness, at the same time informing her of the high opinion her husband entertained of their prudence in any future discussion of the matter. "I am really glad he is going to marry you, Emily," replied Mrs. Ellis, "and depend upon it we will do all in our power to aid it. Only yesterday, that inquisitive Mrs. Tiddy was at our house, and, in conversation respecting you, asked if I knew you to be married to Mr. Garie. I turned the conversation somehow, without giving her a direct answer. Mr. Garie, I must say, does act nobly towards you. He must love you, Emily, for not one white man in a thousand would make such a sacrifice for a coloured woman. You can't tell how we all like him—he is so amiable, so kind in his manner, and makes everyone so much at ease in his company. It's real good in him, I declare, and I shall begin to have some faith in white folks, after all.—Wednesday night," continued she; "very well—we shall be here, if the Lord spare us;" and, kissing Emily, she hurried off, to impart the joyful intelligence to her husband. The anxiously looked for Wednesday evening at last arrived, and Emily arrayed herself in a plain white dress for the occasion. Her long black hair had been arranged in ringlets by Mrs. Ellis, who stood by, gazing admiringly at her. "How sweet you look, Emily—you only want a wreath of orange blossoms to complete your appearance. Don't you feel a little nervous?" asked her friend. "A little excited," she answered, and her hand shook as she put back one of the curls that had fallen across her face. Just then a loud ringing at the door announced the arrival of Dr. Blackly, who was shown into the front parlour. Emily and Mrs. Ellis came down into the room where Mr. Garie was waiting for them, whilst Mr. Ellis brought in Dr. Blackly. The reverend gentleman gazed with some surprise at the party assembled. Mr. Garie was so thoroughly Saxon in appearance, that no one could doubt to what race he belonged, and it was equally evident that Emily, Mrs. Ellis, and her husband, were coloured persons. Dr. Blackly looked from one to the other with evident embarrassment, and then said to Mr. Garie, in a low, hesitating tone:— "I think there has been some mistake here—will you do me the favour to step into another room?" Mr. Garie mechanically complied, and stood waiting to learn the cause of Dr. Blackly's strange conduct. "You are a white man, I believe?" at last stammered forth the doctor. "Yes, sir; I presume my appearance is a sufficient guarantee of that," answered Mr. Garie. "Oh yes, I do not doubt it, and for that reason you must not be surprised if I decline to proceed with the ceremony." "I do not see how my being a white man can act as a barrier to its performance," remarked Mr. Garie in reply. "It would not, sir, if all the parties were of one complexion; but I do not believe in the propriety of amalgamation, and on no consideration could I be induced to assist in the union of a white man or woman with a person who has the slightest infusion of African blood in their veins. I believe the negro race," he continued, "to be marked out by the hand of God for servitude; and you must pardon me if I express my surprise that a gentleman of your evident intelligence should seek such a connection—you must be labouring under some horrible infatuation." "Enough, sir," replied Mr. Garie, proudly; "I only regret that I did not know it was necessary to relate every circumstance of appearance, complexion, &c. I wished to obtain a marriage certificate, not a passport. I mistook you for a Christian minister, which mistake you will please to consider as my apology for having troubled you;" and thus speaking, he bowed Dr. Blackly out of the house. Mr. Garie stepped back to the door of the parlour and called out Mr. Ellis. "We are placed in a very difficult dilemma," said he, as he was joined by the latter. "Would you believe it? that prejudiced old sinner has actually refused to marry us." "It is no more than you might have expected of him—he's a thorough nigger-hater—keeps a pew behind the organ of his church for coloured people, and will not permit them to receive the sacrament until all the white members of his congregation are served. Why, I don't see what on earth induced you to send for him." "I knew nothing of his sentiments respecting coloured people. I did not for a moment have an idea that he would hesitate to marry us. There is no law here that forbids it. What can we do?" said Mr. Garie, despairingly. "I know a minister who will marry you with pleasure, if I can only catch him at home; he is so much engaged in visiting the sick and other pastoral duties." "Do go—hunt him up, Ellis. It will be a great favour to me, if you can induce him to come. Poor Emily—what a disappointment this will be to her," said he, as he entered the room where she was sitting. "What is the matter, dear?" she asked, as she observed Garie's anxious face. "I hope there is no new difficulty." Mr. Garie briefly explained what had just occurred, and informed her, in addition, of Mr. Ellis having gone to see if he could get Father Banks, as the venerable old minister was called. "It seems, dear," said she, despondingly, "as if Providence looked unfavourably on our design; for every time you have attempted it, we have been in some way thwarted;" and the tears chased one another down her face, which had grown pale in the excitement of the moment. "Oh, don't grieve about it, dear; it is only a temporary disappointment. I can't think all the clergymen in the city are like Dr. Blackly. Some one amongst them will certainly oblige us. We won't despair; at least not until Ellis comes back." They had not very long to wait; for soon after this conversation footsteps were heard in the garden, and Mr. Ellis entered, followed by the clergyman. In a very short space of time they were united by Father Banks, who seemed much affected as he pronounced his blessing upon them. "My children," he said, tremulously, "you are entering upon a path which, to the most favoured, is full of disappointment, care, and anxieties; but to you who have come together under such peculiar circumstances, in the face of so many difficulties, and in direct opposition to the prejudices of society, it will be fraught with more danger, and open to more annoyances, than if you were both of one race. But if men revile you, revile not again; bear it patiently for the sake of Him who has borne so much for you. God bless you, my children," said he, and after shaking hands with them all, he departed. Mr. and Mrs. Ellis took their leave soon after, and then Mrs. Garie stole upstairs alone into the room where the children were sleeping. It seemed to her that night that they were more beautiful than ever, as they lay in their little beds quietly slumbering. She knelt beside them, and earnestly prayed their heavenly Father that the union which had just been consummated in the face of so many difficulties might prove a boon to them all. "Where have you been, you runaway?" exclaimed her husband as she re-entered the parlour. "You stayed away so long, I began to have all sorts of frightful ideas—I thought of the 'mistletoe hung in the castle hall,' and of old oak chests, and all kind of terrible things. I've been sitting here alone ever since the Ellises went: where have you been?" "Oh, I've been upstairs looking at the children. Bless their young hearts! they looked so sweet and happy—and how they grow! Clarence is getting to be quite a little man; don't you think it time, dear, that he was sent to school? I have so much more to occupy my mind here than I had in Georgia, so many household duties to attend to, that I am unable to give that attention to his lessons which I feel is requisite. Besides, being so much at home, he has associated with that wretched boy of the Stevens's, and is growing rude and noisy; don't you think he had better be sent to school?" "Oh yes, Emily, if you wish it," was Mr. Garie's reply. "I will search out a school to-morrow, or next day;" and taking out his watch, he continued, "it is near twelve o'clock—how the night has flown away—we must be off to bed. After the excitement of the evening, and your exertions of to-day, I fear that you will be indisposed to-morrow." Clarence, although over nine years old, was so backward in learning, that they were obliged to send him to a small primary school which had recently been opened in the neighbourhood; and as it was one for children of both sexes, it was deemed advisable to send little Em with him. "I do so dislike to have her go," said her mother, as her husband proposed that she should accompany Clarence; "she seems so small to be sent to school. I'm afraid she won't be happy." "Oh! don't give yourself the least uneasiness about her not being happy there, for a more cheerful set of little folks I never beheld. You would be astonished to see how exceedingly young some of them are." "What kind of a person is the teacher?" asked Mrs. Garie. "Oh! she's a charming little creature; the very embodiment of cheerfulness and good humour. She has sparkling black eyes, a round rosy face, and can't be more than sixteen, if she is that old. Had I had such a teacher when a boy, I should have got on charmingly; but mine was a cross old widow, who wore spectacles and took an amazing quantity of snuff, and used to flog upon the slightest pretence. I went into her presence with fear and trembling. I could never learn anything from her, and that must be my excuse for my present literary short-comings. But you need have no fear respecting Em getting on with Miss Jordan: I don't believe she could be unkind to any one, least of all to our little darling." "Then you will take them down in the morning," suggested Mrs. Garie; "but on no account leave Emily unless she wishes to stay." CHAPTER XIV. Charlie at Warmouth. After the departure of Mrs. Bird to visit her sick friend, Betsey turned to Charlie and bid him follow her into the kitchen. "I suppose you haven't been to breakfast," said she, in a patronizing manner; "if you haven't, you are just in time, as we will be done ours in a little while, and then you can have yours." Charlie silently followed her down into the kitchen, where a man-servant and the younger maid were already at breakfast; the latter arose, and was placing another plate upon the table, when Betsey frowned and nodded disapprovingly to her. "Let him wait," whispered she; "I'm not going to eat with niggers." "Oh! he's such a nice little fellow," replied Eliza, in an undertone; "let him eat with us." Betsey here suggested to Charlie that he had better go up to the maple chamber, wash his face, and take his things out of his trunk, and that when his breakfast was ready she would call him. "What on earth can induce you to want to eat with a nigger?" asked Betsey, as soon as Charlie was out of hearing. "I couldn't do it; my victuals would turn on my stomach. I never ate at the same table with a nigger in my life." "Nor I neither," rejoined Eliza; "but I see no reason why I should not. The child appears to have good manners, he is neat and good-looking, and because God has curled his hair more than he has ours, and made his skin a little darker than yours or mine, that is no reason we should treat him as if he was not a human being." Alfred, the gardener, had set down his saucer and appeared very much astonished at this declaration of sentiment on the part of Eliza, and sneeringly remarked, "You're an Abolitionist, I suppose." "No, I am not," replied she, reddening; "but I've been taught that God made all alike; one no better than the other. You know the Bible says God is no respecter of persons." "Well, if it does," rejoined Alfred, with a stolid-look, "it don't say that man isn't to be either, does it? When I see anything in my Bible that tells me I'm to eat and drink with niggers, I'll do it, and not before. I suppose you think that all the slaves ought to be free, and all the rest of the darned stuff these Abolitionists are preaching. Now if you want to eat with the nigger, you can; nobody wants to hinder you. Perhaps he may marry you when he grows up—don't you think you had better set your cap at him?" Eliza made no reply to this low taunt, but ate her breakfast in silence. "I don't see what Mrs. Bird brought him here for; she says he is sick,—had a broken arm or something; I can't imagine what use she intends to make of him," remarked Betsey. "I don't think she intends him to be a servant here, at any rate," said Eliza; "or why should she have him put in the maple chamber, when there are empty rooms enough in the garret?" "Well, I guess I know what she brought him for," interposed Alfred. "I asked her before she went away to get a little boy to help me do odd jobs, now that Reuben is about to leave; we shall want a boy to clean the boots, run on errands, drive up the cows, and do other little chores.[*] I'm glad he's a black boy; I can order him round more, you know, than if he was white, and he won't get his back up half as often either. You may depend upon it, that's what Mrs. Bird has brought him here for." The gardener, having convinced himself that his view of the matter was the correct one, went into the garden for his day's labour, and two or three things that he had intended doing he left unfinished, with the benevolent intention of setting Charlie at them the next morning. [Footnote *: A Yankeeism, meaning little jobs about a farm.] Charlie, after bathing his face and arranging his hair, looked from the window at the wide expanse of country spread out before him, all bright and glowing in the warm summer sunlight. Broad well-cultivated fields stretched away from the foot of the garden to the river beyond, and the noise of the waterfall, which was but a short distance off, was distinctly heard, and the sparkling spray was clearly visible through the openings of the trees. "What a beautiful place,—what grand fields to run in; an orchard, too, full of blossoming fruit-trees! Well, this is nice," exclaimed Charlie, as his eye ran over the prospect; but in the midst of his rapture came rushing back upon him the remembrance of the cavalier treatment he had met with below-stairs, and he said with a sigh, as the tears sprang to his eyes, "But it is not home, after all." Just at this moment he heard his name called by Betsey, and he hastily descended into the kitchen. At one end of the partially-cleared table a clean plate and knife and fork had been placed, and he was speedily helped to the remains of what the servants had been eating. "You mustn't be long," said Betsey, "for to-day is ironing day, and we want the table as soon as possible." The food was plentiful and good, but Charlie could not eat; his heart was full and heavy,—the child felt his degradation. "Even the servants refuse to eat with me because I am coloured," thought he. "Oh! I wish I was at home!" "Why don't you eat?" asked Betsey. "I don't think I want any breakfast; I'm not hungry," was the reply. "I hope you are not sulky," she rejoined; "we don't like sulky boys here; why don't you eat?" she repeated. The sharp, cold tones of her voice struck a chill into the child's heart, and his lip quivered as he stammered something farther about not being hungry; and he hurried away into the garden, where he calmed his feelings and allayed his home-sickness by a hearty burst of tears. After this was over, he wandered through the garden and fields until dinner; then, by reading his book and by another walk, he managed to get through the day. The following morning, as he was coming down stairs, he was met by Alfred, who accosted him with, "Oh! you're up, are you; I was just going to call you." And looking at Charlie from head to foot, he inquired, "Is that your best suit?" "No, it's my worst," replied Charlie. "I have two suits better than this;" and thinking that Mrs. Bird had arrived, he continued, "I'll put on my best if Mrs. Bird wants me." "No, she ain't home," was the reply; "it's me that wants you; come down here; I've got a little job for you. Take this," said he, handing him a dirty tow apron, "and tie it around your neck; it will keep the blacking off your clothes, you know. Now," continued he, "I want you to clean these boots; these two pairs are Mr. Tyndall's—them you need not be particular with; but this pair is mine, and I want 'em polished up high,—now mind, I tell you. I'm going to wear a new pair of pants to meetin' to-morrow, and I expect to cut a dash, so you'll do 'em up slick, now won't you?" "I'll do my best," said Charlie, who, although he did not dislike work, could not relish the idea of cleaning the servants' boots. "I'm afraid I shall find this a queer place," thought he. "I shall not like living here, I know—wait for my meals until the servants have finished, and clean their boots into the bargain. This is worse than being with Mrs. Thomas." Charlie, however, went at it with a will, and was busily engaged in putting the finishing touches on Alfred's boots, when he heard his name called, and on looking up, saw Mrs. Bird upon the piazza above. "Why, bless me! child, what are you about?—whose boots are those, and why are you cleaning them?" "Oh!" he replied, his face brightening up at the sight of Mrs. Bird, "I'm so glad you're come; those are Mr. Tyndall's boots, and these," he continued, holding up the boots on which he was engaged, "are the gardener's." "And who, pray, instructed you to clean them?" "The gardener," replied Charlie. "He did, did he?" said Mrs. Bird, indignantly. "Very well; now do you take off that apron and come to me immediately; before you do, however, tell Alfred I want him." Charlie quickly divested himself of the tow apron, and after having informed the gardener that Mrs. Bird desired his presence in the parlour, he ran up there himself. Alfred came lumbering up stairs, after giving his boots an unusual scraping and cleansing preparatory to entering upon that part of the premises which to him was generally forbidden ground. "By whose direction did you set the child at that dirty work?" asked Mrs. Bird, after he had entered the room. "I hadn't anybody's direction to set him to work, but I thought you brought him here to do odd jobs. You know, ma'am, I asked you some time ago to get a boy, and I thought this was the one." "And if he had been, you would have taken a great liberty in assigning him any duties without first consulting me. But he is not a servant here, nor do I intend him to be such; and let me inform you, that instead of his cleaning your boots, it will be your duty henceforth to clean his. Now," continued she, "you know his position here, let me see that you remember yours. You can go." This was said in so peremptory a manner, as to leave no room for discussion or rejoinder, and Alfred, with a chagrined look, went muttering down stairs. "Things have come to a pretty pass," grumbled he. "I'm to wait on niggers, black their boots, and drive them out, too, I suppose. I'd leave at once if it wasn't such a good situation. Drat the old picture—what has come over her I wonder—she'll be asking old Aunt Charity, the black washerwoman to dine with her next. She has either gone crazy or turned abolitionist, I don't know which; something has happened to her, that's certain." "Now, Charlie," said Mrs. Bird, as the door closed upon the crest-fallen gardener, "go to your room and dress yourself nicely. After I've eaten my breakfast, I am going to visit a friend, and I want you to accompany me; don't be long." "Can't I eat mine first, Mrs. Bird?" he asked, in reply. "I thought you had had yours, long ago," rejoined she. "The others hadn't finished theirs when you called me, and I don't get mine until they have done," said Charlie. "Until they have done; how happens that?" asked Mrs. Bird. "I think they don't like to eat with me, because I'm coloured," was Charlie's hesitating reply. "That is too much," exclaimed Mrs. Bird; "if it were not so very ridiculous, I should be angry. It remains for me, then," continued she, "to set them an example. I've not eaten my breakfast yet—come, sit down with me, and we'll have it together." Charlie followed Mrs. Bird into the breakfast-room, and took the seat pointed out by her. Eliza, when she entered with the tea-urn, opened her eyes wide with astonishment at the singular spectacle she beheld. Her mistress sitting down to breakfast vis-a-vis to a little coloured boy! Depositing the urn upon the table, she hastened back to the kitchen to report upon the startling events that were occurring in the breakfast-room. "Well, I never," said she; "that beats anything I ever did see; why, Mrs. Bird must have turned abolitionist. Charlie is actually sitting at the same table with her, eating his breakfast as natural and unconcerned as if he was as white as snow! Wonders never will cease. You see I'm right though. I said that child wasn't brought here for a servant—we've done it for ourselves now—only think how mad she'll be when she finds he was made to wait for his meals until we have done. I'm glad I wasn't the one who refused to eat with him." "I guess she has been giving Alfred a blowing up," said Betsy, "for setting him at boot cleaning; for he looked like a thunder-cloud when he came down stairs, and was muttering something about a consarned pet-nigger—he looked anything but pleased." Whilst the lower powers were discussing what they were pleased to regard as an evidence of some mental derangement on the part of Mrs. Bird, that lady was questioning Charlie respecting his studies, and inquired if he would like to go to school in Warmouth. "After a while, I think I should," he replied; "but for a week I'd like to be free to run about the fields and go fishing, and do lots of things. This is such a pretty place; and now that you have come I shall have nice times—I know I shall." "You seem to have great confidence in my ability to make you happy. How do you know that I am as kind as you seem to suppose?" asked Mrs. Bird, with a smile. "I know you are," answered Charlie, confidently; "you speak so pleasantly to me. And do you know, Mrs. Bird," continued he, "that I liked you from the first day, when you praised me so kindly when I recited my lessons before you. Did you ever have any little boys of your own?" A change immediately came over the countenance of Mrs. Bird, as she replied: "Oh, yes, Charlie; a sweet, good boy about your own age:" and the tears stood in her eyes as she continued. "He accompanied his father to England years ago—the ship in which they sailed was never heard of—his name was Charlie too." "I didn't know that, or I should not have asked," said Charlie, with some embarrassment of manner caused by the pain he saw he had inflicted. "I am very sorry," he continued. Mrs. Bird motioned him to finish his breakfast, and left the table without drinking the tea she had poured out for herself. There were but one or two families of coloured people living in the small town of Warmouth, and they of a very humble description; their faces were familiar to all the inhabitants, and their appearance was in accordance with their humble condition. Therefore, when Charlie made his debut, in company with Mrs. Bird, his dress and manners differed so greatly from what they were accustomed to associate with persons of his complexion, that he created quite a sensation in the streets of the usually quiet and obscure little town. He was attired with great neatness; and not having an opportunity of playing marbles in his new suit, it still maintained its spotless appearance. The fine grey broadcloth coat and pants fitted him to a nicety, the jaunty cap was set slightly on one side of his head giving him, a somewhat saucy look, and the fresh colour now returning to his cheeks imparted to his face a much healthier appearance than it had worn for months. He and his kind friend walked on together for some time, chatting about the various things that attracted their attention on the way, until they reached a cottage in the garden of which a gentleman was busily engaged in training a rosebush upon a new trellis. So completely was he occupied with his pursuit that he did not observe the entrance of visitors, and quite started when he was gently tapped upon the shoulder by Mrs. Bird. "How busy we are," said she, gaily, at the same time extending her hand—"so deeply engaged, that we can scarcely notice old friends that we have not seen for months." "Indeed, this is a pleasant surprise," he remarked, when he saw by whom he had been interrupted. "When did you arrive?" "Only this morning; and, as usual, I have already found something with which to bore you—you know, Mr. Whately, I always have something to trouble you about." "Don't say trouble, my dear Mrs. Bird; if you will say 'give me something to occupy my time usefully and agreeably,' you will come much nearer the mark. But who is this you have with you?" "Oh, a little protege of mine, poor little fellow—he met with a sad accident recently—he broke his arm; and I have brought him down here to recruit. Charlie, walk around and look at the garden—I have a little matter of business to discuss with Mr. Whately, and when we shall have finished I will call you." Mr. Whately led the way into his library, and placing a seat for Mrs. Bird, awaited her communication. "You have great influence with the teacher of the academy, I believe," said she. "A little," replied Mr. Whately, smiling. "Not a little," rejoined Mrs. Bird, "but a great deal; and, my dear Mr. Whately, I want you to exercise it in my behalf. I wish to enter as a scholar that little boy I brought with me this morning." "Impossible!" said Mr. Whately. "My good friend, the boy is coloured!" "I am well aware of that," continued Mrs. Bird; "if he were not there would not be the least trouble about his admission; nor am I sure there will be as it is, if you espouse his cause. One who has been such a benefactor to the academy as yourself, could, I suppose, accomplish anything." "Yes; but that is stretching my influence unduly. I would be willing to oblige you in almost anything else, but I hesitate to attempt this. Why not send him to the public school?—they have a separate bench for black children; he can be taught there all that is necessary for him to know." "He is far in advance of any of the scholars there. I attended the examination of the school to which he was attached," said Mrs. Bird, "and I was very much surprised at the acquirements of the pupils; this lad was distinguished above all the rest—he answered questions that would have puzzled older heads, with the greatest facility. I am exceedingly anxious to get him admitted to the academy, as I am confident he will do honour to the interest I take in him." "And a very warm interest it must be, my dear Mrs. Bird, to induce you to attempt placing him in such an expensive and exclusive school. I am very much afraid you will have to give it up: many of the scholars' parents, I am sure, will object strenuously to the admission of a coloured boy as a scholar." "Only tell me that you will propose him, and I will risk the refusal," replied Mrs. Bird—"it can be tried at all events; and if you will make the effort I shall be under deep obligations to you." "Well, Mrs. Bird, let us grant him admitted—what benefit can accrue to the lad from an education beyond his station? He cannot enter into any of the learned professions: both whilst he is there, and after his education is finished, he will be like a fish out of water. You must pardon me if I say I think, in this case, your benevolence misdirected. The boy's parents are poor, I presume?" "They certainly are not rich," rejoined Mrs. Bird; "and it is for that reason I wish to do all that I can for him. If I can keep him with me, and give him a good education, it may be greatly for his advantage; there may be a great change in public sentiment before he is a man—we cannot say what opening there may be for him in the future." "Not unless it changes very much. I never knew prejudice more rampant than it is at this hour. To get the boy admitted as a right is totally out of the question: if he is received at all, it will be as a special favour, and a favour which—I am sure it will require all my influence to obtain. I will set about it immediately, and, rely upon it, I will do my best for your protege." Satisfied with the promise, which was as much as Mrs. Bird had dared to hope for, she called Charlie, then shook hands with Mr. Whately and departed. CHAPTER XV. Mrs. Stevens gains a Triumph. The Garies had now become thoroughly settled in Philadelphia, and, amongst the people of colour, had obtained a very extensive and agreeable acquaintance. At the South Mr. Garie had never borne the reputation of an active person. Having an ample fortune and a thoroughly Southern distaste for labour, he found it by no means inconvenient or unpleasant to have so much time at his disposal. His newspaper in the morning, a good book, a stroll upon the fashionable promenade, and a ride at dusk, enabled him to dispose of his time without being oppressed with ennui. It was far happier for him that such was his disposition, as his domestic relations would have been the means of subjecting him to many unpleasant circumstances, from which his comparative retirement in a great measure screened him. Once or twice since his settlement in the North his feelings had been ruffled, by the sneering remarks of some of his former friends upon the singularity of his domestic position; but his irritation had all fled before the smiles of content and happiness that beamed from the faces of his wife and children. Mrs. Garie had nothing left to wish for; she was surrounded by every physical comfort and in the enjoyment of frequent intercourse with intelligent and refined people, and had been greatly attracted toward Esther Ellis with whom she had become very intimate. One morning in November, these two were in the elegant little bed-room of Mrs. Garie, where a fire had been kindled, as the weather was growing very chilly and disagreeable. "It begins to look quite like autumn," said Mrs. Garie, rising and looking out of the window. "The chrysanthemums are drooping and withered, and the dry leaves are whirling and skimming through the air. I wonder," she continued, "if the children were well wrapped up this morning?" "Oh, yes; I met them at the corner, on their way to school, looking as warm and rosy as possible. What beautiful children they are! Little Em has completely won my heart; it really seems a pity for her to be put on the shelf, as she must be soon." "How—what do you mean?" asked Mrs. Garie. "Oh, this will explain," archly rejoined Esther, as she held up to view one of the tiny lace trimmed frocks that she was making in anticipation of the event that has been previously hinted. Mrs. Garie laughed, and turned to look out of the window again. "Do you know I found little Lizzy Stevens, your neighbour's daughter, shivering upon the steps in a neighbouring street, fairly blue with cold? She was waiting there for Clarence and Em. I endeavoured to persuade her to go on without them, but she would not. From what I could understand, she waits for them there every day." "Her mother cannot be aware of it, then; for she has forbidden her children to associate with mine," rejoined Mrs. Garie. "I wonder she permits her little girl to go to the same school. I don't think she knows it, or it is very likely she would take her away." "Has she ever spoken to you since the night of her visit?" asked Esther. "Never! I have seen her a great many times since; she never speaks, nor do I. There she goes now. That," continued Mrs. Garie, with a smile, "is another illustration of the truthfulness of the old adage, 'Talk of—well, I won't say who,—'and he is sure to appear.'" And, thus speaking, she turned from the window, and was soon deeply occupied in the important work of preparing for the expected little stranger. Mrs. Garie was mistaken in her supposition that Mrs. Stevens was unaware that Clarence and little Em attended the same school to which her own little girl had been sent; for the evening before the conversation we have just narrated, she had been discussing the matter with her husband. "Here," said she to him, "is Miss Jordan's bill for the last quarter. I shall never pay her another; I am going to remove Lizzy from that school." "Remove her! what for? I thought I heard you say, Jule, that the child got on excellently well there,—that she improved very fast?" "So she does, as far as learning is concerned; but she is sitting right next to one of those Garie children, and that is an arrangement I don't at all fancy. I don't relish the idea of my child attending the same school that niggers do; so I've come to the determination to take her away." "I should do no such thing," coolly remarked Mr. Stevens. "I should compel the teacher to dismiss the Garies, or I should break up her school. Those children have no right to be there whatever. I don't care a straw how light their complexions are, they are niggers nevertheless, and ought to go to a nigger school; they are no better than any other coloured children. I'll tell you what you can do, Jule," continued he: "call on Mrs. Kinney, the Roths, and one or two others, and induce them to say that if Miss Jordan won't dismiss the Garies that they will withdraw their children; and you know if they do, it will break up the school entirely. If it was any other person's children but his, I would wink at it; but I want to give him a fall for his confounded haughtiness. Just try that plan, Jule, and you will be sure to succeed." "I am not so certain about it, Stevens. Miss Jordan, I learn, is very fond of their little Em. I must say I cannot wonder at it. She is the most loveable little creature I ever saw. I will say that, if her mother is a nigger." "Yes, Jule, all that may be; but I know the world well enough to judge that, when she becomes fully assured that it will conflict with her interests to keep them, she will give them up. She is too poor to be philanthropic, and, I believe, has sufficient good sense to know it." "Well, I'll try your plan," said Mrs. Stevens; "I will put matters in train to-morrow morning." Early the next morning, Mrs. Stevens might have been seen directing her steps to the house of Mrs. Kinney, with whom she was very intimate. She reached it just as that lady was departing to preside at a meeting of a female missionary society for evangelizing the Patagonians. "I suppose you have come to accompany me to the meeting," said she to Mrs. Stevens, as soon as they had exchanged the usual courtesies. "Oh, dear, no; I wish I was," she replied. "I've got a troublesome little matter on my hands; and last night my husband suggested my coming to ask your advice respecting it. George has such a high opinion of your judgment, that he would insist on my troubling you." Mrs. Kinney smiled, and looked gratified at this tribute to her importance. "And moreover," continued Mrs. Stevens, "it's a matter in which your interest, as well as our own, is concerned." Mrs. Kinney now began to look quite interested, and, untying the strings of her bonnet, exclaimed, "Dear me, what can it be?" "Knowing," said Mrs. Stevens, "that you entertain just the same sentiments that we do relative to associating with coloured people, I thought I would call and ask if you were aware that Miss Jordan receives coloured as well as white children in her school." "Why, no! My dear Mrs. Stevens, you astound me. I hadn't the remotest idea of such a thing. It is very strange my children never mentioned it." "Oh, children are so taken up with their play, they forget such things," rejoined Mrs. Stevens. "Now," continued she, "husband said he was quite confident you would not permit your children to continue their attendance after this knowledge came to your ears. We both thought it would be a pity to break up the poor girl's school by withdrawing our children without first ascertaining if she would expel the little darkies. I knew, if I could persuade you to let me use your name as well as ours, and say that you will not permit your children to continue at her school unless she consents to our wishes, she, knowing the influence you possess, would, I am sure, accede to our demands immediately." "Oh, you are perfectly at liberty to use my name, Mrs. Stevens, and say all that you think necessary to effect your object. But do excuse me for hurrying off," she continued, looking at her watch: "I was to have been at the meeting at ten o'clock, and it is now half-past. I hope you won't fail to call, and let me know how you succeed;" and, with her heart overflowing with tender care for the poor Patagonian, Mrs. Kinney hastily departed. "That's settled," soliloquized Mrs. Stevens, with an air of intense satisfaction, as she descended the steps—"her four children would make a serious gap in the little school; and now, then," continued she, "for the Roths." Mrs. Stevens found not the slightest difficulty in persuading Mrs. Roth to allow her name to be used, in connection with Mrs. Kinney's, in the threat to withdraw their children if the little Garies were not immediately expelled. Mrs. Roth swore by Mrs. Kinney, and the mere mention of that lady's name was sufficient to enlist her aid. Thus armed, Mrs. Stevens lost no time in paying a visit to Miss Jordan's school. As she entered, the busy hum of childish voices was somewhat stilled; and Lizzy Stevens touched little Em, who sat next her, and whispered, "There is my mother." Mrs. Stevens was welcomed very cordially by Miss Jordan, who offered her the seat of honour beside her. "Your school seems quite flourishing," she remarked, after looking around the room, "and I really regret being obliged to make a gap in your interesting circle." "I hope you don't intend to deprive me of your little girl," inquired Miss Jordan; "I should regret to part with her—not only because I am very fond of her, but in consideration of her own interest—she is coming on so rapidly." "Oh, I haven't the slightest fault to find with her progress. That," said she, "is not the reason. I have another, of much more weight. Of course, every one is at liberty to do as they choose; and we have no right to dictate to you what description of scholars you should receive; but, if they are not such, as we think proper companions for our children, you can't complain if we withdraw them." "I really do not understand you, Mrs. Stevens," said the teacher, with an astonished look: "I have none here but the children of the most respectable persons—they are all as well behaved as school children generally are." "I did not allude to behaviour; that, for all that I know to the contrary, is irreproachable; it is not character that is in question, but colour. I don't like my daughter to associate with coloured children." "Coloured children!" repeated the now thoroughly bewildered teacher—"coloured children! My dear madam," continued she, smiling, "some one has been hoaxing you—I have no coloured pupils—I could not be induced to receive one on any account." "I am very glad to hear you say so," rejoined Mrs. Stevens, "for that convinces me that my fears were groundless. I was under the impression you had imbibed some of those pestilent abolition sentiments coming into vogue. I see you are not aware of it, but you certainly have two coloured scholars; and there," said she, pointing to Clarence, "is one of them." Clarence, who, with his head bent over his book, was sitting so near as to overhear a part of this conversation, now looked up, and found the cold, malignant, grey eyes of Mrs. Stevens fastened on him. He looked at her for a moment—then apparently resumed his studies. The poor boy had, when she entered the room, an instinctive knowledge that her visit boded no good to them. He was beginning to learn the anomalous situation he was to fill in society. He had detested Mrs. Stevens ever since the night she had ejected him so rudely from her house, and since then had learned to some extent what was meant by the term nigger woman. "You must certainly be misinformed," responded Miss Jordan. "I know their father—he has frequently been here. He is a Southerner, a thorough gentleman in his manners; and, if ever a man was white, I am sure he is." "Have you seen their mother?" asked Mrs. Stevens, significantly. "No, I never have," replied Miss Jordan; "she is in poor health; but she must unquestionably be a white woman—a glance at the children ought to convince you of that." "It might, if I had not seen her, and did not know her to be a coloured woman. You see, my dear Miss Jordan," continued she, in her blandest tone, "I am their next-door neighbour and have seen their mother twenty times and more; she is a coloured woman beyond all doubt." "I never could have dreamed of such a thing!" exclaimed Miss Jordan, as an anxious look overspread her face; then, after a pause, she continued: "I do not see what I am to do—it is really too unfortunate—I don't know how to act. It seems unjust and unchristian to eject two such children from my school, because their mother has the misfortune to have a few drops of African blood in her veins. I cannot make up my mind to do it. Why, you yourself must admit that they are as white as any children in the room." "I am willing to acknowledge they are; but they have nigger blood in them, notwithstanding; and they are, therefore, as much niggers as the blackest, and have no more right to associate with white children than if they were black as ink. I have no more liking for white niggers than for black ones." The teacher was perplexed, and, turning to Mrs. Stevens, said, imploringly: "This matter seems only known to you; let me appeal to your generosity—say nothing more about it. I will try to keep your daughter away from them, if you wish—but pray do not urge me to the performance of an act that I am conscious would be unjust." Mrs. Stevens's face assumed a severe and disagreeable expression. "I hoped you would look at this matter in a reasonable light, and not compel those who would be your friends to appear in the light of enemies. If this matter was known to me alone, I should remove my daughter and say nothing more about it; but, unfortunately for you, I find that, by some means or other, both Mrs. Kinney and Mrs. Roth have become informed of the circumstance, and are determined to take their children away. I thought I would act a friend's part by you, and try to prevail on you to dismiss these two coloured children at once. I so far relied upon your right judgment as to assure them that you would not hesitate for a moment to comply with their wishes; and I candidly tell you, that it was only by my so doing that they were prevented from keeping their children at home to-day." Miss Jordan looked aghast at this startling intelligence; if Mrs. Roth and Mrs. Kinney withdrew their patronage and influence, her little school (the sole support of her mother and herself) would be well-nigh broken up. She buried her face in her hands, and sat in silence for a few seconds; then looking at Mrs. Stevens, with tearful eyes, exclaimed, "God forgive me if it must be so; nothing but the utter ruin that stares me in the face if I refuse induces me to accede to your request." "I am sorry that you distress yourself so much about it. You know you are your own mistress, and can do as you choose," said Mrs. Stevens; "but if you will be advised by me, you will send them away at once." "After school I will," hesitatingly replied Miss Jordan. "I hate to appear so pressing," resumed Mrs. Stevens; "but I feel it my duty to suggest that you had better do it at once, and before the rest of the scholars. I did not wish, to inform you to what extent this thing had gone; but it really has been talked of in many quarters, and it is generally supposed that you are cognisant of the fact that the Garies are coloured; therefore you see the necessity of doing something at once to vindicate yourself from the reproach of abolitionism." At the pronunciation of this then terrible word in such connection with herself, Miss Jordan turned quite pale, and for a moment struggled to acquire sufficient control of her feelings to enable her to do as Mrs. Stevens suggested; at last, bursting into tears, she said, "Oh, I cannot—will not—do it. I'll dismiss them, but not in that unfeeling manner; that I cannot do." The children were now entirely neglecting their lessons, and seemed much affected by Miss Jordan's tears, of which they could not understand the cause. She observing this, rang the bell, the usual signal for intermission. Mrs. Stevens, satisfied with the triumph she had effected, took leave of Miss Jordan, after commending her for the sensible conclusion at which she had arrived, and promising to procure her two more pupils in the room of those she was about to dismiss. Miss Jordan was a long time writing the note that she intended sending to Mr. Garie; and one of the elder girls returned to the school-room, wondering at the unusually long time that had been given for recreation. "Tell Clarence and his sister to come here," said she to the girl who had just entered; and whilst they were on their way upstairs, she folded the note, and was directing it when Clarence entered. "Clarence," said she, in a soft voice, "put on your hat; I have a note of some importance for you to take to your father—your father remember—don't give it to any one else." Taking out her watch, she continued, "It is now so late that you would scarcely get back before the time for dismissal, so you had better take little Emily home with you." "I hope, ma'am, I haven't done anything wrong?" asked Clarence. "Oh, no!" quickly replied she; "you're a dear, good boy, and have never given me a moment's pain since you came to the school." And she hurried out into the hall to avoid farther questioning. She could not restrain the tears as she dressed little Em, whose eyes were large with astonishment at being sent home from school at so early an hour. "Teacher, is school out?" asked she. "No, dear, not quite; I wanted to send a note to your pa, and so I have let Clary go home sooner than usual," replied Miss Jordan, kissing her repeatedly, whilst the tears were trickling down her cheek. "Don't cry, teacher, I love you," said the little blue-eyed angel, whose lip began to quiver in sympathy; "don't cry, I'll come back again to-morrow." This was too much for the poor teacher, who clasped the child in her arms, and gave way to a burst of uncontrollable sorrow. At last, conquering herself with an effort, she led the children down stairs, kissed them both again, and then opening the door she turned them forth into the street—turned away from her school these two little children, such as God received into his arms and blessed, because they were the children of a "nigger woman." CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Stevens makes a Discovery. "Well, Jule, old Aunt Tabitha is gone at last, and I am not at all sorry for it, I assure you; she's been a complete tax upon me for the last eight years. I suppose you won't lament much, nor yet go into mourning for her," continued Mr. Stevens, looking at her jocularly. "I'm not sorry, that I admit," rejoined Mrs. Stevens; "the poor old soul is better off, no doubt; but then there's no necessity to speak of the matter in such an off-hand manner." "Now, Jule, I beg you won't attempt to put on the sanctified; that's too much from you, who have been wishing her dead almost every day for the last eight years. Why, don't you remember you wished her gone when she had a little money to leave; and when she lost that, you wished her off our hands because she had none. Don't pretend to be in the least depressed; that won't do with me." "Well, never mind that," said Mrs. Stevens, a little confused; "what has become of her things—her clothing, and furniture?" "I've ordered the furniture to be sold; and all there is of it will not realize sufficient to pay her funeral expenses. Brixton wrote me that she has left a bundle of letters directed to me, and I desired him to send them on." "I wonder what they can be," said Mrs. Stevens. "Some trash, I suppose; an early love correspondence, of but little value to any one but herself. I do not expect that they will prove of any consequence whatever." "Don't you think one or the other of us should go to the funeral?" asked Mrs. Stevens. "Nonsense. No! I have no money to expend in that way—it is as much as I can do to provide comfortably for the living, without spending money to follow the dead," replied he; "and besides, I have a case coming on in the Criminal Court next week that will absorb all my attention." "What kind of a case is it?" she inquired. "A murder case. Some Irishmen were engaged in a row, when one of the party received a knock on his head that proved too much for him, and died in consequence. My client was one of the contending parties; and has been suspected, from some imprudent expressions of his, to have been the man who struck the fatal blow. His preliminary examination comes off to-morrow or next day, and I must be present as a matter of course." At an early hour of the morning succeeding this conversation, Mr. Stevens might have been seen in his dingy office, seated at a rickety desk which was covered with various little bundles, carefully tied with red tape. The room was gloomy and cheerless, and had a mouldy disagreeable atmosphere. A fire burned in the coal stove, which, however, seemed only to warm, but did not dry the apartment; and the windows were covered with a thin coating of vapour. Mr. Stevens was busily engaged in writing, when hearing footsteps behind him, he turned and saw Mr. Egan, a friend of his client, entering the room. "Good morning, Mr. Egan," said he, extending his hand; "how is our friend McCloskey this morning?" "Oh, it's far down in the mouth he is, be jabers—the life a'most scared out of him!" "Tell him to keep up a good heart and not to be frightened at trifles," laughingly remarked Mr. Stevens. "Can't your honour come and see him?" asked Egan. "I can't do that; but I'll give you a note to Constable Berry, and he will bring McCloskey in here as he takes him to court;" and Mr. Stevens immediately wrote the note, which Egan received and departed. After the lapse of a few hours, McCloskey was brought by the accommodating constable to the office of Mr. Stevens. "He'll be safe with you, I suppose, Stevens;" said the constable, "but then there is no harm in seeing for one's self that all's secure;" and thus speaking, he raised the window and looked into the yard below. The height was too great for his prisoner to escape in that direction; then satisfying himself that the other door only opened into a closet, he retired, locking Mr. Stevens and his client in the room. Mr. Stevens arose as soon as the door closed behind the constable, and stuffed a piece of damp sponge into the keyhole; he then returned and took a seat by his client. "Now, McCloskey," said he, in a low tone, as he drew his chair closely in front of the prisoner, and fixed his keen grey eyes on him—"I've seen Whitticar. And I tell you what it is—you're in a very tight place. He's prepared to swear that he saw you with a slung shot in your hand—that he saw you drop it after the man fell; he picked it up, and whilst the man was lying dead at his tavern, awaiting the coroner's inquest, he examined the wound, and saw in the skull two little dents or holes, which were undoubtedly made by the little prongs that are on the leaden ball of the weapon, as they correspond in depth and distance apart; and, moreover, the ball is attached to a twisted brace which proves to be the fellow to the one found upon a pair of your trousers. What can you say to all this?" McCloskey here gave a smothered groan, and his usually red face grew deadly pale in contemplation of his danger. "Now," said Mr. Stevens, after waiting long enough for his revelation to have its due effect upon him, "there is but one thing to be done. We must buy Whitticar off. Have you got any money? I don't mean fifty or a hundred dollars—that would be of no more use than as many pennies. We must have something of a lump—three or four hundred at the very least." The prisoner drew his breath very hard at this, and remained silent. "Come, speak out," continued Mr. Stevens, "circumstances won't admit of our delaying—this man's friends will raise Heaven and earth to secure your conviction; so you see, my good fellow, it's your money or your life. You can decide between the two—you know which is of the most importance to you." "God save us, squire! how am I to raise that much money? I haven't more nor a hunther dollars in the world." "You've got a house, and a good horse and dray," replied Mr. Stevens, who was well posted in the man's pecuniary resources. "If you expect me to get you out of this scrape, you must sell or mortgage your house, and dispose of your horse and dray. Somehow or other four hundred dollars must be raised, or you will be dangling at a rope's end in less than six months." "I suppose it will have to go then," said McCloskey, reluctantly. "Then give me authority," continued Mr. Stevens, "to arrange for the disposal of the property, and I will have your affairs all set straight in less than no time." The constable here cut short any further colloquy by rapping impatiently on the door, then opening it, and exclaiming, "Come, now it is ten o'clock—time that you were in court;" and the two started out, followed by Mr. Stevens. After having, by some of those mysterious plans with which lawyers are familiar, been enabled to put off the examination for a few days, Mr. Stephens returned to his office, and found lying upon his table the packet of letters he was expecting from New York. Upon breaking the seal, and tearing off the outer covering, he discovered a number of letters, time-worn and yellow with age; they were tied tightly together with a piece of cord; cutting this, they fell scattered over the desk. Taking one of them up, he examined it attentively, turning it from side to side to endeavour to decipher the half-effaced post-mark. "What a ninny I am, to waste time in looking at the cover of this, when the contents will, no doubt, explain the whole matter?" Thus soliloquising he opened the letter, and was soon deeply absorbed in its contents. He perused and re-perused it; then opened, one after another, the remainder that lay scattered before him. Their contents seemed to agitate him exceedingly; as he walked up and down the room with hasty strides, muttering angrily to himself, and occasionally returning to the desk to re-peruse the letters which had so strangely excited him. Whilst thus engaged, the door was opened by no less a personage than Mr. Morton, who walked in and seated himself in a familiar manner. "Oh, how are you, Morton. You entered with such a ghostly tread, that I scarcely heard you," said Mr. Stevens, with a start; "what has procured me the honour of a visit from you this morning?" "I was strolling by, and thought I would just step in and inquire how that matter respecting the Tenth-street property has succeeded." "Not at all—the old fellow is as obstinate as a mule; he won't sell except on his own terms, which are entirely out of all reason. I am afraid you will be compelled to abandon your building speculation in that quarter until his demise—he is old and feeble, and can't last many years; in the event of his death you may be able to effect some more favourable arrangement with his heirs." "And perhaps have ten or fifteen years to wait—no, that won't do. I'd better sell out myself. What would you, advise me to do, Stevens?" Mr. Stevens was silent for a few moments; then having opened the door and looked into the entry, he closed it carefully, placed the piece of sponge in the key-hole, and returned to his seat at the desk, saying:— "We've transacted enough business together to know one another pretty well. So I've no hesitation in confiding to you a little scheme I've conceived for getting into our hands a large proportion of property in one of the lower districts, at a very low figure; and 'tis probable, that the same plan, if it answers, will assist you materially in carrying out your designs. It will require the aid of two or three moneyed men like yourself; and, if successful, will without doubt be highly remunerative." "If successful," rejoined Mr. Morton; "yes, there is the rub. How are you to guarantee success?" "Hear my plan, and then you can decide. In the first place, you know as well as I that a very strong feeling exists in the community against the Abolitionists, and very properly too; this feeling requires to be guided into some proper current, and I think we can give it that necessary guidance, and at the same time render it subservient to our own purposes. You are probably aware that a large amount of property in the lower part of the city is owned by niggers; and if we can create a mob and direct it against them, they will be glad to leave that quarter, and remove further up into the city for security and protection. Once get the mob thoroughly aroused, and have the leaders under our control, and we may direct its energies against any parties we desire; and we can render the district so unsafe, that property will be greatly lessened in value—the houses will rent poorly, and many proprietors will be happy to sell at very reduced prices. If you can furnish me the means to start with, I have men enough at my command to effect the rest. We will so control the elections in the district, through these men, as to place in office only such persons as will wink at the disturbances. When, through their agency, we have brought property down sufficiently low, we will purchase all that we can, re-establish order and quiet, and sell again at an immense advantage." "Your scheme is a good one, I must confess, and I am ready to join you at any time. I will communicate with Carson, who, I think, will be interested, as he desired to invest with me in those Tenth-street improvements. I will call in to-morrow, and endeavour to persuade him to accompany me, and then we can discuss the matter more fully." "Well, do; but one word before you go. You appear to know everybody—who is anybody—south of Mason and Dixon's line; can you give me any information respecting a family by the name of Garie, who live or formerly did live in the vicinity of Savannah?" "Oh, yes—I know them, root and branch; although there is but little of the latter left; they are one of the oldest families in Georgia—those of whom I have heard the most are of the last two generations. There now remain of the family but two persons—old John or Jack Garie as he is called, a bachelor—and who I have recently learned is at the point of death; and a crack-brained nephew of his, living in this city—said to be married to a nigger woman—actually married to her. Dr. Blackly informed me last week, that he sent for him to perform the ceremony, which he very properly refused to do. I have no doubt, however, that he has been successful in procuring the services of some one else. I am sorry to say, there are some clergymen in our city who would willingly assist in such a disgraceful proceeding. What ever could have induced a man with his prospects to throw himself away in that manner, I am at loss to determine—he has an independent fortune of about one hundred thousand dollars, besides expectations from his uncle, who is worth a considerable sum of money. I suppose these little darkies of his will inherit it," concluded Mr. Morton. "Are there no other heirs?" asked Mr. Stevens, in a tone of deep interest. "There may be. He had an aunt, who married an exceedingly low fellow from the North, who treated her shamefully. The mercenary scoundrel no doubt expected to have acquired a fortune with her, as it was generally understood that she was sole heiress of her mother's property—but it turned out to be an entire mistake. The circumstance made considerable stir at the time. I remember having heard my elders discuss it some years after its occurrence. But why do you take such an interest in it? You charged me with coming upon you like a ghost. I could return the compliment. Why, man, you look like a sheet. What ails you?" "Me!—I—oh, nothing—nothing! I'm perfectly well—that is to say, I was up rather late last night, and am rather fatigued to day—nothing more." "You looked so strange, that I could not help being frightened—and you seemed so interested. You must have some personal motive for inquiring." "No more than a lawyer often has in the business of his clients. I have been commissioned to obtain some information respecting these people—a mere matter of business, nothing more, believe me. Call in again soon, and endeavour to bring Carson; but pray be discreet—be very careful to whom you mention the matter." "Never fear," said Mr. Morton, as he closed the door behind him, and sauntered lazily out of the house. Mr. Morton speculated in stocks and town-lots in the same spirit that he had formerly betted at the racecourse and cockpit in his dear Palmetto State. It was a pleasant sort of excitement to him, and without excitement of some kind, he would have found it impossible to exist. To have frequented gaming hells and race courses in the North would have greatly impaired his social position; and as he set a high value upon that he was compelled to forego his favourite pursuits, and associate himself with a set of men who conducted a system of gambling operations upon 'Change, of a less questionable but equally exciting character. Mr. Stevens sat musing at his desk for some time after the departure of his visitor; then, taking up one of the letters that had so strongly excited him, he read and re-read it; then crushing it in his hand, arose, stamped his feet, and exclaimed, "I'll have it! if I—" here he stopped short, and, looking round, caught a view of his face in the glass; he sank back into the chair behind him, horrified at the lividness of his countenance. "Good God!" he soliloquized, "I look like a murderer already," and he covered his face with his hands, and turned away from the glass. "But I am wrong to be excited thus; men who accomplish great things approach them coolly, so must I. I must plot, watch, and wait;" and thus speaking, he put on his hat and left the office. As Mr. Stevens approached his house, a handsome carriage drove up to the door of his neighbour, and Mr. Garie and his wife, who had been enjoying a drive along the bank of the river, alighted and entered their residence. The rustle of her rich silk dress grated harshly on his ear, and the soft perfume that wafted toward him as she glided by, was the very reverse of pleasant to him. Mr. Garie bowed stiffly to him as they stood on the steps of their respective residences, which were only divided by the low iron fence; but, beyond the slight inclination of the head, took no further notice of him. "The cursed haughty brute," muttered Mr. Stevens, as he jerked the bell with violence; "how I hate him! I hated him before I knew—but now I——;" as he spoke, the door was opened by a little servant that Mrs. Stevens had recently obtained from a charity institution. "You've kept me standing a pretty time," exclaimed he savagely, as he seized her ear and gave it a spiteful twist; "can't you manage to open the door quicker?" "I was up in the garret, and didn't hear the bell," she replied, timidly. "Then I'll improve your hearing," he continued malignantly, as he pulled her by the ear; "take that, now, and see if you'll keep me standing at the door an hour again." Striding forward into the back parlour, he found his wife holding a small rattan elevated over little Lizzy in a threatening attitude. "Will you never mind me? I've told you again and again not to go, and still you persist in disobeying me. I'll cut you to pieces if you don't mind. Will you ever go again?" she almost screamed in the ears of the terrified child. "Oh, no, mother, never; please don't whip me, I'll mind you;" and as she spoke, she shrank as far as possible into the corner of the room. "What's all this—what's the matter, Jule? What on earth are you going to whip Liz for?" "Because she deserves it," was the sharp reply; "she don't mind a word I say. I've forbid her again and again to go next door to visit those little niggers, and she will do it in spite of me. She slipped off this afternoon, and has been in their house over an hour; and it was only this morning I detected her kissing their Clarence through the fence." "Faugh," said Mr. Stevens, with a look of disgust; "you kissed a nigger! I'm ashamed of you, you nasty little thing; your mother ought to have taken a scrubbing-brush and cleaned your mouth, never do such a thing again; come here to me." As he spoke, he extended his hand and grasped the delicately rounded arm of his little girl. "What induces you to go amongst those people; hasn't your mother again and again forbidden you to do so. Why do you go, I say?" he continued, shaking her roughly by the arm, and frowning savagely. "Why don't you answer?—speak!" The child, with the tears streaming down her lovely face, was only able to answer in her defence. "Oh, pa, I do love them so." "You do, do you?" replied her exasperated father, stamping his foot, and pushing her from him; "go to bed, and if ever I hear of you going there again, you shall be well whipped." The tearful face lingered about the door in hope of a reprieve that did not come, and then disappeared for the night. "The children must not be suffered to go in there, Jule; something I've learned to-day will——" here Mr. Stevens checked himself; and in answer to his wife's impatient "What have you learned?" replied, "Oh, nothing of consequence—nothing that will interest you," and sat with his slipper in his hand, engaged in deep thought. Now for Mr. Stevens to commence a communication to his wife, and then break off in the middle of it, was as novel as disagreeable, as he was generally very communicative, and would detail to her in the evening, with pleasing minuteness, all the rogueries he had accomplished during the day; and his unwillingness to confide something that evidently occupied his mind caused his spouse to be greatly irritated. Mr. Stevens drank his tea in silence, and during the evening continued absorbed in reflection; and, notwithstanding the various ill-natured remarks of his wife upon his strange conduct retired without giving her the slightest clue to its cause. CHAPTER XVII. Plotting. Mr. Stevens awoke at a very early hour the ensuing morning, and quite unceremoniously shook his wife to arouse her also. This he accomplished after considerable labour; for Mrs. Stevens was much more sleepy than usual, in consequence of her husband's restlessness the previous night. "I declare," said she, rubbing her eyes, "I don't get any peace of my life. You lie awake, kicking about, half the night, muttering and whispering about no one knows what, and then want me to rise before day. What are you in such, a hurry for this morning,—no more mysteries, I hope?" "Oh, come, Jule, get up!" said her husband, impatiently. "I must be off to my business very early; I am overburthened with different things this morning." Mrs. Stevens made a very hasty toilette, and descended to the kitchen, where the little charity-girl was bustling about with her eyes only half open. With her assistance, the breakfast was soon prepared, and Mr. Stevens called downstairs. He ate rapidly and silently, and at the conclusion of his meal, put on his hat, and wished his amiable spouse an abrupt good morning. After leaving his house, he did not take the usual course to his office, but turned his steps toward the lower part of the city. Hastening onward, he soon left the improved parts of it in his rear, and entered upon a shabby district. The morning was very chilly, and as it was yet quite early, but few people were stirring: they were labourers hurrying to their work, milkmen, and trundlers of breadcarts. At length he stopped at the door of a tavern, over which was a large sign, bearing the name of Whitticar. On entering, he found two or three forlorn-looking wretches clustering round the stove, endeavouring to receive some warmth upon their half-clothed bodies,—their red and pimpled noses being the only parts about them that did not look cold. They stared wonderingly at Mr. Stevens as he entered; for a person so respectable as himself in appearance was but seldom seen in that house. The boy who attended the bar inquired from behind the counter what he would take. "Mr. Whitticar, if you please," blandly replied Mr. Stevens. Hearing this, the boy bolted from the shop, and quite alarmed the family, by stating that there was a man in the shop, who said he wanted to take Mr. Whitticar, and he suspected that he was a policeman. Whitticar, who was seldom entirely free from some scrape, went through another door to take a survey of the new comer, and on ascertaining who it was, entered the room. "You've quite upset the family; we all took you for a constable," said he, approaching Mr. Stevens, who shook hands with him heartily, and then, laying his arm familiarly on his shoulder, rejoined,— "I say, Whitticar, I want about five minutes' conversation with you. Haven't you some room where we can be quite private for a little while?" "Yes; come this way," replied he. And, leading his visitor through the bar, they entered a small back room, the door of which they locked behind them. "Now, Whitticar," said Mr. Stevens, "I want you to act the part of a friend by the fellow who got in that awkward scrape at this house. As you did not give the evidence you informed me you were possessed of, at the coroner's inquest, it is unnecessary for you to do so before the magistrate at examination. There is no use in hanging the fellow—it cannot result in any benefit to yourself; it will only attract disagreeable notice to your establishment, and possibly may occasion a loss of your licence. We will be willing to make it worth your while to absent yourself, for a short time at least, until the trial is over; it will put money in your purse, and save this poor devil's life besides. What do you say to receiving a hundred and fifty, and going off for a month or two?" "Couldn't think of it, Mr. Stevens, no how. See how my business would suffer; everything would be at loose ends. I should be obliged to hire a man to take my place; and, in that case, I must calculate upon his stealing at least twenty-five per cent. of the receipts: and then there is his wages. No, no that won't do. Besides, I'm trying to obtain the nomination for the office of alderman—to secure it, I must be on the spot; nothing like looking out for oneself. I am afraid I can't accommodate you, squire, unless you can offer something better than one hundred and fifty." "You've got no conscience," rejoined Mr. Stevens, "not a bit." "Well, the less of that the better for me; it's a thing of very little use in the rum-selling business; it interferes with trade—so I can't afford to keep a conscience. If you really want me to go, make me a better offer; say two fifty, and I'll begin to think of it. The trial will be over in a month or six weeks, I suppose, and a spree of that length would be very pleasant." "No, I won't do that, Whitticar,—that's flat; but I'll tell you what I will do. I'll make it two hundred, and what is more, I'll see to your nomination. I'm all right down here, you know; I own the boys in this district; and if you'll say you'll put some little matters through for me after you are elected, I'll call it a bargain." "Then I'm your man," said Whitticar, extending his hand. "Well, then," added Stevens, "come to my office this morning, and you shall have the money; after that I shall expect you to get out of town as quick as possible. Goodbye." "So far all right," muttered Mr. Stevens, with an air of intense satisfaction, as he left the house; "he'll be of great use to me. When it becomes necessary to blind the public by a sham investigation, he will be the man to conduct it; when I want a man released from prison, or a little job of that kind done, he will do it—this act will put him in my power; and I am much mistaken if he won't prove of the utmost service in our riot scheme. Now, then, we will have an examination of McCloskey as soon as they like." A few weeks subsequent to the events we have just written, we find Mr. Stevens seated in his dingy office in company with the McCloskey, who had recently been discharged from custody in default of sufficient evidence being found to warrant his committal for trial. He was sitting with his feet upon the stove, and was smoking a cigar in the most free-and-easy manner imaginable. "So far, so good," said Mr. Stevens, as he laid down the letter he was perusing; "that simplifies the matter greatly; and whatever is to be done towards his removal, must be done quickly—now that the old man is dead there is but one to deal with." During the interval that had elapsed between the interview of Mr. Stevens with Whitticar and the period to which we now refer, Mr. Stevens had been actively engaged in promoting his riot scheme; and already several disturbances had occurred, in which a number of inoffensive coloured people had been injured in their persons and property. But this was only a faint indication of what was to follow; and as he had, through the agency of Mr. Morton and others, been able to prevent any but the most garbled statements of these affairs from getting abroad, there was but little danger of their operations being interfered with. Leading articles daily appeared in the public journals (particularly those that circulated amongst the lowest classes), in which the negroes were denounced, in the strongest terms. It was averred that their insolence, since the commencement of the abolition agitation, had become unbearable; and from many quarters was suggested the absolute necessity for inflicting some general chastisement, to convince them that they were still negroes, and to teach them to remain in their proper place in the body politic. Many of these articles were written by Mr. Stevens, and their insertion as editorials procured through the instrumentality of Mr. Morton and his friends. Mr. Stevens turned to his visitor, and inquired, "What was done last night—much of anything?" "A great deal, yer honour," replied McCloskey; "a nagur or two half killed, and one house set on fire and nearly burned up." "Is that all?" said Mr. Stevens, with a well-assumed look of disappointment. "Is that all? Why, you are a miserable set: you should have beaten every darky out of the district by this time." "They're not so aisily bate out—they fight like sevin divils. One o' 'em, night before last, split Mikey Dolan's head clane open, and it's a small chance of his life he's got to comfort himself wid." "Chances of war—chances of war!" rejoined Mr. Stevens,—"mere trifles when you get used to 'em: you mustn't let that stop you—you have a great deal yet to do. What you have already accomplished is a very small matter compared with what is expected, and what I intend you to do: your work has only just begun, man." "Jist begun!" replied the astonished McCloskey; "haven't we bin raising the very divil every night for the last week—running a near chance of being kilt all the time—and all for nothing! It's gettin' tiresome; one don't like to be fighting the nagurs all the time for the mere fun of the thing—it don't pay, for divil a cent have I got for all my trouble; and ye said ye would pay well, ye remimber." "So I shall," said Mr. Stevens, "when you do something worth paying for—the quarter is not accomplished yet. I want the place made so hot down there that the niggers can't stay. Go a-head, don't give them any rest—I'll protect you from the consequences, whatever they be: I've great things in store for you," continued he, moving nearer and speaking in a confidential tone; "how should you like to return to Ireland a moneyed man?" "I should like it well enough, to be sure; but where's the money to come from, squire?" "Oh, there's money enough to be had if you have the courage to earn it." "I'm willin' enough to earn an honest penny, but I don't like risking me neck for it, squire. It's clear ye'll not be afther givin' me a dale of money widout being sure of havin' the worth of it out o' me; and it's dirty work enough I've done, widout the doin' of any more: me conscience is a sore throuble to me about the other job. Be the powers I'm out o' that, and divil a like scrape will I get in agin wid my own consint." "Your conscience has become troublesome very suddenly," rejoined Mr. Stevens, with a look of angry scorn; "it's strange it don't appear to have troubled you in the least during the last few weeks, whilst you have been knocking niggers on the head so freely." "Well, I'm tired o' that work," interrupted McCloskey; "and what's more, I'll soon be lavin' of it off." "We'll see about that," said Mr. Stevens. "You're a pretty fellow, now, ain't you—grateful, too—very! Here I've been successful in getting you out of a hanging scrape, and require a trifling service in return, and you retire. You'll find this trifling won't do with me," continued Mr. Stevens, with great sternness of manner. "You shall do as I wish: you are in my power! I need your services, and I will have them—make up your mind to that." McCloskey was somewhat staggered at this bold declaration from Mr. Stevens; but he soon assumed his former assured manner, and replied, "I'd like to know how I'm in your power: as far as this riot business is concerned, you're as deep in the mud as I'm in the mire; as for the other, be St. Patrick, I'm clane out o' that!—they don't try a man twice for the same thing." "Don't halloo so loud, my fine fellow," sneeringly rejoined Mr. Stevens, "you are not entirely out of the wood yet; you are by no means as safe as you imagine—you haven't been tried yet, you have only been examined before a magistrate! They lacked sufficient evidence to commit you for trial—that evidence I can produce at any time; so remember, if you please, you have not been tried yet: when you have been, and acquitted, be kind enough to let me know, will you?" Mr. Stevens stood for a few moments silently regarding the change his language had brought over the now crestfallen McCloskey; he then continued—"Don't think you can escape me—I'll have a thousand eyes upon you; no one ever escapes me that I wish to retain. Do as I require, and I'll promote your interest in every possible way, and protect you; but waver, or hold back, and I'll hang you as unhesitatingly as if you were a dog." This threat was given in a tone that left no doubt on the mind of the hearer but that Mr. Stevens would carry out his expressed intention; and the reflections thereby engendered by no means added to the comfort or sense of security that McCloskey had flattered himself he was in future to enjoy; he, therefore, began to discover the bad policy of offending one who might prove so formidable an enemy—of incensing one who had it in his power to retaliate by such terrible measures. He therefore turned to Mr. Stevens, with a somewhat humbled manner, and said: "You needn't get so mad, squire—sure it's but natural that a man shouldn't want to get any deeper in the mire than he can help; and I've enough on my hands now to make them too red to look at wid comfort—sure it's not a shade deeper you'd have 'em?" he asked, looking inquiringly at Mr. Stevens, who was compelled to turn away his face for a moment to hide his agitation. At last he mastered his countenance, and, in as cool a tone as he could assume, replied: "Oh, a little more on them will be scarcely a perceptible addition. You know the old adage, 'In for a penny, in for a pound.' You need have no fear," said he, lowering his voice almost to a whisper; "it can be done in a crowd—and at night—no one will notice it." "I don't know about that, squire—in a crowd some one will be sure to notice it. It's, too dangerous—I can't do it." "Tut, tut, man; don't talk like a fool. I tell you there is no danger. You, in company with a mob of others, are to attack this man's house. When he makes his appearance, as he will be sure to do, shoot him down." "Good God! squire," said McCloskey, his face growing pale at the prospect of what was required of him, "you talk of murder as if it was mere play!" "And still, I never murdered any one," rejoined Mr. Stevens, significantly; "come, come—put your scruples in your pocket, and make up your mind to go through with it like a man. When the thing is done, you shall have five thousand dollars in hard cash, and you can go with it where you please. Now, what do you think of that?" "Ah, squire, the money's a great timptation! but it's an awful job." "No worse than you did for nothing," replied Mr. Stevens. "But that was in a fair fight, and in hot blood; it isn't like planning to kill a man, squire." "Do you call it a fair fight when you steal up behind a man, and break his skull with a slung shot?" asked Mr. Stevens. McCloskey was unable to answer this, and sat moodily regarding his tempter. "Come, make up your mind to it—you might as well," resumed Mr. Stevens, in a coaxing tone. "Ye seem bent on not giving it up, and I suppose I'll have to do it," replied McCloskey, reluctantly; "but what has the man done to ye's, squire, that you're so down upon him?" "Oh, he is one of those infernal Abolitionists, and one of the very worst kind; he lives with a nigger woman—and, what is more, he is married to her!" "Married to a nigger!" exclaimed McCloskey—"it's a quare taste the animal has—but you're not afther killing him for that; there's something more behind: it's not for having a black wife instead of a white one you'd be afther murthering him—ye'll get no stuff like that down me." "No, it is not for that alone, I acknowledge," rejoined Mr. Stevens, with considerable embarrassment. "He insulted me some time ago, and I want to be revenged upon him." "It's a dear job to insult you, at that rate, squire; but where does he live?" "In my neighbourhood—in fact, next door to me," replied Mr. Stevens, with an averted face. "Howly Mother! not away up there—sure it's crazy ye are. What, away up there in the city limits!—why, they would have the police and the sogers at our heels in less than no time. Sure, you're out o' your sinses, to have me go up there with a mob. No, no—there's too much risk—I can't try that." "I tell you there shall be no risk," impatiently replied Mr. Stevens. "It's not to be done to-night, nor to-morrow night; and, when I say do it, you shall do it, and as safely there as anywhere. Only come to the conclusion that a thing must be done, and it is half finished already. You have only to make up your mind that you will accomplish a design in spite of obstacles, and what you once thought to be insurmountable difficulties will prove mere straws in your path. But we are wasting time; I've determined you shall do it, and I hope you now know me well enough to be convinced that it is your best policy to be as obliging as possible. You had better go now, and be prepared to meet me to-night at Whitticar's." After the door closed upon the retreating form of McCloskey, the careless expression that Mr. Stevens's countenance had worn during the conversation, gave place to one full of anxiety and apprehension, and he shuddered as he contemplated the fearful length to which he was proceeding. "If I fail," said he—"pshaw! I'll not fail—I must not fail—for failure is worse than ruin; but cool—cool," he continued, sitting down to his desk—"those who work nervously do nothing right." He sat writing uninterruptedly until quite late in the afternoon, when the fading sunlight compelled him to relinquish his pen, and prepare for home. Thrusting the papers into his pocket, he hurried toward the newspaper office from which were to emanate, as editorials, the carefully concocted appeals to the passions of the rabble which he had been all the afternoon so busily engaged in preparing. CHAPTER XVIII. Mr. Stevens falls into Bad Hands. The amiable partner of Mr. Stevens sat in high dudgeon, at being so long restrained from her favourite beverage by the unusually deferred absence of her husband. At length she was rejoiced by hearing his well-known step as he came through the garden, and the rattle of his latch-key as he opened the door was quite musical in her ears. "I thought you was never coming," said she, querulously, as he entered the room; "I have been waiting tea until I am almost starved." "You needn't have waited a moment, for you will be obliged to eat alone after all; I'm going out. Pour me out a cup of tea—I'll drink it whilst I'm dressing; and," continued Mr. Stevens, "I want you to get me that old brown over-coat and those striped trowsers I used to wear occasionally." "Why, you told me," rejoined Mrs. Stevens, "that you did not require them again, and so I exchanged them for this pair of vases to-day." "The devil you did!" said Mr. Stevens, angrily; "you let them lie about the house for nearly a year—and now, just as they were likely to be of some service to me, you've sold them. It's just like you—always doing something at the wrong time." "How on earth, Stevens, was I to know you wanted them?" "Well, there, Jule, they're gone; don't let's have any more talk about it. Get me another cup of tea; I must go out immediately." After hastily swallowing the second cup, Mr. Stevens left his home, and walked to an omnibus-station, from whence he was quickly transported to a street in the lower part of the city, in which were a number of second-hand clothing stores. These places were supported principally by the country people who attended the market in the same street, and who fancied that the clothing they purchased at these shops must be cheap, because it was at second-hand. Mr. Stevens stopped at the door of one of these establishments, and paused to take a slight survey of the premises before entering. The doorway was hung with coats of every fashion of the last twenty years, and all in various stages of decay. Some of them looked quite respectable, from much cleaning and patching; and others presented a reckless and forlorn aspect, as their worn and ragged sleeves swung about in the evening air. Old hats, some of which were, in all probability, worn at a period anterior to the Revolution, kept company with the well-blacked shoes that were ranged on shelves beside the doorway, where they served in the capacity of signs, and fairly indicated the style of goods to be purchased within. Seeing that there were no buyers in the store, Mr. Stevens opened the door, and entered. The sounds of his footsteps drew from behind the counter no less a personage than our redoubtable friend Kinch, who, in the absence of his father, was presiding over the establishment. "Well, Snowball," said Mr. Stevens, "do you keep this curiosity-shop?" "My name is not Snowball, and this ain't a curiosity-shop," replied Kinch. "Do you want to buy anything?" "I believe I do," answered Mr. Stevens. "Let me look at some coats—one that I can get on—I won't say fit me, I'm indifferent about that—let me see some of the worst you've got." Kinch looked surprised at this request from a gentleman of Mr. Stevens's appearance, and handed out, quite mechanically, a coat that was but slightly worn. "Oh, that won't do—I want something like this," said Mr. Stevens, taking down from a peg a very dilapidated coat, of drab colour, and peculiar cut. What do you ask for this?" "That's not fit for, a gentleman like you, sir," said Kinch. "I'm the best judge of that matter," rejoined Mr. Stevens. "What is the price of it?" "Oh, that coat you can have for a dollar," replied Kinch. "Then I'll take it. Now hand out some trowsers." The trowsers were brought; and from a large number Mr. Stevens selected a pair that suited him. Then adding an old hat to his list of purchases, he declared his fit-out complete. "Can't you accommodate me with some place where I can put these on?" he asked of Kinch; "I'm going to have a little sport with some friends of mine, and I want to wear them." Kinch led the way into a back room, where he assisted Mr. Stevens to array himself in his newly-purchased garments. By the change in his attire he seemed completely robbed of all appearance of respectability; the most disagreeable points of his physique seemed to be brought more prominently forward by the habiliments he had assumed, they being quite in harmony with his villanous countenance. Kinch, who looked at him with wonder, was forced to remark, "Why, you don't look a bit like a gentleman now, sir." Mr. Stevens stepped forward, and surveyed himself in the looking-glass. The transformation was complete—surprising even to himself. "I never knew before," said he, mentally, "how far a suit of clothes goes towards giving one the appearance of a gentleman." He now emptied the pockets of the suit he had on;—in so doing, he dropped upon the floor, without observing it, one of the papers. "Fold these up," said he, handing to Kinch the suit he had just taken off, "and to-morrow bring them to this address." As he spoke, he laid his card upon the counter, and, after paying for his new purchases, walked out of the shop, and bent his steps in the direction of Whitticar's tavern. On arriving there, he found the bar-room crowded with half-drunken men, the majority of whom were Irishmen, armed with bludgeons of all sizes and shapes. His appearance amongst them excited but little attention, and he remained there some time before he was recognized by the master of the establishment. "By the howly St. Patherick I didn't know you, squire; what have you been doing to yourself?" "Hist!" cried Mr. Stevens, putting his fingers to his lips; "I thought it was best to see how matters were progressing, so I've run down for a little while. How are you getting on?" "Fine, fine, squire," replied Whitticar; "the boys are ripe for anything. They talk of burning down a nigger church." "Not to-night—they must not do such a thing to-night—we are not ready for that yet. I've made out a little list—some of the places on it they might have a dash at to-night, just to keep their hands in." As Mr. Stevens spoke, he fumbled in his pocket for the list in question, and was quite surprised to be unable to discover it. "Can't you find it, squire?" asked Whitticar. "I must have lost; it on the way," replied Mr. Stevens. "I am sure I put it in this pocket," and he made another search. "No use—I'll have to give it up," said he, at length; "but where is McCloskey? I haven't seen him since I came in." "He came here this afternoon, very far gone; he had been crooking his elbow pretty frequently, and was so very drunk that I advised him to go home and go to bed; so he took another dram and went away, and I haven't seen him since." "That's bad, very bad—everything goes wrong this evening—I wanted him to-night particularly." "Wouldn't the boys go out with you?" suggested Whitticar. "No, no; that wouldn't do at all. I mustn't appear in these things. If I'm hauled up for participation, who is to be your lawyer—eh?" "True for you," rejoined Whitticar; "and I'll just disperse the crowd as soon as I can, and there will be one peaceable night in the district at any rate." Not liking to give directions to the mob personally, and his useful coadjutor McCloskey not being at hand, Mr. Stevens came to the conclusion he would return to his home, and on the next evening a descent should be made upon the places marked on the list. Taking out his watch, he found it would be too late to return to the store where he had purchased his present adornments, so he determined to start for home. The coat that temporarily adorned the person of Mr. Stevens was of peculiar cut and colour—it was, in fact, rather in the rowdy style, and had, in its pristine state, bedecked the person of a member of a notorious fire company. These gentry had for a long time been the terror of the district in which they roamed, and had rendered themselves highly obnoxious to some of the rival factions on the borders of their own territory; they had the unpleasant habit of pitching into and maltreating, without the slightest provocation, any one whom their practised eyes discovered to be a rival; and by such outrages they had excited in the bosoms of their victims a desire for revenge that only awaited the occasion to manifest itself. Mr. Stevens, in happy unconsciousness, that, owing to his habiliments, he represented one of the well-known and hated faction, walked on quite leisurely; but, unfortunately for him, his way home lay directly through the camp of their bitterest and most active enemies. Standing in front of a tavern-window, through which a bright light shone, were a group of young men, who bestowed upon Mr. Stevens more than passing attention. "I'm blest," exclaimed one of them, if there ain't a ranger! now that it a saucy piece of business, ain't it! That fellow has come up here to be able to go back and play brag-game." "Let's wallop him, then," suggested another, "and teach him better than to come parading himself in our parts. I owe 'em something for the way they served me when I was down in their district." "Well, come on," said the first speaker, "or he will get away whilst we are jawing about what we shall do." Advancing to Mr. Stevens, he tapped that gentleman on the shoulder, and said, with mock civility, and in as bland a tone as he could assume, "It's really very obliging of you, mister, to come up here to be flogged—saves us the trouble of coming down to you. We would like to settle with you for that drubbing you gave one of our boys last week." "You must be mistaken," replied Mr. Stevens: "I don't know anything of the affair to which you allude." "You don't, eh! Well, take that, then, to freshen your memory," exclaimed one of the party, at the same time dealing him a heavy blow on the cheek, which made the lamplights around appear to dance about in the most fantastic style. The first impulse of Mr. Stevens was to cry out for the watchman; but a moment's reflection suggested the impolicy of that project, as he would inevitably be arrested with the rest; and to be brought before a magistrate in his present guise, would have entailed upon him very embarrassing explanations; he therefore thought it best to beg off—to throw himself, as it were, upon their sympathies. "Stop, gentlemen—stop—for God's sake, stop," he cried, as soon as he could regain the breath that had been almost knocked out of him by the tremendous blow he had just received—"don't kill an innocent man; upon my honour I never saw you before, nor ever assaulted any of you in my life. My dear friends," he continued, in a dolorous tone, "please let me go—you are quite mistaken: I assure you I am not the man." "No, we ain't mistaken, either: you're one of the rangers; I know you by your coat," replied one of the assaulters. It now flashed upon Mr. Stevens that he had brought himself into these difficulties, by the assumption of the dress he then wore; he therefore quickly rejoined—"Oh, it is not my coat—I only put it on for a joke!" "That's a likely tale," responded one of the party, who looked very incredulous; "I don't believe a word of it. That's some darned stuff you've trumped up, thinking to gammon us—it won't go down; we'll just give you a walloping, if it's only to teach you to wear your own clothes,"—and suiting the action to the word, he commenced pommelling him unmercifully. "Help! help!" screamed Mr. Stevens. "Don't kill me, gentlemen,—don't kill me!" "Oh! we won't kill you—we'll only come as near it as we can, without quite finishing you," cried one of his relentless tormenters. On hearing this, their victim made a frantic effort to break away, and not succeeding in it, he commenced yelling at the top of his voice. As is usual in such cases, the watchman was nowhere to be seen; and his cries only exasperated his persecutors the more. "Hit him in the bread-crusher, and stop his noise," suggested one of the party farthest off from Mr. Stevens. This piece of advice was carried into immediate effect, and the unfortunate wearer of the obnoxious coat received a heavy blow in the mouth, which cut his lips and knocked out one of his front teeth. His cries now became so loud as to render it necessary to gag him, which was done by one of the party in the most thorough and expeditious manner. They then dragged him into a wheelwright's shop near by, where they obtained some tar, with which they coated his face completely. "Oh! don't he look like a nigger!" said one of the party, when they had finished embellishing their victim. "Rub some on his hands, and then let him go," suggested another. "When he gets home I guess he'll surprise his mammy: I don't believe his own dog will know him!" A shout of laughter followed this remark, in the midst of which they ungagged Mr. Stevens and turned him from the door. "Now run for it—cut the quickest kind of time," exclaimed one of them, as he gave him a kick to add impetus to his forward movement. This aid was, however, entirely unnecessary, for Mr. Stevens shot away from the premises like an arrow from a bow; and that, too, without any observation upon the direction in which he was going. As soon as he felt himself out of the reach of his tormentors, he sat down upon the steps of a mansion, to consider what was best to be done. All the shops, and even the taverns, were closed—not a place was open where he could procure the least assistance; he had not even an acquaintance in the neighbourhood to whom he might apply. He was, indeed, a pitiable object to look upon The hat he had so recently purchased, bad as it was when it came into his possession, was now infinitely less presentable. In the severe trials it had undergone, in company with its unfortunate owner, it had lost its tip and half the brim. The countenance beneath it would, however, have absorbed the gazer's whole attention. His lips were swelled to a size that would have been regarded as large even on the face of a Congo negro, and one eye was puffed out to an alarming extent; whilst the coating of tar he had received rendered him such an object as the reader can but faintly picture to himself. The door of the mansion was suddenly opened, and there issued forth a party of young men, evidently in an advanced state of intoxication. "Hallo! here's a darkey!" exclaimed one of them, as the light from the hall fell upon the upturned face of Mr. Stevens. "Ha, ha! Here's a darkey—now for some fun!" Mr. Stevens was immediately surrounded by half a dozen well-dressed young men, who had evidently been enjoying an entertainment not conducted upon temperance principles. "Spirit of—hic—hic—night, whence co-co-comest thou?" stammered one; "sp-p-peak—art thou a creature of the mag-mag-na-tion-goblin-damned, or only a nigger?—speak!" Mr. Stevens, who at once recognized one or two of the parties as slight acquaintances, would not open his mouth, for fear that his voice might discover him, as to them, above all persons, he would have shrunk from making himself known, he therefore began to make signs as though he were dumb. "Let him alone," said one of the more sober of the party; "he's a poor dumb fellow—let him go." His voice was disregarded, however, as the rest seemed bent on having some sport. A half-hogshead, nearly filled with water, which stood upon the edge of the pavement, for the convenience of the builders who were at work next door, caught the attention of one of them. "Let's make him jump into this," he exclaimed, at the same time motioning to Mr. Stevens to that effect. By dint of great effort they made him understand what was required, and they then continued to make him jump in and out of the hogshead for several minutes; then, joining hands, they danced around him, whilst he stood knee-deep in the water, shivering, and making the most imploring motions to be set at liberty. Whilst they were thus engaged, the door again opened, and the fashionable Mr. Morton (who had been one of the guests) descended the steps, and came to see what had been productive of so much mirth. "What have you got here?" he asked, pressing forward, until he saw the battered form of Mr. Stevens; "oh, let the poor darkey go," he continued, compassionately, for he had just drunk enough to make him feel humane; "let the poor fellow go, it's a shame to treat him in this manner." As he spoke, he endeavoured to take from the hands of one of the party a piece of chip, with which he was industriously engaged in streaking the face of Mr. Stevens with lime, "Let me alone, Morton—let me alone; I'm making a white man of him, I'm going to make him a glorious fellow-citizen, and have him run for Congress. Let me alone, I say." Mr. Morton was able, however, after some persuasion, to induce the young men to depart; and as his home lay in a direction opposite to theirs, he said to Mr. Stevens, "Come on, old fellow, I'll protect you." As soon as they were out of hearing of the others, Mr. Stevens exclaimed, "Don't you know me, Morton?" Mr. Morton started back with surprise, and looked at his companion in a bewildered manner, then exclaimed, "No, I'll be hanged if I do. Who the devil are you?" "I'm Stevens; you know me." "Indeed I don't. Who's Stevens?" "You don't know me! why, I'm George Stevens, the lawyer." Mr. Morton thought that he now recognized the voice, and as they were passing under the lamp at the time, Mr. Stevens said to him, "Put your finger on my face, and you will soon see it is only tar." Mr. Morton did as he was desired, and found his finger smeared with the sticky article. "What on earth have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, with great surprise; "what is all this masquerading for?" Mr. Stevens hereupon related his visit at Whitticar's, and detailed the events that had subsequently occurred. Mr. Morton gave vent to shouts of laughter as he listened to the recital of his friend. "By George!" he exclaimed, "I'll have to tell that; it is too good to keep." "Oh, no, don't," said Mr. Stevens; "that won't do—you forget what I came out for?" "True," rejoined Mr. Morton; "I suppose it will be best to keep mum about it. I'll go home with you, you might fall into the hands of the Philistines again." "Thank you—thank you," replied Mr. Stevens, who felt greatly relieved to have some company for his further protection; "and," continued he, "if I could only get some of this infernal stuff off my face, I should be so glad; let us try." Accordingly they stopped at the nearest pump, and endeavoured to remove some of the obnoxious tar from his face; but, unfortunately, the only result obtained by their efforts was to rub it more thoroughly in, so they were compelled to give up in despair, and hasten onward. Mr. Stevens rang so loudly at the door, as to quite startle his wife and the charity-girl, both of whom had fallen into a sound sleep, as they sat together awaiting his return. Mr. Morton, who, as we have said before, was not entirely sober, was singing a popular melody, and keeping time upon the door with the head of his cane. Now, in all her life, Mrs. Stevens had never heard her husband utter a note, and being greatly frightened at the unusual noise upon the door-step, held a hurried consultation with the charity-girl upon the best mode of proceeding. "Call through the key-hole, ma'am," suggested she, which advice Mrs. Stevens immediately followed, and inquired, "Who's there?" "Open the door, Jule, don't keep me out here with your darned nonsense; let me in quick." "Yes, let him in," added Mr. Morton; "he's brought a gentleman from Africa with him." Mrs. Stevens did not exactly catch the purport of the words uttered by Mr. Morton; and, therefore, when she opened the door, and her husband, with his well-blacked face, stalked into the entry, she could not repress a scream of fright at the hideous figure he presented. "Hush, hush," he exclaimed, "don't arouse the neighbours—it's me; don't you know my voice." Mrs. Stevens stared at him in a bewildered manner, and after bidding Mr. Morton "Good night," she closed and locked the door, and followed her husband into the back room. In a short time he recapitulated the events of the night to his astonished and indignant spouse, who greatly commiserated his misfortunes. A bottle of sweet oil was brought into requisition, and she made a lengthened effort to remove the tar from her husband's face, in which she only partially succeeded; and it was almost day when he crawled off to bed, with the skin half scraped off from his swollen face. CHAPTER XIX. The Alarm. Immediately after the departure of Mr. Stevens, Master Kinch began to consider the propriety of closing the establishment for the night. Sliding down from the counter, where he had been seated, reflecting upon the strange conduct of his recent customer, he said, "I feels rather queer round about here," laying his hand upon his stomach; "and I'm inclined to think that some of them 'ere Jersey sausages and buckwheat cakes that the old man has been stuffing himself with, wouldn't go down slow. Rather shabby in him not to come back, and let me go home, and have a slap at the wittles. I expect nothing else, but that he has eat so much, that he's fell asleep at the supper-table, and won't wake up till bedtime. He's always serving me that same trick." The old man thus alluded to was no other than Master Kinch's father, who had departed from the shop two or three hours previously, promising to return immediately after tea. This promise appeared to have entirely faded from his recollection, as he was at that moment, as Kinch had supposed, fast asleep, and totally oblivious of the fact that such a person as his hungry descendant was in existence. Having fully come to the conclusion to suspend operations for the evening, Kinch made two or three excursions into the street, returning each time laden with old hats, coats, and shoes. These he deposited on the counter without order or arrangement, muttering, as he did so, that the old man could sort 'em out in the morning to suit himself. The things being all brought from the street, he had only to close the shutters, which operation was soon effected, and our hungry friend on his way home. The next morning Mr. De Younge (for the father of Kinch rejoiced in that aristocratic cognomen) was early at his receptacle for old clothes, and it being market-day, he anticipated doing a good business. The old man leisurely took down the shutters, assorted and hung out the old clothes, and was busily engaged in sweeping out the store, when his eye fell upon the paper dropped by Mr. Stevens the evening previous. "What's dis 'ere," said he, stooping to pick it up; "bill or suthin' like it, I s'pose. What a trial 'tis not to be able to read writin'; don't know whether 'tis worth keeping or not; best save it though till dat ar boy of mine comes, he can read it—he's a scholar. Ah, de children now-a-days has greater 'vantages than deir poor fathers had." Whilst he was thus soliloquizing, his attention was arrested by the noise of footsteps in the other part of the shop, and looking up, he discerned the tall form of Mr. Walters. "Why, bless me," said the old man, "dis is an early visit; where you come from, honey, dis time o' day?" "Oh, I take a walk every morning, to breathe a little of the fresh air; it gives one an appetite for breakfast, you know. You'll let me take the liberty of sitting on your counter, won't you?" he continued; "I want to read a little article in a newspaper I have just purchased." Assent being readily given, Mr. Walters was soon perusing the journal with great attention; at last he tossed it from him in an impatient manner, and exclaimed, "Of all lying rascals, I think the reporters for this paper are the greatest. Now, for instance, three or four nights since, a gang of villains assaulted one of my tenants—a coloured man—upon his own doorstep, and nearly killed him, and that, too, without the slightest provocation; they then set fire to the house, which was half consumed before it could be extinguished; and it is here stated that the coloured people were the aggressors, and whilst they were engaged in the melee, the house caught fire accidentally." "Yes," rejoined Mr. De Younge; "things are gitting mighty critical even in dese 'ere parts; and I wouldn't live furder down town if you was to give me a house rent-free. Why, it's raly dangerous to go home nights down dere." "And there is no knowing how long we may be any better off up here," continued Mr. Walters; "the authorities don't seem to take the least notice of them, and the rioters appear to be having it all their own way." They continued conversing upon the topic for some time, Mr. De Younge being meanwhile engaged in sponging and cleaning some coats he had purchased the day before; in so doing, he was obliged to remove the paper he had picked up from the floor, and it occurred to him to ask Mr. Walters to read it; he therefore handed it to him, saying— "Jist read dat, honey, won't you? I want to know if it's worth savin'. I've burnt up two or three receipts in my life, and had de bills to pay over; and I'se got rale careful, you know. 'Taint pleasant to pay money twice over for de same thing." Mr. Walters took the paper extended to him, and, after glancing over it, remarked, "This handwriting is very familiar to me, very; but whose it is, I can't say; it appears to be a list of addresses, or something of that kind." And he read over various names of streets, and numbers of houses. "Why," he exclaimed, with a start of surprise, "here is my own house upon the list, 257, Easton-street; then here is 22, Christian-street; here also are numbers in Baker-street, Bedford-street, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Streets; in some of which houses I know coloured people live, for one or two of them are my own. This is a strange affair." As he spoke, he turned over the paper, and read on the other side,—"Places to be attacked." "Why, this looks serious," he continued, with some excitement of manner. "'Places to be attacked,'—don't that seem to you as if it might be a list of places for these rioters to set upon? I really must look into this. Who could have left it here?" "I raly don't know," replied the old man. "Kinch told me suthin' last night about some gemman comin' here and changing his clothes; p'raps 'twas him. I'd like to know who 'twas myself. Well, wait awhile, my boy will come in directly; maybe he can explain it." He had scarcely finished speaking, when Master Kinch made his appearance, with his hat, as usual, placed upon nine hairs, and his mouth smeared with the eggs and bacon with which he had been "staying and comforting" himself. He took off his hat on perceiving Mr. Walters, and, with great humility, "hoped that gentleman was well." "Yes, very well, Kinch," replied Mr. Walters. "We were waiting for you. Can you tell where this came from?" he asked, handing him the mysterious paper. "Never seen it before, that I know of," replied Kinch, after a short inspection. "Well, who was here last night?" asked his father; "you said you sold suthin'?" "So I did," replied Kinch; "sold a whole suit; and the gentleman who put it on said he was going out for a lark. He was changing some papers from his pocket: perhaps he dropped it. I'm to take this suit back to him to-day. Here is his card." "By heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Walters, after looking at the card, "I know the fellow,—George Stevens, 'Slippery George,'—every one knows him, and can speak no good of him either. Now I recognize the handwriting of the list; I begin to suspect something wrong by seeing his name in connection with this." Hereupon Kinch was subjected to a severe cross-examination, which had the effect of deepening Mr. Walters's impression, that some plot was being concocted that would result to the detriment of the coloured people; for he was confident that no good could be indicated by the mysterious conduct of Mr. Stevens. After some deliberation, Kinch received instructions to take home the clothes as directed, and to have his eyes about him; and if he saw or heard anything, he was to report it. In accordance with his instructions, Master Kinch made several journeys to Mr. Stevens's office, but did not succeed in finding that gentleman within; the last trip he made there fatigued him to such a degree, that he determined to wait his arrival, as he judged, from the lateness of the hour, that, if it was his intention to come at all that day, he would soon be there. "I'll sit down here," said Kinch, who espied an old box in the back part of the entry, "and give myself a little time to blow." He had not sat long before he heard footsteps on the stairs, and presently the sound of voices became quite audible. "That's him," ejaculated Kinch, as Mr. Stevens was heard saying, in an angry tone,—"Yes; and a devil of a scrape I got into by your want of sobriety. Had you followed my directions, and met me at Whitticar's, instead of getting drunk as a beast, and being obliged to go home to bed, it wouldn't have happened." "Well, squire," replied McCloskey, for he was the person addressed by Mr. Stevens, "a man can't be expected always to keep sober." "He ought to when he has business before him," rejoined Mr. Stevens, sharply; "how the devil am I to trust you to do anything of importance, when I can't depend on your keeping sober a day at a time? Come up to this top landing," continued he, "and listen to me, if you think you are sober enough to comprehend what I say to you." They now approached, and stood within a few feet of the place where Kinch was sitting, and Mr. Stevens said, with a great deal of emphasis, "Now, I want you to pay the strictest attention to what I say. I had a list of places made out for you last night, but, somehow or other, I lost it. But that is neither here nor there. This is what I want you to attend to particularly. Don't attempt anything to-night; you can't get a sufficient number of the boys together; but, when you do go, you are to take, first, Christian-street, between Eleventh and Twelfth,—there are several nigger families living in that block. Smash in their windows, break their furniture, and, if possible, set one of the houses on fire, and that will draw attention to that locality whilst you are operating elsewhere. By that time, the boys will be ripe for anything. Then you had better go to a house in Easton-street, corner of Shotwell: there is a rich nigger living there whose plunder is worth something. I owe him an old grudge, and I want you to pay it off for me." "You keep me pretty busy paying your debts. What's the name of this rich nigger?" "Walters," replied Mr. Stevens; "everybody knows him. Now about that other affair." Here he whispered so low, that Kinch could only learn they were planning an attack on the house of some one, but failed in discovering the name. McCloskey departed as soon as he had received full directions from Mr. Stevens, and his retreating steps might be still heard upon the stairs, when Mr. Stevens unlocked his office-door and entered. After giving him sufficient time to get quietly seated, Kinch followed, and delivered the clothes left with him the evening previous. He was very much struck with Mr. Stevens's altered appearance, and, in fact, would not have recognized him, but for his voice. "You don't seem to be well?" remarked Kinch, inquiringly. "No, I'm not," he replied, gruffly; "I've caught cold." As Kinch was leaving the office, he called after him, "Did you find a paper in your shop this morning?" "No, sir," replied Kinch, "I didn't;" but mentally he observed, "My daddy did though;" and, fearful of some other troublesome question, he took leave immediately. Fatigued and out of breath, Kinch arrived at the house of Mr. Walters, where he considered it best to go and communicate what he had learned. Mr. Walters was at dinner when he received from the maid a summons to the parlour to see a lad, who said his business was a matter "of life or death." He was obliged to smile at the air of importance with which Kinch commenced the relation of what he had overheard—but the smile gave place to a look of anxiety and indignation long ere he had finished, and at the conclusion of the communication he was highly excited and alarmed. "The infernal scoundrel!" exclaimed Mr. Walters. "Are you sure it was my house?" "Yes, sure," was Kinch's reply. "You are the only coloured person living in the square—and he said plain enough for anybody to understand, 'Easton-street, corner of Shotwell.' I heard every word but what they said towards the last in a whisper." "You couldn't catch anything of it?" asked Mr. Walters. "No, I missed that; they talked too low for me to hear." After reflecting a few moments, Mr. Walters said: "Not a word of this is to be lisped anywhere except with my permission, and by my direction. Have you had your dinner?" "No, sir," was the prompt reply. "I want to despatch a note to Mr. Ellis, by you, if it won't trouble you too much. Can you oblige me?" "Oh, yes, sir, by all means," replied Kinch, "I'll go there with pleasure." "Then whilst I'm writing," continued Mr. Walters, "you can be eating your dinner, that will economize time, you know." Kinch followed the servant who answered the bell into the dining-room which Mr. Walters had just left. On being supplied with a knife and fork, he helped himself bountifully to the roast duck, then pouring out a glass of wine, he drank with great enthusiasm, to "our honoured self," which proceeding caused infinite amusement to the two servants who were peeping at him through the dining-room door. "Der-licious," exclaimed Kinch, depositing his glass upon the table; "guess I'll try another;" and suiting the action to the word, he refilled his glass, and dispatched its contents in the wake of the other. Having laboured upon the duck until his appetite was somewhat appeased, he leant back in his chair and suffered his plate to be changed for another, which being done, he made an attack upon a peach pie, and nearly demolished it outright. This last performance brought his meal to a conclusion, and with a look of weariness, he remarked, "I don't see how it is—but as soon as I have eat for a little while my appetite is sure to leave me—now I can't eat a bit more. But the worst thing is walking down to Mr. Ellis's. I don't feel a bit like it, but I suppose I must;" and reluctantly rising from the table, he returned to the parlour, where he found Mr. Walters folding the note he had promised to deliver. As soon as he had despatched Kinch on his errand, Mr. Walters put on his hat and walked to the office of the mayor. "Is his honour in?" he asked of one of the police, who was lounging in the anteroom. "Yes, he is—what do you want with him?" asked the official, in a rude tone. "That, sir, is none of your business," replied Mr. Walters; "if the mayor is in, hand him this card, and say I wish to see him." Somewhat awed by Mr. Walters's dignified and decided manner, the man went quickly to deliver his message, and returned with an answer that his honour would be obliged to Mr. Walters if he would step into his office. On following the officer, he was ushered into a small room—the private office of the chief magistrate of the city. "Take a seat, sir," said the mayor, politely, "it is some time since we have met. I think I had the pleasure of transacting business with you quite frequently some years back if I am not mistaken." "You are quite correct," replied Mr. Walters, "and being so favourably impressed by your courtesy on the occasions to which you refer, I have ventured to intrude upon you with a matter of great importance, not only to myself, but I think I may say to the public generally. Since this morning, circumstances have come under my notice that leave no doubt on my mind that a thoroughly-concerted plan is afoot for the destruction of the property of a large number of our coloured citizens—mine amongst the rest. You must be aware," he continued, "that many very serious disturbances have occurred lately in the lower part of the city." "Yes, I've heard something respecting it," replied the mayor, "but I believe they were nothing more than trifling combats between the negroes and the whites in that vicinity." "Oh, no, sir! I assure you," rejoined Mr. Walters, "they were and are anything but trifling. I regard them, however, as only faint indications of what we may expect if the thing is not promptly suppressed; there is an organized gang of villains, who are combined for the sole purpose of mobbing us coloured citizens; and, as we are inoffensive, we certainly deserve protection; and here," continued Mr. Walters, "is a copy of the list of places upon which it is rumoured an attack is to be made." "I really don't see how I'm to prevent it, Mr. Walters; with the exception of your own residence, all that are here enumerated are out of my jurisdiction. I can send two or three police for your protection if you think it necessary. But I really can't see my way clear to do anything further." "Two or three police!" said Mr. Walters, with rising indignation at the apathy and indifference the mayor exhibited; "they would scarcely be of any more use than as many women. If that is the extent of the aid you can afford me, I must do what I can to protect myself." "I trust your fears lead you to exaggerate the danger," said the mayor, as Mr. Walters arose to depart; "perhaps it is only rumour after all." "I might have flattered myself with the same idea, did I not feel convinced by what has so recently occurred but a short distance from my own house; at any rate, if I am attacked, they will find I am not unprepared. Good day," and bowing courteously to the mayor, Mr. Walters departed. CHAPTER XX. The Attack. Mr. Walters lost no time in sending messengers to the various parties threatened by the mob, warning them either to leave their houses or to make every exertion for a vigorous defence. Few, however, adopted the latter extremity; the majority fled from their homes, leaving what effects they could not carry away at the mercy of the mob, and sought an asylum in the houses of such kindly-disposed whites as would give them shelter. Although the authorities of the district had received the most positive information of the nefarious schemes of the rioters, they had not made the slightest efforts to protect the poor creatures threatened in their persons and property, but let the tide of lawlessness flow on unchecked. Throughout the day parties of coloured people might have been seen hurrying to the upper part of the city: women with terror written on their faces, some with babes in their arms and children at their side, hastening to some temporary place of refuge, in company with men who were bending beneath the weight of household goods. Mr. Walters had converted his house into a temporary fortress: the shutters of the upper windows had been loop-holed, double bars had been placed across the doors and windows on the ground floor, carpets had been taken up, superfluous furniture removed, and an air of thorough preparation imparted. A few of Mr. Walters's male friends had volunteered their aid in defence of his house, and their services had been accepted. Mr. Ellis, whose house was quite indefensible (it being situated in a neighbourhood swarming with the class of which the mob was composed), had decided on bringing his family to the house of Mr. Walters, and sharing with him the fortunes of the night, his wife and daughters having declared they would feel as safe there as elsewhere; and, accordingly, about five in the afternoon, Mrs. Ellis came up, accompanied by Kinch and the girls. Caddy and Kinch, who brought up the rear, seemed very solicitous respecting the safety of a package that the latter bore in his arms. "What have you there?" asked Mr. Walters, with a smile; "it must be powder, or some other explosive matter, you take such wonderful pains for its preservation. Come, Caddy, tell us what it is; is it powder?" "No, Mr. Walters, it isn't powder," she replied; "it's nothing that will blow the house up or burn it down." "What is it, then? You tell us, Kinch." "Just do, if you think best," said Caddy, giving him a threatening glance; whereupon, Master Kinch looked as much as to say, "If you were to put me on the rack you couldn't get a word out of me." "I suppose I shall have to give you up," said Mr. Walters at last; "but don't stand here in the entry; come up into the drawing-room." Mrs. Ellis and Esther followed him upstairs, and stood at the door of the drawing-room surveying the preparations for defence that the appearance of the room so abundantly indicated. Guns were stacked in the corner, a number of pistols lay upon the mantelpiece, and a pile of cartridges was heaped up beside a small keg of powder that stood upon the table opposite the fire-place. "Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Ellis, "this looks dreadful; it almost frightens me out of my wits to see so many dangerous weapons scattered about." "And how does it affect our quiet Esther?" asked Mr. Walters. "It makes me wish I were a man," she replied, with considerable vehemence of manner. All started at this language from one of her usually gentle demeanour. "Why, Esther, how you talk, girl: what's come over you?" "Talk!" replied she. "I say nothing that I do not feel. As we came through the streets to-day, and I saw so many inoffensive creatures, who, like ourselves, have never done these white wretches the least injury,—to see them and us driven from our homes by a mob of wretches, who can accuse us of nothing but being darker than themselves,—it takes all the woman out of my bosom, and makes me feel like a——" here Esther paused, and bit her lip to prevent the utterance of a fierce expression that hovered on the tip of her tongue. She then continued: "One poor woman in particular I noticed: she had a babe in her arms, poor thing, and was weeping bitterly because she knew of no place to go to seek for shelter or protection. A couple of white men stood by jeering and taunting her. I felt as though I could have strangled them: had I been a man, I would have attacked them on the spot, if I had been sure they would have killed me the next moment." "Hush! Esther, hush! my child; you must not talk so, it sounds unwomanly—unchristian. Why, I never heard you talk so before." Esther made no reply, but stood resting her forehead upon the mantelpiece. Her face was flushed with excitement, and her dark eyes glistened like polished jet. Mr. Walters stood regarding her for a time with evident admiration, and then said, "You are a brave one, after my own heart." Esther hung down her head, confused by the ardent look he cast upon her, as he continued, "You have taken me by surprise; but it's always the way with you quiet people; events like these bring you out—seem to change your very natures, as it were. We must look out," said he, with a smile, turning to one of the young men, "or Miss Ellis will excel us all in courage. I shall expect great things from her if we are attacked to-night." "Don't make a jest of me, Mr. Walters," said Esther, and as she spoke her eyes moistened and her lip quivered with vexation. "No, no, my dear girl, don't misunderstand me," replied he, quickly; "nothing was farther from my thoughts. I truly meant all that I said. I believe you to be a brave girl." "If you really think so," rejoined Esther, "prove it by showing me how to load these." As she spoke she took from the mantel one of the pistols that were lying there, and turned it over to examine it. "Oh! put that down, Esther, put that down immediately," almost screamed Mrs. Ellis; "what with your speeches and your guns you'll quite set me crazy; do take it from her, Walters; it will certainly go off." "There's not the least danger, Ellen," he replied; "there's nothing in it." "Well, I'm afraid of guns, loaded or unloaded; they are dangerous, all of them, whether they have anything in them or not. Do you hear me, Esther; do put that down and come out of here." "Oh, no, mother," said she, "do let me remain; there, I'll lay the pistols down and won't touch them again whilst you are in the room." "You may safely leave her in my hands," interposed Mr. Walters. "If she wants to learn, let her; it won't injure her in the least, I'll take care of that." This assurance somewhat quieted Mrs. Ellis, who left the room and took up her quarters in another apartment. "Now, Mr. Walters," said Esther, taking off her bonnet, I'm quite in earnest about learning to load these pistols, and I wish you to instruct me. You may be hard pressed tonight, and unable to load for yourselves, and in such an emergency I could perhaps be of great use to you." "But, my child," replied he, "to be of use in the manner you propose, you would be compelled to remain in quite an exposed situation." "I am aware of that," calmly rejoined Esther. "And still you are not afraid?" he asked, in surprise. "Why should I be; I shall not be any more exposed than you or my father." "That's enough—I'll teach you. Look here," said Mr. Walters, "observe how I load this." Esther gave her undivided attention to the work before her, and when he had finished, she took up another pistol and loaded it with a precision and celerity that would have reflected honour on a more practised hand. "Well done!—capital!" exclaimed Mr. Walters, as she laid down the weapon. "You'll do, my girl; as I said before, you are one after my own heart. Now, whilst you are loading the rest, I will go downstairs, where I have some little matters to attend to." On the stair-way he was met by Kinch and Caddy, who were tugging up a large kettle of water. "Is it possible, Caddy," asked Mr. Walters, "that your propensity to dabble in soap and water has overcome you even at this critical time? You certainly can't be going to scrub?" "No, I'm not going to scrub," she replied, "nor do anything like it. We've got our plans, haven't we, Kinch?" "Let's hear what your plans are. I'd like to be enlightened a little, if convenient," said Mr. Walters. "Well, it's not convenient, Mr. Walters, so you need not expect to hear a word about them. You'd only laugh if we were to tell you, so we're going to keep it to ourselves, ain't we, Kinch?" The latter, thus appealed to, put on an air of profound mystery, and intimated that if they were permitted to pursue the even tenor of their way, great results might be expected; but if they were balked in their designs, he could not answer for the consequences. "You and Esther have your plans," resumed Caddy, "and we have ours. We don't believe in powder and shot, and don't want anything to do with guns; for my part I'm afraid of them, so please let us go by—do, now, that's a good soul!" "You seem to forget that I'm the commander of this fortress," said Mr. Walters, "and that I have a right to know everything that transpires within it; but I see you look obstinate, and as I haven't time to settle the matter now, you may pass on. I wonder what they can be about," he remarked, as they hurried on. "I must steal up by-and-by and see for myself." One after another the various friends of Mr. Walters came in, each bringing some vague report of the designs of the mob. They all described the excitement as growing more intense; that the houses of various prominent Abolitionists had been threatened; that an attempt had been made to fire one of the coloured churches; and that, notwithstanding the rioters made little scruple in declaring their intentions, the authorities were not using the slightest effort to restrain them, or to protect the parties threatened. Day was fast waning, and the approaching night brought with it clouds and cold. Whilst they had been engaged in their preparations for defence, none had time to reflect upon the danger of their situation; but now that all was prepared, and there was nothing to sustain the excitement of the last few hours, a chill crept over the circle who were gathered round the fire. There were no candles burning, and the uncertain glow from the grate gave a rather weird-like look to the group. The arms stacked in the corner of the room, and the occasional glitter of the pistol-barrels as the flames rose and fell, gave the whole a peculiarly strange effect. "We look belligerent enough, I should think," remarked Mr. Walters, looking around him. "I wish we were well out of this: it's terrible to be driven to these extremities—but we are not the aggressors, thank God! and the results, be they what they may, are not of our seeking. I have a right to defend my own: I have asked protection of the law, and it is too weak, or too indifferent, to give it; so I have no alternative but to protect myself. But who is here? It has grown so dark in the room that I can scarcely distinguish any one. Where are all the ladies?" "None are here except myself," answered Esther; "all the rest are below stairs." "And where are you? I hear, but can't see you; give me your hand," said he, extending his own in the direction from which her voice proceeded. "How cold your hand is," he continued; "are you frightened?" "Frightened!" she replied; "I never felt calmer in my life—put your finger on my pulse." Mr. Walters did as he was desired, and exclaimed, "Steady as a clock. I trust nothing may occur before morning to cause it to beat more hurriedly." "Let us put some wood on these coals," suggested Mr. Ellis; "it will make a slight blaze, and give us a chance to see each other." As he spoke he took up a few small fagots and cast them upon the fire. The wood snapped and crackled, as the flames mounted the chimney and cast a cheerful glow upon the surrounding objects: suddenly a thoroughly ignited piece flew off from the rest and fell on the table in the midst of the cartridges. "Run for your lives!" shrieked one of the party. "The powder! the powder!" Simultaneously they nearly all rushed to the door. Mr. Walters stood as one petrified. Esther alone, of the whole party, retained her presence of mind; springing forward, she grasped the blazing fragment and dashed it back again into the grate. All this passed in a few seconds, and in the end Esther was so overcome with excitement and terror, that she fainted outright. Hearing no report, those who had fled cautiously returned, and by their united efforts she was soon restored to consciousness. "What a narrow escape!" said she, trembling, and covering her face with her hands; "it makes me shudder to think of it." "We owe our lives to you, my brave girl," said Mr. Walters; "your presence of mind has quite put us all to the blush." "Oh! move the powder some distance off, or the same thing may happen again. Please do move it, Mr. Walters; I shall have no peace whilst it is there." Whilst they were thus engaged, a loud commotion was heard below stairs, and with one accord all started in the direction from whence the noise proceeded. "Bring a light! bring a light!" cried Mrs. Ellis; "something dreadful has happened." A light was soon procured, and the cause of this second alarm fully ascertained. Master Kinch, in his anxiety to give himself as warlike an appearance as possible, had added to his accoutrements an old sword that he had discovered in an out-of-the-way corner of the garret. Not being accustomed to weapons of this nature, he had been constantly getting it between his legs, and had already been precipitated by it down a flight of steps, to the imminent risk of his neck. Undaunted, however, by this mishap, he had clung to it with wonderful tenacity, until it had again caused a disaster the noise of which had brought all parties into the room where it had occurred. The light being brought, Master Kinch crawled out from under a table with his head and back covered with batter, a pan of which had been overturned upon him, in consequence of his having been tripped up by his sword and falling violently against the table on which it stood. "I said you had better take that skewer off," exclaimed Caddy: "It's a wonder it hasn't broke your neck before now; but you are such a goose you would wear it," said she, surveying her aide-de-camp with derision, as he vainly endeavoured to scrape the batter from his face. "Please give me some water," cried Kinch, looking from one to the other of the laughing group: "help a feller to get it off, can't you—it's all in my eyes, and the yeast is blinding me." The only answer to this appeal was an additional shout of laughter, without the slightest effort for his relief. At last Caddy, taking compassion upon his forlorn condition, procured a basin of water, and assisted him to wash from his woolly pate what had been intended for the next day's meal. "This is the farce after what was almost a tragedy," said Mr. Walters, as they ascended the stairs again; "I wonder what we shall have next!" They all returned to their chairs by the drawing-room fire after this occurrence, and remained in comparative silence for some time, until loud cries of "Fire! fire!" startled them from their seats. "The whole of the lower part of the city appears to be in a blaze," exclaimed one of the party who had hastened to the window; "look at the flames—they are ascending from several places. They are at their work; we may expect them here soon." "Well, they'll find us prepared when they do come," rejoined Mr. Walters. "What do you propose?" asked Mr. Ellis. "Are we to fire on them at once, or wait for their attack?" "Wait for their attack, by all means," said he, in reply;—"if they throw stones, you'll find plenty in that room with which to return the compliment; if they resort to fire-arms, then we will do the same; I want to be strictly on the defensive—but at the same time we must defend ourselves fully and energetically." In about an hour after this conversation a dull roar was heard in the distance, which grew louder and nearer every moment. "Hist!" said Esther; "do you hear that noise? Listen! isn't that the mob coming?" Mr. Walters opened the shutter, and then the sound became more distinct. On they came, nearer and nearer, until the noise of their voices became almost deafening. There was something awful in the appearance of the motley crowd that, like a torrent, foamed and surged through the streets. Some were bearing large pine torches that filled the air with thick smoke and partially lighted up the surrounding gloom. Most of them were armed with clubs, and a few with guns and pistols. As they approached the house, there seemed to be a sort of consultation between the ringleaders, for soon after every light was extinguished, and the deafening yells of "Kill the niggers!" "Down with the Abolitionists!" were almost entirely stilled. "I wonder what that means," said Mr. Walters, who had closed the shutter, and was surveying, through an aperture that had been cut, the turbulent mass below. "Look out for something soon." He had scarcely finished speaking, when a voice in the street cried, "One—two—three!" and immediately there followed a volley of missiles, crushing in the windows of the chamber above, and rattling upon the shutters of the room in which the party of defenders were gathered. A yell then went up from the mob, followed by another shower of stones. "It is now our turn," said Mr. Walters, coolly. "Four of you place yourselves at the windows of the adjoining room; the rest remain here. When you see a bright light reflected on the crowd below, throw open the shutters, and hurl down stones as long as the light is shining. Now, take your places, and as soon as you are prepared stamp upon the floor." Each of the men now armed themselves with two or more of the largest stones they could find, from the heap that had been provided for the occasion; and in a few seconds a loud stamping upon the floor informed Mr. Walters that all was ready. He now opened the aperture in the shutter, and placed therein a powerful reflecting light which brought the shouting crowd below clearly into view, and in an instant a shower of heavy stones came crashing down upon their upturned faces. Yells of rage and agony ascended from the throng, who, not seeing any previous signs of life in the house, had no anticipation of so prompt and severe a response to their attack. For a time they swayed to and fro, bewildered by the intense light and crushing shower of stones that had so suddenly fallen upon them. Those in the rear, however, pressing forward, did not permit the most exposed to retire out of reach of missiles from the house; on perceiving which, Mr. Walters again turned the light upon them, and immediately another stony shower came rattling down, which caused a precipitate retreat. "The house is full of niggers!—the house is full of niggers!" cried several voices—"Shoot them! kill them!" and immediately several shots were fired at the window by the mob below. "Don't fire yet," said Mr. Walters to one of the young men who had his hand upon a gun. "Stop awhile. When we do fire, let it be to some purpose—let us make sure that some one is hit." Whilst they were talking, two or three bullets pierced the shutters, and flattened themselves upon the ceiling above. "Those are rifle bullets," remarked one of the young men—"do let us fire." "It is too great a risk to approach the windows at present; keep quiet for a little while; and, when the light is shown again, fire. But, hark!" continued he, "they are trying to burst open the door. We can't reach them there without exposing ourselves, and if they should get into the entry it would be hard work to dislodge them." "Let us give them a round; probably it will disperse those farthest off—and those at the door will follow," suggested one of the young men. "We'll try it, at any rate," replied Walters. "Take your places, don't fire until I show the light—then pick your man, and let him have it. There is no use to fire, you know, unless you hit somebody. Are you ready?" he asked. "Yes," was the prompt reply. "Then here goes," said he, turning the light upon the crowd below—who, having some experience in what would follow, did their best to get out of reach; but they were too late—for the appearance of the light was followed by the instantaneous report of several guns which did fearful execution amidst the throng of ruffians. Two or three fell on the spot, and were carried off by their comrades with fearful execrations. The firing now became frequent on both sides, and Esther's services came into constant requisition. It was in vain that her father endeavoured to persuade her to leave the room; notwithstanding the shutters had been thrown open to facilitate operations from within and the exposure thereby greatly increased, she resolutely refused to retire, and continued fearlessly to load the guns and hand them to the men. "They've got axes at work upon the door, if they are not dislodged, they'll cut their way in," exclaimed one of the young men—"the stones are exhausted, and I don't know what we shall do." Just then the splash of water was heard, followed by shrieks of agony. "Oh, God! I'm scalded! I'm scalded!" cried one of the men upon the steps. "Take me away! take me away!" In the midst of his cries another volume of scalding water came pouring down upon the group at the door, which was followed by a rush from the premises. "What is that—who could have done that—where has that water come from?" asked Mr. Walters, as he saw the seething shower pass the window, and fall upon the heads below. "I must go and see." He ran upstairs, and found Kinch and Caddy busy putting on more water, they having exhausted one kettle-full—into which they had put two or three pounds of cayenne pepper—on the heads of the crowd below. "We gave 'em a settler, didn't we, Mr. Walters?" asked Caddy, as he entered the room. "It takes us; we fight with hot water. This," said she, holding up a dipper, "is my gun. I guess we made 'em squeal." "You've done well, Caddy," replied he—"first-rate, my girl. I believe you've driven them off entirely," he continued, peeping out of the window. "They are going off, at any rate," said he, drawing in his head; "whether they will return or not is more than I can say. Keep plenty of hot water, ready, but don't expose yourselves, children. Weren't you afraid to go to the window?" he asked. "We didn't go near it. Look at this," replied Caddy, fitting a broom handle into the end of a very large tin dipper. "Kinch cut this to fit; so we have nothing to do but to stand back here, dip up the water, and let them have it; the length of the handle keeps us from being seen from the street. That was Kinch's plan." "And a capital one it was too. Your head, Kinch, evidently has no batter within, if it has without; there is a great deal in that. Keep a bright look out," continued Mr. Walters; "I'm going downstairs. If they come again, let them have plenty of your warm pepper-sauce." On returning to the drawing-room, Mr. Walters found Mr. Dennis, one of the company, preparing to go out. "I'm about to avail myself of the advantage afforded by my fair complexion, and play the spy," said he. "They can't discern at night what I am, and I may be able to learn some of their plans." "A most excellent idea," said Mr. Walters; "but pray be careful. You may meet some one who will recognise you." "Never fear," replied Mr. Dennis. "I'll keep a bright look out for that." And, drawing his cap far down over his eyes, to screen his face as much as possible, he sallied out into the street. He had not been absent more than a quarter of an hour, when he returned limping into the house. "Have they attacked you—are you hurt?" asked the anxious group by which he was surrounded. "I'm hurt-, but not by them. I got on very well, and gleaned a great deal of information, when I heard a sudden exclamation, and, on looking round, I found myself recognized by a white man of my acquaintance. I ran immediately; and whether I was pursued or not, I'm unable to say. I had almost reached here, when my foot caught in a grating and gave my ancle such a wrench that I'm unable to stand." As he spoke, his face grew pale from the suffering the limb was occasioning. "I'm sorry, very sorry," he continued, limping to the sofa; "I was going out again immediately. They intend making an attack on Mr. Garie's house: I didn't hear his name mentioned, but I heard one of the men, who appeared to be a ringleader, say, 'We're going up to Winter-street, to give a coat of tar and feathers to a white man, who is married to a nigger woman.' They can allude to none but him. How annoying that this accident should have happened just now, of all times. They ought to be warned." "Oh, poor Emily!" cried Esther, bursting into tears; "it will kill her, I know it will; she is so ill. Some one must go and warn them. Let me try; the mob, even if I met them, surely would not assault a woman." "You mustn't think of such a thing, Esther," exclaimed Mr. Walters; "the idea isn't to be entertained for a moment. You don't know what ruthless wretches they are. Your colour discovered you would find your sex but a trifling protection. I'd go, but it would be certain death to me: my black face would quickly obtain for me a passport to another world if I were discovered in the street just now." "I'll go," calmly spoke Mr. Ellis. "I can't rest here and think of what they are exposed to. By skulking through bye-streets and keeping under the shadows of houses I may escape observation—at any rate, I must run the risk." And he began to button up his coat. "Don't let your mother know I'm gone; stick by her, my girl," said he, kissing Esther; "trust in God,—He'll protect me." Esther hung sobbing on her father's neck. "Oh, father, father," said she, "I couldn't bear to see you go for any one but Emily and the children." "I know it, dear," he replied; "it's my duty. Garie would do the same for me, I know, even at greater risk. Good-bye! good-bye!" And, disengaging himself from the weeping girl, he started on his errand of mercy. Walking swiftly forwards, he passed over more than two-thirds of the way without the slightest interruption, the streets through which he passed being almost entirely deserted. He had arrived within a couple of squares of the Garies, when suddenly, on turning a corner, he found himself in the midst of a gang of ruffians. "Here's a nigger! here's a nigger!" shouted two or three of them, almost simultaneously, making at the same time a rush at Mr. Ellis, who turned and ran, followed by the whole gang. Fear lent him wings, and he fast outstripped his pursuers, and would have entirely escaped, had he not turned into a street which unfortunately was closed at the other end. This he did not discover until it was too late to retrace his steps, his pursuers having already entered the street. Looking for some retreat, he perceived he was standing near an unfinished building. Tearing off the boards that were nailed across the window, he vaulted into the room, knocking off his hat, which fell upon the pavement behind him. Scarcely had he groped his way to the staircase of the dwelling when he heard the footsteps of his pursuers. "He can't have got through," exclaimed one of them, "the street is closed up at the end; he must be up here somewhere." Lighting one of their torches, they began to look around them, and soon discovered the hat lying beneath the window. "He's in here, boys; we've tree'd the 'coon," laughingly exclaimed one of the ruffians. "Let's after him." Tearing off the remainder of the boards, one or two entered, opened the door from the inside, and gave admission to the rest. Mr. Ellis mounted to the second story, followed by his pursuers; on he went, until he reached the attic, from which a ladder led to the roof. Ascending this, he drew it up after him, and found himself on the roof of a house that was entirely isolated. The whole extent of the danger flashed upon him at once. Here he was completely hemmed in, without the smallest chance for escape. He approached the edge and looked over, but could discover nothing near enough to reach by a leap. "I must sell my life dearly," he said. "God be my helper now—He is all I have to rely upon." And as he spoke, the great drops of sweat fell from his forehead. Espying a sheet of lead upon the roof, he rolled it into a club of tolerable thickness, and waited the approach of his pursuers. "He's gone on the roof," he heard one of them exclaim, "and pulled the ladder up after him." Just then, a head emerged from the trap-door, the owner of which, perceiving Mr. Ellis, set up a shout of triumph. "We've got him! we've got him!—here he is!" which cries were answered by the exultant voices of his comrades below. An attempt was now made by one of them to gain the roof; but he immediately received a blow from Mr. Ellis that knocked him senseless into the arms of his companions. Another attempted the same feat, and met a similar fate. This caused a parley as to the best mode of proceeding, which resulted in the simultaneous appearance of three of the rioters at the opening. Nothing daunted, Mr. Ellis attacked them with such fierceness and energy that they were forced to descend, muttering the direst curses. In a few moments another head appeared, at which Mr. Ellis aimed a blow of great force; and the club descended upon a hat placed upon a stick. Not meeting the resistance expected, it flew from his hand, and he was thrown forward, nearly falling down the doorway. With a shout of triumph, they seized his arm, and held him firmly, until one or two of them mounted the roof. "Throw him over! throw him over!" exclaimed some of the fiercest of the crowd. One or two of the more merciful endeavoured to interfere against killing him outright; but the frenzy of the majority triumphed, and they determined to cast him into the street below. Mr. Ellis clung to the chimney, shrieking,—"Save me! save me!—Help! help! Will no one save me!" His cries were unheeded by the ruffians, and the people at the surrounding windows were unable to afford him any assistance, even if they were disposed to do so. Despite his cries and resistance, they forced him to the edge of the roof; he clinging to them the while, and shrieking in agonized terror. Forcing off his hold, they thrust him forward and got him partially over the edge, where he clung calling frantically for aid. One of the villains, to make him loose his hold, struck on his fingers with the handle of a hatchet found on the roof; not succeeding in breaking his hold by these means, with, an oath he struck with the blade, severing two of the fingers from one hand and deeply mangling the other. With a yell of agony, Mr. Ellis let go his hold, and fell upon a pile of rubbish below, whilst a cry of triumphant malignity went up from the crowd on the roof. A gentleman and some of his friends kindly carried the insensible man into his house. "Poor fellow!" said he, "he is killed, I believe. What a gang of wretches. These things are dreadful; that such a thing can be permitted in a Christian city is perfectly appalling." The half-dressed family gathered around the mangled form of Mr. Ellis, and gave vent to loud expressions of sympathy. A doctor was quickly sent for, who stanched the blood that was flowing from his hands and head. "I don't think he can live," said he, "the fall was too great. As far as I can judge, his legs and two of his ribs are broken. The best thing we can do, is to get him conveyed to the hospital; look in his pockets, perhaps we can find out who he is." There was nothing found, however, that afforded the least clue to his name and residence; and he was, therefore, as soon as persons could be procured to assist, borne to the hospital, where his wounds were dressed, and the broken limbs set. CHAPTER XXI. More Horrors. Unaware of the impending danger, Mr. Garie sat watching by the bedside of his wife. She had been quite ill; but on the evening of which we write, although nervous and wakeful, was much better. The bleak winds of the fast approaching winter dealt unkindly with her delicate frame, accustomed as she was to the soft breezes of her Southern home. Mr. Garie had been sitting up looking at the fires in the lower part of the city. Not having been out all that day or the one previous, he knew nothing of the fearful state into which matters had fallen. "Those lights are dying away, my dear," said he to his wife; "there must have been quite an extensive conflagration." Taking out his watch, he continued, "almost two o'clock; why, how late I've been sitting up. I really don't know whether it's worth while to go to bed or not, I should be obliged to get up again at five o'clock; I go to New York to-morrow, or rather to-day; there are some matters connected with Uncle John's will that require my personal attention. Dear old man, how suddenly he died." "I wish, dear, you could put off your journey until I am better," said Mrs. Garie, faintly; "I do hate you to go just now." "I would if I could, Emily; but it is impossible. I shall be back to-morrow, or the next day, at farthest. Whilst I'm there, I'll——" "Hush!" interrupted Mrs. Garie, "stop a moment. Don't you hear a noise like the shouting of a great many people." "Oh, it's only the firemen," replied he; "as I was about to observe—" "Hush!" cried she again. "Listen now, that don't sound like the firemen in the least." Mr. Garie paused as the sound of a number of voices became more distinct. Wrapping his dressing-gown more closely about him, he walked into the front room, which overlooked the street. Opening the window, he saw a number of men—some bearing torches—coming rapidly in the direction of his dwelling. "I wonder what all this is for; what can it mean," he exclaimed. They had now approached sufficiently near for him to understand their cries. "Down with the Abolitionist—down with the Amalgamationist! give them tar and feathers!" "It's a mob—and that word Amalgamationist—can it be pointed at me? It hardly seems possible; and yet I have a fear that there is something wrong." "What is it, Garie? What is the matter?" asked his wife, who, with a shawl hastily thrown across her shoulders, was standing pale and trembling by the window. "Go in, Emily, my dear, for Heaven's sake; you'll get your death of cold in this bleak night air—go in; as soon as I discover the occasion of the disturbance, I'll come and tell you. Pray go in." Mrs. Garie retired a few feet from the window, and stood listening to the shouts in the street. The rioters, led on evidently by some one who knew what he was about, pressed forward to Mr. Garie's house; and soon the garden in front was filled with the shouting crowd. "What do you all want—why are you on my premises, creating this disturbance?" cried Mr. Garie. "Come down and you'll soon find out. You white livered Abolitionist, come out, damn you! we are going to give you a coat of tar and feathers, and your black wench nine-and-thirty. Yes, come down—come down!" shouted several, "or we will come up after you." "I warn you," replied Mr. Garie, "against any attempt at violence upon my person, family, or property. I forbid you to advance another foot upon the premises. If any man of you enters my house, I'll shoot him down as quick as I would a mad dog." "Shut up your gap; none of your cussed speeches," said a voice in the crowd; "if you don't come down and give yourself up, we'll come in and take you—that's the talk, ain't it, boys?" A general shout of approval answered this speech, and several stones were thrown at Mr. Garie, one of which struck him on the breast. Seeing the utter futility of attempting to parley with the infuriated wretches below, he ran into the room, exclaiming, "Put on some clothes, Emily! shoes first—quick—quick, wife!—your life depends upon it. I'll bring down the children and wake the servants. We must escape from the house—we are attacked by a mob of demons. Hurry, Emily! do, for God sake!" Mr. Garie aroused the sleeping children, and threw some clothes upon them, over which he wrapped shawls or blankets, or whatever came to hand. Rushing into the next room, he snatched a pair of loaded pistols from the drawer of his dressing-stand, and then hurried his terrified wife and children down the stairs. "This way, dear—this way!" he cried, leading on toward the back door; "out that way through the gate with the children, and into some of the neighbour's houses. I'll stand here to keep the way." "No, no, Garie," she replied, frantically; "I won't go without you." "You must!" he cried, stamping his foot impatiently; "this is no time to parley—go, or we shall all be murdered. Listen, they've broken in the door. Quick—quick! go on;" and as he spoke, he pressed her and the children out of the door, and closed it behind them. Mrs. Garie ran down the garden, followed by the children; to her horror, she found the gate locked, and the key nowhere to be found. "What shall we do?" she cried. "Oh, we shall all be killed!" and her limbs trembled beneath her with cold and terror. "Let us hide in here, mother," suggested Clarence, running toward the wood-house; "we'll be safe in there." Seeing that nothing better could be done, Mrs. Garie availed herself of the suggestion; and when she was fairly inside the place, fell fainting upon the ground. As she escaped through the back door, the mob broke in at the front, and were confronting Mr. Garie, as he stood with his pistol pointed at them, prepared to fire. "Come another step forward and I fire!" exclaimed he, resolutely; but those in the rear urged the advance of those in front, who approached cautiously nearer and nearer their victim. Fearful of opening the door behind him, lest he should show the way taken by his retreating wife, he stood uncertain how to act; a severe blow from a stone, however, made him lose all reflection, and he immediately fired. A loud shriek followed the report of his pistol, and a shower of stones was immediately hurled upon him. He quickly fired again, and was endeavouring to open the door to effect his escape, when a pistol was discharged close to his head and he fell forward on the entry floor lifeless. All this transpired in a few moments, and in the semi-darkness of the entry. Rushing forward over his lifeless form, the villains hastened upstairs in search of Mrs. Garie. They ran shouting through the house, stealing everything valuable that they could lay their hands upon, and wantonly destroying the furniture; they would have fired the house, but were prevented by McCloskey, who acted as leader of the gang. For two long hours they ransacked the house, breaking all they could not carry off, drinking the wine in Mr. Garie's cellar, and shouting and screaming like so many fiends. Mrs. Garie and the children lay crouching with terror in the wood-house, listening to the ruffians as they went through the yard cursing her and her husband and uttering the direst threats of what they would do should she fall into their hands. Once she almost fainted on hearing one of them propose opening the wood-house, to see if there was anything of value in it—but breathed again when they abandoned it as not worth their attention. The children crouched down beside her—scarcely daring to whisper, lest they should attract the attention of their persecutors. Shivering with cold they drew closer around them the blanket with which they had been providentially provided. "Brother, my feet are so cold," sobbed little Em. "I can't feel my toes. Oh, I'm so cold!" "Put your feet closer to me, sissy," answered her brother, baring himself to enwrap her more thoroughly; "put my stockings on over yours;" and, as well as they were able in the dark, he drew his stockings on over her benumbed feet. "There, sis, that's better," he whispered, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "now you'll be warmer." Just then Clarence heard a groan from his mother, so loud indeed that it would have been heard without but for the noise and excitement around the house—and feeling for her in the dark, he asked, "Mother, are you worse? are you sick?" A groan was her only answer. "Mother, mother," he whispered, "do speak, please do!" and he endeavoured to put his arm around her. "Don't, dear—don't," said she, faintly, "just take care of your sister—you can't do me any good—don't speak, dear, the men will hear you." Reluctantly the frightened child turned his attention again to his little sister; ever and anon suppressed groans from his mother would reach his ears—at last he heard a groan even fierce in its intensity; and then the sounds grew fainter and fainter until they entirely ceased. The night to the poor shivering creatures in their hiding place seemed interminably long, and the sound of voices in the house had not long ceased when the faint light of day pierced their cheerless shelter. Hearing the voices of some neighbours in the yard, Clarence hastened out, and seizing one of the ladies by the dress, cried imploringly, "Do come to my mother, she's sick." "Why, where did you come from, chil?" said the lady, with a start of astonishment. "Where have you been?" "In there," he answered, pointing to the wood-house. "Mother and sister are in there." The lady, accompanied by one or two others, hastened to the wood-house. "Where is she?" asked the foremost, for in the gloom of the place she could not perceive anything. "Here," replied Clarence, "she's lying here." On opening a small window, they saw Mrs. Garie lying in a corner stretched upon the boards, her head supported by some blocks. "She's asleep," said Clarence. "Mother—mother," but there came no answer. "MOTHER," said he, still louder, but yet there was no response. Stepping forward, one of the females opened the shawl, which was held firmly in the clenched hands of Mrs. Garie—and there in her lap partially covered by her scanty nightdress, was discovered a new-born babe, who with its mother had journeyed in the darkness, cold, and night, to the better land, that they might pour out their woes upon the bosom of their Creator. The women gazed in mournful silence on the touching scene before them. Clarence was on his knees, regarding with fear and wonder the unnatural stillness of his mother—the child had never before looked on death, and could not recognize its presence. Laying his hand on her cold cheek, he cried, with faltering voice, "Mother, can't you speak?" but there was no answering light in the fixed stare of those glassy eyes, and the lips of the dead could not move. "Why don't she speak?" he asked. "She can't, my dear; you must come away and leave her. She's better off, my darling—she's dead." Then there was a cry of grief sprung up from the heart of that orphan boy, that rang in those women's ears for long years after; it was the first outbreak of a loving childish heart pierced with life's bitterest grief—a mother's loss. The two children were kindly taken into the house of some benevolent neighbour, as the servants had all fled none knew whither. Little Em was in a profound stupor—the result of cold and terror, and it was found necessary to place her under the care of a physician. After they had all gone, an inquest was held by the coroner, and a very unsatisfactory and untruthful verdict pronounced—one that did not at all coincide with the circumstances of the case, but such a one as might have been expected where there was a great desire to screen the affair from public scrutiny. CHAPTER XXII. An Anxious Day. Esther Ellis, devoured with anxiety respecting the safety of her father and the Garies, paced with impatient step up and down the drawing-room. Opening the window, she looked to see if she could discover any signs of day. "It's pitchy dark," she exclaimed, "and yet almost five o'clock. Father has run a fearful risk. I hope nothing has happened to him." "I trust not. I think he's safe enough somewhere," said Mr. Walters. "He's no doubt been very cautious, and avoided meeting any one—don't worry yourself, my child, 'tis most likely he remained with them wherever they went; probably they are at the house of some of their neighbours." "I can't help feeling dreadfully oppressed and anxious," continued she. "I wish he would come." Whilst she was speaking, her mother entered the room. "Any news of your father?" she asked, in a tone of anxiety. Esther endeavoured to conceal her own apprehensions, and rejoined, in as cheerful tone as she could assume—"Not yet, mother—it's too dark for us to expect him yet—he'll remain most likely until daylight." "He shouldn't have gone had I been here—he's no business to expose himself in this way." "But, mother," interrupted Esther, "only think of it—the safety of Emily and the children were depending on it—we mustn't be selfish." "I know we oughtn't to be, my child," rejoined her mother, "but it's natural to the best of us—sometimes we can't help it." Five—six—seven o'clock came and passed, and still there were no tidings of Mr. Ellis. "I can bear this suspense no longer," exclaimed Esther. "If father don't come soon, I shall go and look for him. I've tried to flatter myself that he's safe; but I'm almost convinced now that something has happened to him, or he'd have come back long before this—he knows how anxious we would all be about him. I've tried to quiet mother and Caddy by suggesting various reasons for his delay, but, at the same time, I cannot but cherish the most dismal forebodings. I must go and look for him." "No, no, Esther—stay where you are at present—leave that to me. I'll order a carriage and go up to Garie's immediately." "Well, do, Mr. Walters, and hurry back: won't you?" she rejoined, as he left the apartment. In a few moments he returned, prepared to start, and was speedily driven to Winter-street. He found a group of people gathered before the gate, gazing into the house. "The place has been attacked," said he, as he walked towards the front door—picking his way amidst fragments of furniture, straw, and broken glass. At the entrance of the house he was met by Mr. Balch, Mr. Garie's lawyer. "This is a shocking affair, Walters," said he, extending his hand—he was an old friend of Mr. Walters. "Very shocking, indeed," he replied, looking around. "But where is Garie? We sent to warn them of this. I hope they are all safe." "Safe!" repeated Mr. Balch, with an air of astonishment. "Why, man, haven't you heard?" "Heard what?" asked Mr. Walters, looking alarmed. "That Mr. and Mrs. Garie are dead—both were killed last night." The shock of this sudden and totally unexpected disclosure was such that Mr. Walters leaned against the doorway for support. "It can't be possible," he exclaimed at last, "not dead!" "Yes, dead, I regret to say—he was shot through the head—and she died in the wood-house, of premature confinement, brought on by fright and exposure." "And the children?" gasped Walters. "They are safe, with some neighbours—it's heart-breaking to hear them weeping for their mother." Here a tear glistened in the eye of Mr. Balch, and ran down his cheek. Brushing it off, he continued: "The coroner has just held an inquest, and they gave a most truthless verdict: nothing whatever is said of the cause of the murder, or of the murderers; they simply rendered a verdict—death caused by a wound from a pistol-shot, and hers—death from exposure. There seemed the greatest anxiety on the part of the coroner to get the matter over as quickly as possible, and few or no witnesses were examined. But I'm determined to sift the matter to the bottom; if the perpetrators of the murder can be discovered, I'll leave no means untried to find them." "Do you know any one who sat on the inquest?" asked Walters. "Yes, one," was the reply, "Slippery George, the lawyer; you are acquainted with him—George Stevens. I find he resides next door." "Do you know," here interrupted Mr. Walters, "that I've my suspicions that that villain is at the bottom of these disturbances or at least has a large share in them. I have a paper in my possession, in his handwriting—it is in fact a list of the places destroyed by the mob last night—it fell into the hands of a friend of mine by accident—he gave it to me—it put me on my guard; and when the villains attacked my house last night they got rather a warmer reception than they bargained for." "You astonish me! Is it possible your place was assaulted also?" asked Mr. Balch. "Indeed, it was—and a hot battle we had of it for a short space of time. But how did you hear of this affair?" "I was sent for by I can't tell whom. When I came and saw what had happened, I immediately set about searching for a will that I made for Mr. Garie a few weeks since; it was witnessed and signed at my office, and he brought it away with him. I can't discover it anywhere. I've ransacked every cranny. It must have been carried off by some one. You are named in it conjointly with myself as executor. All the property is left to her, poor thing, and his children. We must endeavour to find it somewhere—at any rate the children are secure; they are the only heirs—he had not, to my knowledge, a single white relative. But let us go in and see the bodies." They walked together into the back room where the bodies were lying. Mrs. Garie was stretched upon the sofa, covered with a piano cloth; and her husband was laid upon a long table, with a silk window-curtain thrown across his face. The two gazed in silence on the face of Mr. Garie—the brow was still knit, the eyes staring vacantly, and the marble whiteness of the face unbroken, save by a few gouts of blood near a small blue spot over the eye where the bullet had entered. "He was the best-hearted creature in the world," said Walters, as he re-covered the face. "Won't you look at her?" asked Mr. Balch. "No, no—I can't," continued Walters; "I've seen horrors enough for one morning. I've another thing on my mind! A friend who assisted in the defence of my house started up here last night, to warn them of their danger, and when I left home he had not returned: it's evident he hasn't been here, and I greatly fear some misfortune has befallen him. Where are the children? Poor little orphans, I must see them before I go." Accompanied by Mr. Balch, he called at the house where Clarence and Em had found temporary shelter. The children ran to him as soon as he entered the room. "Oh! Mr. Walters," sobbed Clarence, "my mother's dead—my mother's dead!" "Hush, dears—hush!" he replied, endeavouring to restrain his own tears, as he took little Em in his arms. "Don't cry, my darling," said he, as she gave rent to a fresh outburst of tears. "Oh, Mr. Walters!" said she, still sobbing, "she was all the mother I had." Mr. Balch here endeavoured to assist in pacifying the two little mourners. "Why don't father come?" asked Clarence. "Have you seen him, Mr. Walters?" Mr. Walters was quite taken aback by this inquiry, which clearly showed that the children were still unaware of the extent of their misfortunes. "I've seen him, my child," said he, evasively; "you'll see him before long." And fearful of further questioning, he left the house, promising soon to return. Unable longer to endure her anxiety respecting her father, Esther determined not to await the return of Mr. Walters, which had already been greatly delayed, but to go herself in search of him. It had occurred to her that, instead of returning from the Garies direct to them, he had probably gone to his own home to see if it had been disturbed during the night. Encouraged by this idea, without consulting any one, she hastily put on her cloak and bonnet, and took the direction of her home. Numbers of people were wending their way to the lower part of the city, to gratify their curiosity by gazing upon the havoc made by the rioters during the past night. Esther found her home a heap of smoking ruins; some of the neighbours who recognized her gathered round, expressing their sympathy and regret. But she seemed comparatively careless respecting the loss of their property; and in answer to their kind expressions, could only ask, "Have you seen my father?—do you know where my father is?" None, however, had seen him; and after gazing for a short time upon the ruins of what was once a happy home, she turned mournfully away, and walked back to Mr. Walters's. "Has father come?" she inquired, as soon as the door was opened. "Not yet!" was the discouraging reply: "and Mr. Walters, he hasn't come back, either, miss!" Esther stood for some moments hesitating whether to go in, or to proceed in her search. The voice of her mother calling her from the stairway decided her, and she went in. Mrs. Ellis and Caddy wept freely on learning from Esther the destruction of their home. This cause of grief, added to the anxiety produced by the prolonged absence of Mr. Ellis, rendered them truly miserable. Whilst they were condoling with one another, Mr. Walters returned. He was unable to conceal his fears that something had happened to Mr. Ellis, and frankly told them so; he also gave a detailed account of what had befallen the Garies, to the great horror and grief of all. As soon as arrangements could be made, Mr. Walters and Esther set out in search of her father. All day long they went from place to place, but gained no tidings of him; and weary and disheartened they returned at night, bringing with them the distressing intelligence of their utter failure to procure any information respecting him. CHAPTER XXIII. The Lost One Found. On the day succeeding the events described in our last chapter, Mr. Walters called upon Mr. Balch, for the purpose of making the necessary preparations for the interment of Mr. and Mrs. Garie. "I think," said Mr. Balch, "we had better bury them in the Ash-grove cemetery; it's a lovely spot—all my people are buried there." "The place is fine enough, I acknowledge," rejoined Mr. Walters; "but I much doubt if you can procure the necessary ground." "Oh, yes, you can!" said Mr. Balch; "there are a number of lots still unappropriated." "That may very likely be so; but are you sure we can get one if we apply?" "Of course we can—what is to prevent?" asked Mr. Balch. "You forget," replied Mr. Walters, "that Mrs. Garie was a coloured woman." "If it wasn't such a solemn subject I really should be obliged to laugh at you, Walters," rejoined Mr. Balch, with a smile—"you talk ridiculously. What can her complexion have to do with her being buried there, I should like to know?" "It has everything to do with it! Can it be possible you are not aware that they won't even permit a coloured person to walk through the ground, much less to be buried there!" "You astonish me, Walters! Are you sure of it?" "I give you my word of honour it is so! But why should you be astonished at such treatment of the dead, when you see how they conduct themselves towards the living? I have a friend," continued Mr. Walters, "who purchased a pew for himself and family in a white-church, and the deacons actually removed the floor from under it, to prevent his sitting there. They refuse us permission to kneel by the side of the white communicants at the Lord's Supper, and give us separate pews in obscure corners of their churches. All this you know—why, then, be surprised that they carry their prejudices into their graveyards?—the conduct is all of a piece." "Well, Walters, I know the way things are conducted in our churches is exceedingly reprehensible; but I really did not know they stretched their prejudices to such an extent." "I assure you they do, then," resumed Mr. Walters; "and in this very matter you'll find I'm correct. Ask Stormley, the undertaker, and hear what he'll tell you. Oh! a case in point.—About six months ago, one of our wealthiest citizens lost by death an old family servant, a coloured woman, a sort of half-housekeeper—half-friend. She resembled him so much, that it was generally believed she was his sister. Well, he tried to have her laid in their family vault, and it was refused; the directors thought it would be creating a bad precedent—they said, as they would not sell lots to coloured persons, they couldn't consistently permit them to be buried in those of the whites." "Then Ash-grove must be abandoned; and in lieu of that what can you propose?" asked Mr. Balch. "I should say we can't do better than lay them in the graveyard of the coloured Episcopal church." "Let it be there, then. You will see to the arrangements, Walters. I shall have enough on my hands for the present, searching for that will: I have already offered a large reward for it—I trust it may turn up yet." "Perhaps it may," rejoined Mr. Walters; "we must hope so, at least. I've brought the children to my house, where they are under the care of a young lady who was a great friend of their mother's; though it seems like putting too much upon the poor young creature, to throw them upon her for consolation, when she is almost distracted with her own griefs. I think I mentioned to you yesterday, that her father is missing; and, to add to their anxieties, their property has been all destroyed by the rioters. They have a home with me for the present, and may remain there as long as they please." "Oh! I remember you told me something of them yesterday; and now I come to think of it, I saw in the Journal this morning, that a coloured man was lying at the hospital very much injured, whose name they could not ascertain. Can it be possible that he is the man you are in search of?" "Let me see the article," asked Mr. Walters. Mr. Balch handed him the paper, and pointed out the paragraph in question. "I'll go immediately to the hospital," said he, as he finished reading, "and see if it is my poor friend; I have great fears that it is. You'll excuse my leaving so abruptly—I must be off immediately." On hastening to the hospital, Mr. Walters arrived just in time to be admitted to the wards; and on being shown the person whose name they had been unable to discover, he immediately recognized his friend. "Ellis, my poor fellow," he exclaimed, springing forward. "Stop, stop," cried the attendant, laying his hand upon Mr. Walters's shoulder; "he is hovering between life and death, the least agitation might be fatal to him. The doctor says, if he survives the night, he may probably get better; but he has small chance of life. I hardly think he will last twelve hours more, he's been dreadfully beaten; there are two or three gashes on his head, his leg is broken, and his hands have been so much cut, that the surgeon thinks they'll never be of any use to him, even if he recovers." "What awful intelligence for his family," said Mr. Walters; "they are already half distracted about him." Mr. Ellis lay perfectly unconscious of what was passing around him, and his moans were deeply affecting to hear, unable to move but one limb—he was the picture of helplessness and misery. "It's time to close; we don't permit visitors to remain after this hour," said the attendant; "come to-morrow, you can see your friend, and remain longer with him;" and bidding Mr. Walters good morning, he ushered him from the ward. "How shall I ever find means to break this to the girls and their mother?" said he, as he left the gates of the hospital; "it will almost kill them; really I don't know what I shall say to them." He walked homeward with hesitating steps, and on arriving at his house, he paused awhile before the door, mustering up courage to enter; at last he opened it with the air of a man who had a disagreeable duty to perform, and had made up his mind to go through with it. "Tell Miss Ellis to come to the drawing-room," said he to the servant; "merely say she's wanted—don't say I've returned." He waited but a few moments before Esther made her appearance, looking sad and anxious. "Oh, it's you," she said, with some surprise. "You have news of father?" "Yes, Esther, I have news; but I am sorry to say not of a pleasant character." "Oh, Mr. Walters, nothing serious I hope has happened to him?" she asked, in an agitated tone. "I'm sorry to say there has, Esther; he has met with an accident—a sad and severe one—he's been badly wounded." Esther turned deadly pale at this announcement, and leaned upon the table for support. "I sent for you, Esther," continued Mr. Walters, "in preference to your mother, because I knew you to be courageous in danger, and I trusted you would be equally so in misfortune. Your father's case is a very critical one—very. It appears that after leaving here, he fell into the hands of the rioters, by whom he was shockingly beaten. He was taken to the hospital, where he now remains." "Oh, let me go to him at once, do, Mr. Walters! "My dear child, it is impossible for you to see him to-day, it is long past the visiting hour; moreover, I don't think him in a state that would permit the least agitation. To-morrow you can go with me." Esther did not weep, her heart was too full for tears. With a pale face, and trembling lips, she said to Mr. Walters, "God give us strength to bear up under these misfortunes; we are homeless—almost beggars—our friends have been murdered, and my father is now trembling on the brink of the grave; such troubles as these," said she, sinking into a chair, "are enough to crush any one." "I know it, Esther; I know it, my child. I sympathize with you deeply. All that I have is at your disposal. You may command me in anything. Give yourself no uneasiness respecting the future of your mother and family, let the result to your father be what it may: always bear in mind that, next to God, I am your best friend. I speak thus frankly to you, Esther, because I would not have you cherish any hopes of your father's recovery; from his appearance, I should say there is but little, if any. I leave to you, my good girl, the task of breaking this sad news to your mother and sister; I would tell them, but I must confess, Esther, I'm not equal to it, the events of the last day or two have almost overpowered me." Esther's lips quivered again, as she repeated the words, "Little hope; did the doctor say that?" she asked. "I did not see the doctor," replied he; "perhaps there may be a favourable change during the night. I'd have you prepare for the worst, whilst you hope for the best. Go now and try to break it as gently as possible to your mother." Esther left the room with heavy step, and walked to the chamber where her mother was sitting. Caddy also was there, rocking backwards and forwards in a chair, in an earnest endeavour to soothe to sleep little Em, who was sitting in her lap. "Who was it, Esther?" asked, her mother. "Mr. Walters," she hesitatingly answered. "Was it? Well, has he heard anything of your father?" she asked, anxiously. Esther turned away her head, and remained silent. "Why don't you answer?" asked her mother, with an alarmed look; "if you know anything of him, for God's sake tell me. Whatever it may be, it can't be worse than I expect; is he dead?" she asked. "No—no, mother, he's not dead; but he's sick, very sick, mother. Mr. Walters found him in the hospital." "In the hospital! how came he there? Don't deceive me, Esther, there's something behind all this; are you telling me the truth? is he still alive?" "Mother, believe me, he is still alive, but how long he may remain so, God only knows." Mrs. Ellis, at this communication, leant her head upon the table, and wept uncontrollably. Caddy put down her little charge, and stood beside her mother, endeavouring to soothe her, whilst unable to restrain her own grief. "Let us go to him, Esther," said her mother, rising; "I must see him—let us go at once." "We can't, mother; Mr. Walters says it's impossible for us to see him to-day; they don't admit visitors after a certain hour in the morning." "They must admit me: I'll tell them I'm his wife; when they know that, they can't refuse me." Quickly dressing themselves, Esther, Caddy, and their mother were about to start for the hospital, when Mr. Walters entered. "Where are you all going?" he asked. "To the hospital," answered Mrs. Ellis; "I must see my husband." "I have just sent there, Ellen, to make arrangements to hear of him every hour. You will only have the grief of being refused admission if you go; they're exceedingly strict—no one is admitted to visit a patient after a certain hour; try and compose yourselves; sit down, I want to talk to you for a little while." Mrs. Ellis mechanically obeyed; and on sitting down, little Em crept into her lap, and nestled in her arms. "Ellen," said Mr. Walters, taking a seat by her; "it's useless to disguise the fact that Ellis is in a precarious situation—how long he may be sick it is impossible to say; as soon as it is practicable, should he get better, we will bring him here. You remember, Ellen, that years ago, when I was young and poor, Ellis often befriended me—now 'tis my turn. You must all make up your minds to remain with me—for ever, if you like—for the present, whether you like it or not. I'm going to be dreadfully obstinate, and have my own way completely about the matter. Here I've a large house, furnished from top to bottom with every comfort. Often I've wandered through it, and thought myself a selfish old fellow to be surrounded with so much luxury, and keep it entirely to myself. God has blessed me with abundance, and to what better use can it be appropriated than the relief of my friends? Now, Ellen, you shall superintend the whole of the establishment, Esther shall nurse her father, Caddy shall stir up the servants, and I'll look on and find my happiness in seeing you all happy. Now, what objection can you urge against that arrangement?" concluded he, triumphantly. "Why, we shall put you to great inconvenience, and place ourselves under an obligation we can never repay," answered Mrs. Ellis. "Don't despair of that—never mind the obligation; try and be as cheerful as you can; to-morrow we shall see Ellis, and perhaps find him better; let us at least hope for the best." Esther looked with grateful admiration at Mr. Walters, as he left the room. "What a good heart he has, mother," said she, as he closed the door behind him; "just such a great tender heart as one should expect to find in so fine a form." Mrs. Ellis and her daughters were the first who were found next day, at the office of the doorkeeper of the hospital waiting an opportunity to see their sick friends. "You're early, ma'am," said a little bald-headed official, who sat at his desk fronting the door; "take a chair near the fire—it's dreadful cold this morning." "Very cold," replied Esther, taking a seat beside her mother; "how long will it be before we can go in?" "Oh, you've good an hour to wait—the doctor hasn't come yet," replied the door-keeper. "How is my husband?" tremblingly inquired Mrs. Ellis. "Who is your husband?—you don't know his number, do you? Never know names here—go by numbers." "We don't know the number," rejoined Esther; "my father's name is Ellis; he was brought here two or three nights since—he was beaten by the mob." "Oh, yes; I know now who you mean—number sixty—bad case that, shocking bad case—hands chopped—head smashed—leg broke; he'll have to cross over, I guess—make a die of it, I'm afraid." Mrs. Ellis shuddered, and turned pale, as the man coolly discussed her husband's injuries, and their probable fatal termination. Caddy, observing her agitation, said, "Please, sir, don't talk of it; mother can't bear it." The man looked at them compassionately for a few moments—then continued: "You mustn't think me hard-hearted—I see so much of these things, that I can't feel them as others do. This is a dreadful thing to you, no doubt, but it's an every-day song to me—people are always coming here mangled in all sorts of ways—so, you see, I've got used to it—in fact, I'd rather miss 'em now if they didn't come. I've sat in this seat every day for almost twenty years;" and he looked on the girls and their mother as he gave them this piece of information as if he thought they ought to regard him henceforth with great reverence. Not finding them disposed to converse, the doorkeeper resumed the newspaper he was reading when they entered, and was soon deeply engrossed in a horrible steam-boat accident. The sound of wheels in the courtyard attracting his attention, he looked up, and remarked: "Here's the doctor—as soon as he has walked the wards you'll be admitted." Mrs. Ellis and her daughters turned round as the door opened, and, to their great joy, recognized Doctor Burdett. "How d'ye do?" said he, extending his hand to Mrs. Ellis—"what's the matter? Crying!" he continued, looking at their tearful faces; "what has happened?" "Oh, doctor," said Esther, "father's lying here, very much injured; and they think he'll die," said she, giving way to a fresh burst of grief. "Very much injured—die—how is this?—I knew nothing of it—I haven't been here before this week." Esther hereupon briefly related the misfortunes that had befallen her father. "Dear me—dear me," repeated the kind old doctor. "There, my dear; don't fret—he'll get better, my child—I'll take him in hand at once. My dear Mrs. Ellis, weeping won't do the least good, and only make you sick yourself. Stop, do now—I'll go and see him immediately, and as soon as possible you shall be admitted." They had not long to wait before a message came from Doctor Burdett, informing them that they could now be permitted to see the sufferer. "You must control yourselves," said the doctor to the sobbing women, as he met them at the door; "you mustn't do anything to agitate him—his situation is extremely critical." The girls and their mother followed him to the bedside of Mr. Ellis, who, ghastly pale, lay before them, apparently unconscious. Mrs. Ellis gave but one look at her husband, and, with a faint cry, sank fainting upon the floor. The noise partially aroused him; he turned his head, and, after an apparent effort, recognized his daughters standing beside him: he made a feeble attempt to raise his mutilated hands, and murmured faintly, "You've come at last!" then closing his eyes, he dropped his arms, as if exhausted by the effort. Esther knelt beside him, and pressed a kiss on his pale face. "Father!—father!" said she, softly. He opened his eyes again, and a smile of pleasure broke over his wan face, and lighted up his eyes, as he feebly said, "God bless you, darlings! I thought you'd never come. Where's mother and Caddy?" "Here," answered Esther, "here, by me; your looks frightened her so, that she's fainted." Doctor Burdett here interposed, and said: "You must all go now; he's too weak to bear more at present." "Let me stay with him a little longer," pleaded Esther. "No, my child, it's impossible," he continued; "besides, your mother will need your attention;" and, whilst he spoke, he led her into an adjoining room, where the others had preceded her. CHAPTER XXIV. Charlie Distinguishes Himself. Charlie had now been many weeks under the hospitable roof of Mrs. Bird, improving in health and appearance. Indeed, it would have been a wonder if he had not, as the kind mistress of the mansion seemed to do nought else, from day to day, but study plans for his comfort and pleasure. There was one sad drawback upon the contentment of the dear old lady, and that was her inability to procure Charlie's admission to the academy. One morning Mr. Whately called upon her, and, throwing himself into a chair, exclaimed: "It's all to no purpose; their laws are as unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians—arguments and entreaty are equally thrown away upon them; I've been closeted at least half a dozen times with each director; and as all I can say won't make your protege a shade whiter, I'm afraid his admission to the academy must be given up." "It's too bad," rejoined Mrs. Bird. "And who, may I ask, were the principal opposers?" "They all opposed it, except Mr. Weeks and Mr. Bentham." "Indeed!—why they are the very ones that I anticipated would go against it tooth and nail. And Mr. Glentworth—surely he was on our side?" "He!—why, my dear madam, he was the most rabid of the lot. With his sanctified face and canting tongue!" "I'm almost ashamed to own it—but it's the truth, and I shouldn't hesitate to tell it—I found the most pious of the directors the least accessible; as to old Glentworth, he actually talked to me as if I was recommending the committal of some horrid sin. I'm afraid I shall be set down by him as a rabid Abolitionist, I got so warm on the subject. I've cherished as strong prejudices against coloured people as any one; but I tell you, seeing how contemptible it makes others appear, has gone a great way towards eradicating it in me. I found myself obliged to use the same arguments against it that are used by the Abolitionists, and in endeavouring to convince others of the absurdity of their prejudices, I convinced myself." "I'd set my heart upon it," said Mrs. Bird, in a tone of regret; "but I suppose I'll have to give it up. Charlie don't know I've made application for his admission, and has been asking me to let him go. A great many of the boys who attend there have become acquainted with him, and it was only yesterday that Mr. Glentworth's sons were teasing me to consent to his beginning there the next term. The boys," concluded she, "have better hearts than their parents." "Oh, I begin to believe it's all sham, this prejudice; I'm getting quite disgusted with myself for having had it—or rather thinking I had it. As for saying it is innate, or that there is any natural antipathy to that class, it's all perfect folly; children are not born with it, or why shouldn't they shrink from a black nurse or playmate? It's all bosh," concluded he, indignantly, as he brought his cane down with a rap. "Charlie's been quite a means of grace to you," laughingly rejoined Mrs. Bird, amused at his vehemence of manner. "Well, I'm going to send him to Sabbath-school next Sunday; and, if there is a rebellion against his admission there, I shall be quite in despair." It is frequently the case, that we are urged by circumstances to the advocacy of a measure in which we take but little interest, and of the propriety of which we are often very sceptical; but so surely as it is just in itself, in our endeavours to convert others we convince ourselves; and, from lukewarm apologists, we become earnest advocates. This was just Mr. Whately's case: he had begun to canvass for the admission of Charlie with a doubtful sense of its propriety, and in attempting to overcome the groundless prejudices of others, he was convicted of his own. Happily, in his case, conviction was followed by conversion, and as he walked home from Mrs. Bird's, he made up his mind that, if they attempted to exclude Charlie from the Sabbath-school, he would give them a piece of his mind, and then resign his superintendency of it. On arriving at home, he found waiting for him a young lady, who was formerly a member of his class in the Sabbath-school. "I've come," said she, "to consult you about forming an adult class in our school for coloured persons. We have a girl living with us, who would be very glad to attend, and she knows two or three others. I'll willingly take the class myself. I've consulted the pastor and several others, and no one seems to anticipate any objections from the scholars, if we keep them on a separate bench, and do not mix them up with the white children." "I'm delighted to hear you propose it," answered Mr. Whately, quite overjoyed at the opening it presented, "the plan meets my warmest approval. I decidedly agree with you in the propriety of our making some effort for the elevation and instruction of this hitherto neglected class—any aid I can render——" "You astonish me," interrupted Miss Cass, "though I must say very agreeably. You were the last person from whom I thought of obtaining any countenance. I did not come to you until armed with the consent of almost all the parties interested, because from you I anticipated considerable opposition," and in her delight, the young girl grasped Mr. Whately's hand, and shook it very heartily. "Oh, my opinions relative to coloured people have lately undergone considerable modification; in fact," said he, with some little confusion, "quite a thorough revolution. I don't, think we have quite done our duty by these people. Well, well, we must make the future atone for the past." Miss Cass had entered upon her project with all the enthusiasm of youth, and being anxious that her class, "in point of numbers," should make a presentable appearance, had drafted into it no less a person than Aunt Comfort. Aunt Comfort was a personage of great importance in the little village of Warmouth, and one whose services were called into requisition on almost every great domestic occasion. At births she frequently officiated, and few young mothers thought themselves entirely safe if the black good-humoured face of Aunt Comfort was not to be seen at their bedside. She had a hand in the compounding of almost every bridecake, and had been known to often leave houses of feasting, to prepare weary earth-worn travellers for their final place of rest. Every one knew, and all liked her, and no one was more welcome at the houses of the good people of Warmouth than Aunt Comfort. But whilst rendering her all due praise for her domestic acquirements, justice compels us to remark that Aunt Comfort was not a literary character. She could get up a shirt to perfection, and made irreproachable chowder, but she was not a woman of letters. In fact, she had arrived at maturity at a time when negroes and books seldom came in familiar contact; and if the truth must be told, she cared very little about the latter. "But jist to 'blege Miss Cass," she consented to attend her class, averring as she did so, "that she didn't 'spect she was gwine to larn nothin' when she got thar." Miss Cass, however, was of the contrary opinion, and anticipated that after a few Sabbaths, Aunt Comfort would prove to be quite a literary phenomenon. The first time their class assembled the white children well-nigh dislocated their necks, in their endeavours to catch glimpses of the coloured scholars, who were seated on a backless bench, in an obscure corner of the room. Prominent amongst them shone Aunt Comfort, who in honour of this extraordinary occasion, had retrimmed her cap, which was resplendent with bows of red ribbon as large as peonies. She had a Sunday-school primer in her hand, and was repeating the letters with the utmost regularity, as Miss Cass pronounced them. They got on charmingly until after crossing over the letter O, as a matter of course they came to P and Q. "Look here," said Aunt Comfort, with a look of profound erudition, "here's anoder O. What's de use of having two of 'em?" "No, no, Aunt Comfort—that's Q—the letter Q." "Umph," grunted the old woman, incredulously, "what's de use of saying dat's a Q, when you jest said not a minute ago 'twas O?" "This is not the same," rejoined the teacher, "don't you see the little tail at the bottom of it?" Aunt Comfort took off her silver spectacles, and gave the glasses of them a furious rub, then after essaying another look, exclaimed, "What, you don't mean dat 'ere little speck down at the bottom of it, does yer?" "Yes, Aunt Comfort, that little speck, as you call it, makes all the difference—it makes O into Q." "Oh, go 'way, child," said she, indignantly, "you isn't gwine to fool me dat ar way. I knows you of old, honey—you's up to dese 'ere things—you know you allus was mighty 'chevious, and I isn't gwine to b'lieve dat dat ar little speck makes all the difference—no such thing, case it don't—deys either both O's or both Q's. I'm clar o' dat—deys either one or tother." Knowing by long experience the utter futility of attempting to convince Aunt Comfort that she was in the wrong, by anything short of a miracle, the teacher wisely skipped over the obnoxious letter, then all went smoothly on to the conclusion of the alphabet. The lesson having terminated, Miss Cass looked up and discovered standing near her a coloured boy, who she correctly surmised was sent as an addition to her class. "Come here, and sit down," said she, pointing to a seat next Aunt Comfort. "What is your name?" Charlie gave his name and residence, which were entered in due form on the teacher's book. "Now, Charles," she continued, "do you know your letters?" "Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "Can you spell?" she inquired. To this also Charlie gave an affirmative, highly amused at the same time at being asked such a question. Miss Cass inquired no further into the extent of his acquirements, it never having entered her head that he could do more than spell. So handing him one of the primers, she pointed out a line on which to begin. The spirit of mischief entered our little friend, and he stumbled through b-l-a bla—b-l-i bli—b-l-o blo—b-l-u blu, with great gravity and slowness. "You spell quite nicely, particularly for a little coloured boy," said Miss Cass, encouragingly, as he concluded the line; "take this next," she continued, pointing to another, "and when you have learned it, I will hear you again." It was the custom of the superintendent to question the scholars upon a portion of Bible history, given out the Sabbath previous for study during the week. It chanced that upon the day of which we write, the subject for examination was one with which Charlie was quite familiar. Accordingly, when the questions were put to the school, he answered boldly and quickly to many of them, and with an accuracy that astonished his fellow scholars. "How did you learn the answers to those questions—you can't read?" said Miss Cass. "Yes, but I can read," answered Charlie, with a merry twinkle in his eye. "Why didn't you tell me so before?" she asked. "Because you didn't ask me," he replied, suppressing a grin. This was true enough, so Miss Cass, having nothing farther to say, sat and listened, whilst he answered the numerous and sometimes difficult questions addressed to the scholars. Not so, Aunt Comfort. She could not restrain her admiration of this display of talent on the part of one of her despised race; she was continually breaking out with expressions of wonder and applause. "Jis' hear dat—massy on us—only jis' listen to de chile," said she, "talks jis' de same as if he was white. Why, boy, where you learn all dat?" "Across the Red Sea," cried Charlie, in answer to a question from the desk of the superintendent. "'Cross de Red Sea! Umph, chile, you been dere?" asked Aunt Comfort, with a face full of wonder. "What did you say?" asked Charlie, whose attention had been arrested by the last question. "Why I asked where you learned all dat 'bout de children of Israel." "Oh, I learned that at Philadelphia," was his reply; "I learned it at school with the rest of the boys." "You did!" exclaimed she, raising her hands with astonishment. "Is dere many more of 'em like you?" Charlie did not hear this last question of Aunt Comfort's, therefore she was rather startled by his replying in a loud tone, "Immense hosts." "Did I ever—jis' hear dat, dere's ''mense hostes' of 'em jest like him! only think of it. Is dey all dere yet, honey?" "They were all drowned." "Oh, Lordy, Lordy," rejoined she, aghast with horror; for Charlie's reply to a question regarding the fate of Pharaoh's army, had been by her interpreted as an answer to her question respecting his coloured schoolmates at Philadelphia. "And how did you 'scape, honey," continued she, "from drowning 'long wid the rest of 'em?" "Why I wasn't there, it was thousands of years ago." "Look here. What do you mean?" she whispered; "didn't you say jest now dat you went to school wid 'em?" This was too much for Charlie, who shook all over with suppressed laughter; nor was Miss Cass proof against the contagion—she was obliged to almost suffocate herself with her handkerchief to avoid a serious explosion. "Aunt Comfort, you are mistaking him," said she, as soon as she could recover her composure; "he is answering the questions of the superintendent—not yours, and very well he has answered them, too," continued she. "I like to see little boys aspiring: I am glad to see you so intelligent—you must persevere, Charlie." "Yes, you must, honey," chimed in Aunt Comfort. "I'se very much like Miss Cass; I likes to see children—'specially children of colour—have expiring minds." Charlie went quite off at this, and it was only by repeated hush—hushes, from Miss Cass, and a pinch in the back from Aunt Comfort, that he was restored to a proper sense of his position. The questioning being now finished, Mr. Whately came to Charlie, praised him highly for his aptness, and made some inquiries respecting his knowledge of the catechism; also whether he would be willing to join the class that was to be catechised in the church during the afternoon. To this, Charlie readily assented, and, at the close of the school, was placed at the foot of the class, preparatory to going into the Church. The public catechizing of the scholars was always an event in the village; but now a novelty was given it, by the addition of a black lamb to the flock, and, as a matter of course, a much greater interest was manifested. Had a lion entered the doors of St. Stephen's church, he might have created greater consternation, but he could not have attracted more attention than did our little friend on passing beneath its sacred portals. The length of the aisle seemed interminable to him, and on his way to the altar he felt oppressed by the scrutiny of eyes through which he was compelled to pass. Mr. Dural, the pastor, looked kindly at him, as he stood in front of the chancel, and Charlie took heart from his cheering smile. Now, to Aunt Comfort (who was the only coloured person who regularly attended the church) a seat had been assigned beside the organ; which elevated position had been given her that the congregation might indulge in their devotions without having their prejudices shocked by a too close contemplation of her ebony countenance. But Aunt Comfort, on this occasion, determined to get near enough to hear all that passed, and, leaving her accustomed seat, she planted herself in one of the aisles of the gallery overlooking the altar, where she remained almost speechless with wonder and astonishment at the unprecedented sight of a woolly head at the foot of the altar. Charlie got on very successfully until called upon to repeat the Lord's Prayer; and, strange to say, at this critical juncture, his memory forsook him, and he was unable to utter a word of it: for the life of him he could not think of anything but "Now I lay me down to sleep"—and confused and annoyed he stood unable to proceed. At this stage of affairs, Aunt Comfort's interest in Charlie's success had reached such a pitch that her customary awe of the place she was in entirely departed, and she exclaimed, "I'll give yer a start—'Our Farrer,'"—then overwhelmed by the consciousness that she had spoken out in meeting, she sank down behind a pew-door, completely extinguished. At this there was an audible titter, that was immediately suppressed; after which, Charlie recovered his memory, and, started by the opportune prompting of Aunt Comfort, he recited it correctly. A few questions more terminated the examination, and the children sat down in front of the altar until the conclusion of the service. Mrs. Bird, highly delighted with the debut of her protege, bestowed no end of praises upon him, and even made the coachman walk home, that Charlie might have a seat in the carriage, as she alleged she was sure he must be much fatigued and overcome with the excitement of the day; then taking the reins into her own hands, she drove them safely home. CHAPTER XXV. The Heir. We must now return to Philadelphia, and pay a visit to the office of Mr. Balch. We shall find that gentleman in company with Mr. Walters: both look anxious, and are poring over a letter which is outspread before them. "It was like a thunder-clap to me," said Mr. Balch: "the idea of there being another heir never entered my brain—I didn't even know he had a living relative." "When did you get the letter?" asked Walters. "Only this morning, and I sent for you immediately! Let us read it again—we'll make another attempt to decipher this incomprehensible name. Confound the fellow! why couldn't he write so that some one besides himself could read it! We must stumble through it," said he, as he again began the letter as follows:— "Dear Sir,—Immediately on receipt of your favour, I called upon Mr. Thurston, to take the necessary steps for securing the property of your late client. To my great surprise, I found that another claimant had started up, and already taken the preliminary measures to entering upon possession. This gentleman, Mr.—— "Now, what would you call that name, Walters?—to me it looks like Stimmens, or Stunners, or something of the kind!" "Never mind the name," exclaimed Walters—"skip that—let me hear the rest of the letter; we shall find out who he is soon enough, in all conscience." "Well, then," resumed Mr. Balch—"This gentleman, Mr.——, is a resident in your city; and he will, no doubt, take an early opportunity of calling on you, in reference to the matter. It is my opinion, that without a will in their favour, these children cannot oppose his claim successfully, if he can prove his consanguinity to Mr. Garie. His lawyer here showed me a copy of the letters and papers which are to be used as evidence, and, I must say, they are entirely without flaw. He proves himself, undoubtedly, to be the first cousin of Mr. Garie. You are, no doubt, aware that these children being the offspring of a slave-woman, cannot inherit, in this State (except under certain circumstances), the property of a white father. I am, therefore, very much afraid that they are entirely at his mercy." "Well, then," said Walters, when Mr. Balch finished reading the letter, "it is clear there is an heir, and his claim must be well sustained, if such a man as Beckley, the first lawyer in the State, does not hesitate to endorse it; and as all the property (with the exception of a few thousands in my hands) lies in Georgia, I'm afraid the poor children will come off badly, unless this new heir prove to be a man of generosity—at all events, it seems we are completely at his mercy." "We must hope for the best," rejoined Mr. Balch. "If he has any heart, he certainly will make some provision for them. The disappearance of that will is to me most unaccountable! I am confident it was at his house. It seemed so singular that none of his papers should be missing, except that—there were a great many others, deeds, mortgages, &c. scattered over the floor, but no will!" The gentlemen were thus conversing, when they heard a tap at the door. "Come in!" cried Mr. Balch; and, in answer to the request, in walked Mr. George Stevens. Mr. Walters and Mr. Balch bowed very stiffly, and the latter inquired what had procured him the honour of a visit. "I have called upon you in reference to the property of the late Mr. Garie." "Oh! you are acting in behalf of this new claimant, I suppose?" rejoined Mr. Balch. "Sir!" said Mr. Stevens, looking as though he did not thoroughly understand him. "I said," repeated Mr. Balch, "that I presumed you called in behalf of this new-found heir to Mr. Garie's property." Mr. Stevens looked at him for a moment, then drawing himself up, exclaimed, "I AM THE HEIR!" "You!—you the heir!" cried both the gentlemen, almost simultaneously. "Yes, I am the heir!" coolly repeated Mr. Stevens, with an assured look. "I am the first cousin of Mr. Garie!" "You his first cousin?—it is impossible!" said Walters. "You'll discover it is not only possible, but true—I am, as I said, Mr. Garie's first cousin!" "If you are that, you are more," said Walters, fiercely—"you're his murderer!" At this charge Mr. Stevens turned deathly pale. "Yes," continued Walters; "you either murdered him, or instigated others to do so! It was you who directed the rioters against both him and me—I have proof of what I say and can produce it. Now your motive is clear as day—you wanted his money, and destroyed him to obtain it! His blood is on your hands!" hissed Walters through his clenched teeth. In the excitement consequent upon such a charge, Mr. Stevens, unnoticed by himself, had overturned a bottle of red ink, and its contents had slightly stained his hands. When Walters charged him with having Mr. Garie's blood upon them, he involuntarily looked down and saw his hands stained with red. An expression of intense horror flitted over his face when he observed it; but quickly regaining his composure, he replied, "It's only a little ink." "Yes, I know that is ink," rejoined Walters, scornfully; "look at him, Balch," he continued, "he doesn't dare to look either of us in the face." "It's false," exclaimed Stevens, with an effort to appear courageous; "it's as false as hell, and any man that charges me with it is a liar." The words had scarcely passed his lips, when Walters sprang upon him with the ferocity of a tiger, and seizing him by the throat, shook and whirled him about as though he were a plaything. "Stop, stop! Walters," cried Mr. Balch, endeavouring to loose his hold upon the throat of Mr. Stevens, who was already purple in the face; "let him go, this violence can benefit neither party. Loose your hold." At this remonstrance, Walters dashed Stevens from him into the farthest corner of the room, exclaiming, "Now, go and prosecute me if you dare, and I'll tell for what I chastised you; prosecute me for an assault, if you think you can risk the consequences." Mr. Balch assisted him from the floor and placed him in a chair, where he sat holding his side, and panting for breath. When he was able to speak, he exclaimed, with a look of concentrated malignity, "Remember, we'll be even some day; I never received a blow and forgot it afterwards, bear that in mind." "This will never do, gentlemen," said Mr. Balch, soothingly: "this conduct is unworthy of you. You are unreasonable both of you. When you have cooled down we will discuss the matter as we should." "You'll discuss it alone then," said Stevens, rising, and walking to the door: "and when you have any further communication to make, you must come to me." "Stop, stop, don't go," cried Mr. Balch, following him out at the door, which they closed behind them; "don't go away in a passion, Mr. Stevens. You and Walters are both too hasty. Come in here and sit down," said he, opening the door of a small adjoining room, "wait here one moment, I'll come back to you." "This will never do, Walters," said he, as he re-entered his office; "the fellow has the upper hand of us, and we must humour him; we should suppress our own feelings for the children's sake. You are as well aware as I am of the necessity of some compromise—we are in his power for the present, and must act as circumstances compel us to." "I can't discuss the matter with him," interrupted Walters, "he's an unmitigated scoundrel. I couldn't command my temper in his presence for five minutes. If you can arrange anything with him at all advantageous to the children, I shall be satisfied, it will be more than I expect; only bear in mind, that what I have in my hands belonging to Garie we must retain, he knows nothing of that." "Very well," rejoined Mr. Balch, "depend upon it I'll do my best;" and closing the door, he went back to Mr. Stevens. "Now, Mr. Stevens," said he, drawing up a chair, "we will talk over this matter dispassionately, and try and arrive at some amicable arrangement: be kind enough to inform me what your claims are." "Mr. Balch, you are a gentleman," began Mr. Stevens, "and therefore I'm willing to discuss the matter thoroughly with you. You'll find me disposed to do a great deal for these children: but I wish it distinctly understood at the beginning, that whatever I may give them, I bestow as a favour. I concede nothing to them as a right, legally they have not the slightest claim upon me; of that you, who are an excellent lawyer, must be well aware." "We won't discuss that point at present, Mr. Stevens. I believe you intimated you would be kind enough to say upon what evidence you purposed sustaining your claims?" "Well, to come to the point, then," said Stevens; "the deceased Mr. Garie was, as I before said, my first cousin. His father and my mother were brother and sister. My mother married in opposition to her parents' desires; they cut her off from the family, and for years there was no communication between them. At my father's death, my mother made overtures for a reconciliation, which were contemptuously rejected, at length she died. I was brought up in ignorance of who my grandparents were; and only a few months since, on the death of my father's sister, did I make the discovery. Here," said he, extending the packet of letters which, the reader will remember once agitated, him so strangely, "here are the letters that passed between my mother and her father." Mr. Balch took up one and read:— "Savannah, 18— "MADAM,—Permit me to return this letter (wherein you declare yourself the loving and repentant daughter of Bernard Garie) and at the same time inform you, that by your own. acts you have deprived yourself of all claim to that relation. In opposition to my wishes, and in open defiance of my express commands, you chose to unite your fortune with one in every respect your inferior. If that union has not resulted as happily as you expected, you must sustain yourself by the reflection that you are the author of your own misfortunes and alone to blame for your present miserable condition.—Respectfully yours, "BERNARD GARIE." Mr. Balch read, one after another, letters of a similar purport—in fact, a long correspondence between Bernard Garie and the mother of Mr. Stevens. When he had finished, the latter remarked, "In addition to those, I can produce my mother's certificate of baptism, her marriage certificate, and every necessary proof of my being her son. If that does not suffice to make a strong case, I am at a loss to imagine what will." Mr. Balch pondered a few moments, and then inquired, looking steadily at Mr. Stevens, "How long have you known of this relationship?" "Oh, I've known it these three years." "Three years! why, my dear sir, only a few moments ago you said a few months." "Oh, did I?" said Mr. Stevens, very much confused; "I meant, or should have said, three years." "Then, of course you were aware that Mr. Garie was your cousin when he took the house beside you?" "Oh, yes—that is—yes—yes; I was aware of it." "And did you make any overtures of a social character?" asked Mr. Balch. "Well, yes—that is to say, my wife did." "Where were you the night of the murder?" Mr. Stevens turned pale at this question, and replied, hesitatingly, "Why, at home, of course." "You were at home, and saw the house of your cousins assaulted, and made no effort to succour them or their children. The next morning you are one of the coroner's inquest, and hurry through the proceedings, never once saying a word of your relationship to them, nor yet making any inquiry respecting the fate of the children. It is very singular." "I don't see what this cross-questioning is to amount to; it has nothing to do with my claim as heir." "We are coming to that," rejoined Mr. Balch. "This, as I said, is very singular; and when I couple it with some other circumstances that have come to my knowledge, it is more than singular—it is suspicious. Here are a number of houses assaulted by a mob. Two or three days before the assault takes place, a list in your handwriting, and which is headed, 'Places to be attacked,' is found, under circumstances that leave no doubt that it came directly from you. Well, the same mob that attacks these places—marked out by you—traverse a long distance to reach the house of your next-door neighbour. They break into it, and kill him; and you, who are aware at the time that he is your own cousin, do not attempt to interpose to prevent it, although it can be proved that you were all-powerful with the marauders. No! you allow him to be destroyed without an effort to save him, and immediately claim his property. Now, Mr. Stevens, people disposed to be suspicions—seeing how much you were to be the gainer by his removal, and knowing you had some connection with this mob—might not scruple to say that you instigated the attack by which he lost his life; and I put it to you—now don't you think that, if it was any one else, you would say that the thing looked suspicious?" Mr. Stevens winced at this, but made no effort to reply. Mr. Balch continued, "What I was going to remark is simply this. As we are in possession of these facts, and able to prove them by competent witnesses, we should not be willing to remain perfectly silent respecting it, unless you made what we regarded as a suitable provision for the children." "I'm willing, as I said before, to do something; but don't flatter yourself I'll do any more than I originally intended from any fear of disclosures from you. I'm not to be frightened," said Mr. Stevens. "I'm not at all disposed to attempt to frighten you: however, you know how far a mere statement of these facts would go towards rendering your position in society more agreeable. A person who has been arrested on suspicion of murder is apt to be shunned and distrusted. It can't be helped; people are so very squeamish—they will draw back, you know, under such circumstances." "I don't see how such a suspicion can attach itself to me," rejoined Stevens, sharply. "Oh, well, we won't discuss that any further: let me hear what you will do for the children." Mr. Balch saw, from the nervous and embarrassed manner of Mr. Stevens, that the indirect threat of exposing him had had considerable effect; and his downcast looks and agitation rather strengthened in his mind the suspicions that had been excited by the disclosures of Mr. Walters. After a few moments' silence, Mr. Stevens said, "I'll settle three thousand dollars on each of the children. Now I think that is treating them liberally." "Liberally!" exclaimed Balch, in a tone of contempt—"liberally! You acquire by the death of their father property worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and you offer these children, who are the rightful heirs, three thousand dollars! That, sir, won't suffice." "I think it should, then," rejoined Stevens. "By the laws of Georgia these children, instead of being his heirs, are my slaves. Their mother was a slave before them, and they were born slaves; and if they were in Savannah, I could sell them both to-morrow. On the whole, I think I've made you a very fair offer, and I'd advise you to think of it." "No, Mr. Stevens; I shall accept no such paltry sum. If you wish a quick and peaceful possession of what you are pleased to regard as your rights, you must tender something more advantageous, or I shall feel compelled to bring this thing into court, even at the risk of loss; and there, you know, we should be obliged to make a clear statement of everything connected with this business. It might be advantageous to us to bring the thing fully before the court and public—but I'm exceedingly doubtful whether it would advance your interest." Stevens winced at this, and asked, "What would you consider a fair offer?" "I should consider all a just offer, half a fair one, and a quarter as little as you could have the conscience to expect us to take." "I don't see any use in this chaffering, Mr. Balch," said Stephens; "you can't expect me to give you any such sums as you propose. Name a sum that you can reasonably expect to get." "Well," said Mr. Balch, rising, "you must give us fifteen thousand dollars, and you should think yourself well off then. We could commence a suit, and put you to nearly that expense to defend it; to say nothing of the notoriety that the circumstance would occasion you. Both Walters and I are willing to spend both money and time in defence of these children's rights; I assure you they are not friendless." "I'll give twelve thousand, and not a cent more, if I'm hung for it," said Mr. Stevens, almost involuntarily. "Who spoke of hanging?" asked Mr. Balch. "Oh!" rejoined Stevens, "that is only my emphatic way of speaking." "Of course, you meant figuratively," said Mr. Balch, in a tone of irony; mentally adding, "as I hope you may be one day literally." Mr. Stevens looked flushed and angry, but Mr. Balch continued, without appearing to notice him, and said: "I'll speak to Walters. Should he acquiesce in your proposal, I am willing to accept it; however, I cannot definitely decide without consulting him. To-morrow I will inform you of the result." CHAPTER XXVI. Home Again. To Charlie the summer had been an exceedingly short one—time had flown so pleasantly away. Everything that could be done to make the place agreeable Mrs. Bird had effected. Amongst the number of her acquaintances who had conceived a regard for her young protege was a promising artist to whom she had been a friend and patroness. Charlie paid him frequent visits, and would sit hour after hour in his studio, watching the progress of his work. Having nothing else at the time to amuse him, he one day asked the artist's permission to try his hand at a sketch. Being supplied with the necessary materials, he commenced a copy of a small drawing, and was working assiduously, when the artist came and looked over his shoulder. "Did you ever draw before?" he asked, with a start of surprise. "Never," replied Charlie, "except on my slate at school. I sometimes used to sketch the boys' faces." "And you have never received any instructions?" "Never—not even a hint," was the answer. "And this is the first time you have attempted a sketch upon paper?" "Yes; the very first." "Then you are a little prodigy," said the artist, slapping him upon the shoulder. "I must take you in hand. You have nothing else to do; come here regularly every day, and I'll teach you. Will you come?" "Certainly, if you wish it. But now, tell me, do you really think that drawing good?" "Well, Charlie, if I had done it, it would be pronounced very bad for me; but, coming from your hands, it's something astonishing." "Really, now—you're not joking me?" "No, Charlie, I'm in earnest—I assure you I am; it is drawn with great spirit, and the boy that you have put in by the pump is exceedingly well done." This praise served as a great incentive to our little friend, who, day after day thenceforth, was found at the studio busily engaged with his crayons, and making rapid progress in his new art. He had been thus occupied some weeks, and one morning was hurrying to the breakfast-table, to get through his meal, that he might be early at the studio, when he found Mrs. Bird in her accustomed seat looking very sad. "Why, what is the matter?" he asked, on observing the unusually grave face of his friend. "Oh, Charlie, my dear! I've received very distressing intelligence from Philadelphia. Your father is quite ill." "My father ill!" cried he, with a look of alarm. "Yes, my dear! quite sick—so says my letter. Here are two for you." Charlie hastily broke the seal of one, and read as follows:— "MY DEAR LITTLE BROTHER,—We are all in deep distress in consequence of the misfortunes brought upon us by the mob. Our home has been destroyed; and, worse than all, our poor father was caught, and so severely beaten by the rioters that for some days his life was entirely despaired of. Thank God! he is now improving, and we have every reasonable hope of his ultimate recovery. Mother, Caddy, and I, as you may well suppose, are almost prostrated by this accumulation of misfortunes, and but for the kindness of Mr. Walters, with whom we are living, I do not know what would have become of us. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Garie—[Here followed a passage that was so scored and crossed as to be illegible. After a short endeavour to decipher it, he continued:] We would like to see you very much, and mother grows every day more anxious for your return. I forgot to add, in connection with the mob, that Mr. Walters's house was also attacked, but unsuccessfully, the rioters having met a signal repulse. Mother and Caddy send a world of love to you. So does Kinch, who comes every day to see us and is, often extremely useful. Give our united kind regards to Mrs. Bird, and thank her in our behalf for her great kindness to you.—Ever yours, "ESTHER. "P.S.—Do try and manage to come home soon." The tears trickled down Charlie's cheek as he perused the letter, which, when he had finished reading, he handed to Mrs. Bird, and then commenced the other. This proved to be from Kinch, who had spent all the spare time at his disposal since the occurrence of the mob in preparing it. "To MR. CHARLES ELLIS, ESQ., at MRS. BIRD'S. "Philadelphia. "DEAR SIR AND HONNORED FRIEND.—I take This chance To Write To you To tell You that I am Well, And that we are all well Except Your father, who Is sick; and I hope you are Enjoying the same Blessin. We had An Awful fight, And I was There, and I was One of The Captings. I had a sord on; and the next Mornin we had a grate Brekfast. But nobody Eat anything but me, And I was obliged to eat, Or the Wittles would have spoiled. The Mob had Guns as Big as Cannun; And they Shot them Off, and the holes Are in The Shutter yet; And when You come Back, I will show them to You. Your Father is very bad; And I Have gone back to school, And I am Licked every day because I don't Know my Lesson. A great big boy, with white woolly hair and Pinkish Grey eyes, has got Your seat. I Put a Pin under him one Day, And he told On me; and We Are to Have a fight tomorrow. The boys Call Him 'Short and Dirty,' because he ain't tall, and never washes His Face. We Have got a new Teacher for the 5th Division. He's a Scorcher, And believes in Rat Tan. I am to Wear My new Cloths Next Sunday. Excuse This long letter. Your Friend till death, "KINCH SANDERS DE YOUNGE. [Illustration: skull and cross bones] "P.S. This it the best Skull and Cross-bones That I can make. Come home soon, Yours &c., "K. S. DE YOUNGE, ESQ." Charlie could not but smile through his tears, as he read this curious epistle, which was not more remarkable for its graceful composition than its wonderful chirography. Some of the lines were written in blue ink, some in red, and others in that pale muddy black which is the peculiar colour of ink after passing through the various experiments of school-boys, who generally entertain the belief that all foreign substances, from molasses-candy to bread-crumbs, necessarily improve the colour and quality of that important liquid. "Why every other word almost is commenced with a capital; and I declare he's even made some in German text," cried Charlie, running his finger mirthfully along the lines, until he came to "Your father is very bad." Here the tears came welling up again—the shower had returned almost before the sun had departed; and, hiding his face in his hands, he leant sobbing on the table. "Cheer up, Charlie!—cheer up, my little man! all may go well yet." "Mrs. Bird," he sobbed, "you've been very kind to me; yet I want to go home. I must see mother and father. You see what Esther writes,—they want me to come home; do let me go." "Of course you shall go, if you wish. Yet I should like you to remain with me, if you will." "No, no, Mrs. Bird, I mustn't stay; it wouldn't be right for me to remain here, idle and enjoying myself, and they so poor and unhappy at home. I couldn't stay," said he, rising from the table,—"I must go." "Well, my dear, you can't go now. Sit down and finish your breakfast, or you will have a head-ache." "I'm not hungry—I can't eat," he replied; "my appetite has all gone." And stealing away from the room, he went up into his chamber, threw himself on the bed, and wept bitterly. Mrs. Bird was greatly distressed at the idea of losing her little favourite. He had been so much with her that she had become strongly attached to him, and therefore looked forward to his departure with unfeigned regret. But Charlie could not be persuaded to stay; and reluctantly Mrs. Bird made arrangements for his journey home. Even the servants looked a little sorry when they heard of his intended departure; and Reuben the coachman actually presented him with a jack-knife as a token of his regard. Mrs. Bird accompanied him to the steamer, and placed him under the special care of the captain; so that he was most comfortably provided for until his arrival in New York, where he took the cars direct for home. Not having written to inform them on what day he might be expected, he anticipated giving them a joyful surprise, and, with this end in view, hastened in the direction of Mr. Walters's. As he passed along, his eye was attracted by a figure before him which he thought he recognized, and on closer inspection it proved to be his sister Caddy. Full of boyish fun, he crept up behind her, and clasped his hands over her eyes, exclaiming, in an assumed voice, "Now, who am I?" "Go away, you impudent, nasty thing!" cried Caddy, plunging violently. Charlie loosed his hold; she turned, and beheld her brother. "Oh! Charlie, Charlie! is it you? Why, bless you, you naughty fellow, how you frightened me!" said she, throwing her arms round his neck, and kissing him again and again. "When did you come? Oh, how delighted mother and Ess will be!" "I only arrived about half an hour ago. How are mother and father and Esther?" "Mother and Ess are well, and father better. But I'm so glad to see you," she cried, with a fresh burst of tears and additional embraces. "Why, Cad," said he, endeavouring to suppress some watery sensations of his own, "I'm afraid you're not a bit pleased at my return—you're actually crying about it." "Oh, I'm so glad to see you that I can't help it," she replied, as she fell to crying and kissing him more furiously than before. Charlie became much confused at these repeated demonstrations of joyful affection in the crowded street, and, gently disengaging her, remarked, "See, Caddy, everybody is looking at us; let us walk on." "I had almost forgot I was sent on an errand—however, it's not of much consequence—I'll go home again with you;" and taking his hand, they trudged on together. "How did you say father was?" he asked again. "Oh, he's better bodily; that is, he has some appetite, sits up every day, and is gradually getting stronger; but he's all wrong here," said she, tapping her forehead. "Sometimes he don't know any of us—and it makes us all feel so bad." Here the tears came trickling down again, as she continued: "Oh, Charlie! what those white devils will have to answer for! When I think of how much injury they have done us, I hate them! I know it's wrong to hate anybody—but I can't help it; and I believe God hates them as much as I do!" Charlie looked gloomy; and, as he made no rejoinder, she continued, "We didn't save a thing, not even a change of clothes; they broke and burnt up everything; and then the way they beat poor father was horrible—horrible! Just think—they chopped his fingers nearly all off, so that he has only the stumps left. Charlie, Charlie!" she cried, wringing her hands, "it's heart-rending to see him—he can't even feed himself, and he'll never be able to work again!" "Don't grieve, Cad," said Charlie, with an effort to suppress his own tears; "I'm almost a man now," continued he, drawing himself up—"don't be afraid, I'll take care of you all!" Thus conversing, they reached Mr. Walters's. Caddy wanted Charlie to stop and look at the damage effected by the mob upon the outside of the house, but he was anxious to go in, and ran up the steps and gave the bell a very sharp pull. The servant who opened the door was about to make some exclamation of surprise, and was only restrained by a warning look from Charlie. Hurrying past them, Caddy led the way to the room where her mother and Esther were sitting. With a cry of joy Mrs. Ellis caught him in her arms, and, before he was aware of their presence, he found himself half smothered by her and Esther. They had never been separated before his trip to Warmouth; and their reunion, under such circumstances, was particularly affecting. None of them could speak for a few moments, and Charlie clung round his mother's neck as though he would never loose his hold. "Mother, mother!" was all he could utter; yet in that word was comprised a world of joy and affection. Esther soon came in for her share of caresses; then Charlie inquired, "Where's father?" "In here," said Mrs. Ellis, leading the way to an adjoining room. "I don't think he will know you—perhaps he may." In one corner of the apartment, propped up in a large easy chair by a number of pillows, sat poor Mr. Ellis, gazing vacantly about the room and muttering to himself. His hair had grown quite white, and his form was emaciated in the extreme; there was a broad scar across his forehead, and his dull, lustreless eyes were deeply sunken in his head. He took no notice of them as they approached, but continued muttering and looking at his hands. Charlie was almost petrified at the change wrought in his father. A few months before he had left him in the prime of healthful manhood; now he was bent and spectrelike, and old in appearance as if the frosts of eighty winters had suddenly fallen on him. Mrs. Ellis laid her hand gently upon his shoulder, and said, "Husband, here's Charlie." He made no reply, but continued muttering and examining his mutilated hands. "It's Charlie," she repeated. "Oh, ay! nice little boy!" he replied, vacantly; "whose son is he?" Mrs. Ellis's voice quivered as she reiterated, "It's Charlie—our Charlie!—don't you know him?" "Oh, yes! nice little boy—nice little boy. Oh!" he continued, in a suppressed and hurried tone, as a look of alarm crossed his face; "run home quick, little boy! and tell your mother they're coming, thousands of them; they've guns, and swords, and clubs. Hush! There they come—there they come!" And he buried his face in the shawl, and trembled in an agony of fright. "Oh, mother, this is dreadful!" exclaimed Charlie. "Don't he know any of you?" "Yes; sometimes his mind comes back—very seldom, though—only for a very little while. Come away: talking to him sometimes makes him worse." And slowly and sorrowfully the two left the apartment. That evening, after Mr. Ellis had been safely bestowed in bed, the family gathered round the fire in the room of Mrs. Ellis, where Charlie entertained them with a description of Warmouth and of the manner in which he had passed the time whilst there. He was enthusiastic respecting Mrs. Bird and her kindness. "Mother, she is such a dear old lady: if I'd been as white as snow, and her own son, she couldn't have been kinder to me. She didn't want me to come away, and cried ever so much. Let me show you what she gave me!" Charlie thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a small wallet, from which he counted out four ten-dollar bills, two fives, and a two dollar and a half gold piece, "Ain't I rich!" said he, as, with the air of a millionaire, he tossed the money upon a table. "Now," he continued, "do you know what I'm about to do?" Not receiving any answer from his wondering sisters or mother, he added, "Why, just this!—here, mother, this is yours," said he, placing the four ten-dollar bills before her; "and here are five apiece for Esther and Cad; the balance is for your humble servant. Now, then," he concluded, "what do you think of that?" Mrs. Ellis looked fondly at him, and, stroking his head, told him that he was a good son; and Esther and Caddy declared him to be the best brother in town. "Now, girls," said he, with the air of a patriarch, "what do you intend to do with your money?" "Mine will go towards buying me a dress, and Esther will save hers for a particular purpose," said Caddy. "I'll tell you something about her and Mr. Walters," continued she, with a mischievous look at her sister. "Oh, Caddy—don't! Ain't you ashamed to plague me so?" asked Esther, blushing to the roots of her hair. "Mother, pray stop her," cried she, pleadingly. "Hush, Caddy!" interposed her mother, authoritatively; "you shall do no such thing." "Well," resumed Caddy, "mother says I mustn't tell; but I can say this much——" Esther here put her hand over her sister's mouth and effectually prevented any communication she was disposed to make. "Never mind her, Ess!" cried Charlie; "you'll tell me all in good time, especially if it's anything worth knowing." Esther made no reply, but, releasing her sister, hurried out of the room, and went upstairs to Charlie's chamber, where he found her on retiring for the night. "I'm glad you're here, Ess," said he, "you'll indulge me. Here is the key—open my trunk and get me out a nightcap; I'm too tired, or too lazy, to get it for myself." Esther stooped down, opened the trunk, and commenced searching for the article of head-gear in question. "Come, Ess," said Charles, coaxingly, "tell me what this is about you and Mr. Walters." She made no reply at first, but fumbled about in the bottom of the trunk, professedly in search of the nightcap which she at that moment held in her hand. "Can't you tell me?" he again asked. "Oh, there's nothing to tell, Charlie!" she answered. "There must be something, Ess, or you wouldn't have blushed up so when Cad was about to speak of it. Do," said he, approaching her, and putting his arm round her neck—"do tell me all about it—I am sure there is some secret!" "Oh, no, Charlie—there is no secret; it's only this——" Here she stopped, and, blushing, turned her head away. "Ess, this is nonsense," said Charlie, impatiently: "if it's anything worth knowing, why can't you tell a fellow? Come," said he, kissing her, "tell me, now, like a dear old Ess as you are." "Well, Charlie," said she, jerking the words out with an effort, "Mr.—Mr. Walters has asked me to marry him!" "Phew—gemini! that is news!" exclaimed Charlie. "And are you going to accept him Ess?" "I don't know," she answered. "Don't know!" repeated Charlie, in a tone of surprise. "Why, Ess, I'm astonished at you—such a capital fellow as he is! Half the girls of our acquaintance would give an eye for the chance." "But he is so rich!" responded Esther. "Well, now, that's a great objection, ain't it! I should say, all the better on that account," rejoined Charlie. "The money is the great stumbling-block," continued she; "everybody would say I married him for that." "Then everybody would lie, as everybody very often does! If I was you, Ess, and loved him, I shouldn't let his fortune stand in the way. I wish," continued he, pulling up his shirt-collar, "that some amiable young girl with a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars, would make me an offer—I'd like to catch myself refusing her!" The idea of a youth of his tender years marrying any one, seemed so ludicrous to Esther, that she burst into a hearty fit of laughter, to the great chagrin of our hero, who seemed decidedly of the opinion that his sister had not a proper appreciation of his years and inches. "Don't laugh, Ess; but tell me—do you really intend to refuse him?" "I can't decide yet, Charlie," answered she seriously; "if we were situated as we were before—were not such absolute paupers—I wouldn't hesitate to accept him; but to bring a family of comparative beggars upon him—I can't make up my mind to do that." Charlie looked grave as Esther made this last objection; boy as he was, he felt its weight and justice. "Well, Ess," rejoined he, "I don't know what to say about it—of course I can't advise. What does mother say?" "She leaves it entirely to me," she answered. "She says I must act just as I feel is right." "I certainly wouldn't have him at all, Ess, if I didn't love him; and if I did, I shouldn't let the money stand in the way—so, good night!" Charlie slept very late the next morning, and was scarcely dressed when Esther knocked at his door, with the cheerful tidings that her father had a lucid interval and was waiting to see him. Dressing himself hastily, he followed her into their father's room. When he entered, the feeble sufferer stretched out his mutilated arms towards him and clasped him round the neck, "They tell me," said he, "that you came yesterday, and that I didn't recognize you. I thought, when I awoke this morning, that I had a dim recollection of having seen some dear face; but my head aches so, that I often forget—yes, often forget. My boy," he continued, "you are all your mother and sisters have to depend upon now; I'm—I'm——" here his voice faltered, as he elevated his stumps of hands—"I'm helpless; but you must take care of them. I'm an old man now," said he despondingly. "I will, father; I'll try so hard" replied Charlie. "It was cruel in them, wasn't it, son," he resumed. "See, they've made me helpless for ever!" Charlie restrained the tears that were forcing themselves up, and rejoined, "Never fear, father! I'll do my best; I trust I shall soon be able to take care of you." His father did not understand him—his mind was gone again, and he was staring vacantly about him. Charlie endeavoured to recall his attention, but failed, for he began muttering about the mob and his hands; they were compelled to quit the room, and leave him to himself, as he always became quiet sooner by being left alone. CHAPTER XXVII. Sudbury. We must now admit our readers to a consultation that is progressing between Mr. Balch and Mr. Walters, respecting the future of the two Garie children. They no doubt entered upon the conference with the warmest and most earnest desire of promoting the children's happiness; but, unfortunately, their decision failed to produce the wished-for result. "I scarcely thought you would have succeeded so well with him," said Walters, "he is such an inveterate scoundrel; depend upon it nothing but the fear of the exposure resulting from a legal investigation would ever have induced that scamp to let twelve thousand dollars escape from his clutches. I am glad you have secured that much; when we add it to the eight thousand already in my possession it will place them in very comfortable circumstances, even if they never get any more." "I think we have done very well," rejoined Mr. Balch; "we were as much in his power as he was in ours—not in the same way, however; a legal investigation, no matter how damaging it might have been to his reputation, would not have placed us in possession of the property, or invalidated his claim as heir. I think, on the whole, we may as well be satisfied, and trust in Providence for the future. So now, then, we will resume our discussion of that matter we had under consideration the other day. I cannot but think that my plan is best adapted to secure the boy's happiness." "I'm sorry I cannot agree with you, Mr. Balch. I have tried to view your plan in the most favourable light, yet I cannot rid myself of a presentiment that it will result in the ultimate discovery of his peculiar position, and that most probably at some time when his happiness is dependent upon its concealment. An undetected forger, who is in constant fear of being apprehended, is happy in comparison with that coloured man who attempts, in this country, to hold a place in the society of whites by concealing his origin. He must live in constant fear of exposure; this dread will embitter every enjoyment, and make him the most miserable of men." "You must admit," rejoined Mr. Balch, "that I have their welfare at heart. I have thought the matter over and over, and cannot, for the life of me, feel the weight of your objections. The children are peculiarly situated; everything seems to favour my views. Their mother (the only relative they had whose African origin was distinguishable) is dead, and both of them are so exceedingly fair that it would never enter the brain of any one that they were connected with coloured people by ties of blood. Clarence is old enough to know the importance of concealing the fact, and Emily might be kept with us until her prudence also might be relied upon. You must acknowledge that as white persons they will be better off." "I admit," answered Mr. Walters, "that in our land of liberty it is of incalculable advantage to be white; that is beyond dispute, and no one is more painfully aware of it than I. Often I have heard men of colour say they would not be white if they could—had no desire to change their complexions; I've written some down fools; others, liars. Why," continued he, with a sneering expression of countenance, "it is everything to be white; one feels that at every turn in our boasted free country, where all men are upon an equality. When I look around me, and see what I have made myself in spite of circumstances, and think what I might have been with the same heart and brain beneath a fairer skin, I am almost tempted to curse the destiny that made me what I am. Time after time, when scraping, toiling, saving, I have asked myself. To what purpose is it all?—perhaps that in the future white men may point at and call me, sneeringly, 'a nigger millionaire,' or condescend to borrow money of me. Ah! often, when some negro-hating white man has been forced to ask a loan at my hands, I've thought of Shylock and his pound of flesh, and ceased to wonder at him. There's no doubt, my dear sir, but what I fully appreciate the advantage of being white. Yet, with all I have endured, and yet endure from day to day, I esteem myself happy in comparison with that man, who, mingling in the society of whites, is at the same time aware that he has African blood in his veins, and is liable at any moment to be ignominiously hurled from his position by the discovery of his origin. He is never safe. I have known instances where parties have gone on for years and years undetected; but some untoward circumstance brings them out at last, and down they fall for ever." "Walters, my dear fellow, you will persist in looking upon his being discovered as a thing of course: I see no reason for the anticipation of any such result. I don't see how he is to be detected—it may never occur. And do you feel justified in consigning them to a position which you know by painful experience to be one of the most disagreeable that can be endured. Ought we not to aid their escape from it if we can?" Mr. Walters stood reflectively for some moments, and then exclaimed, "I'll make no farther objection; I would not have the boy say to me hereafter, 'But for your persisting in identifying me with a degraded people, I might have been better and happier than I am.' However, I cannot but feel that concealments of this kind are productive of more misery than comfort." "We will agree to differ about that, Walters; and now, having your consent, I shall not hesitate to proceed in the matter, with full reliance that the future will amply justify my choice." "Well, well! as I said before, I will offer no further objection. Now let me hear the details of your plan." "I have written," answered Mr. Balch, "to Mr. Eustis, a friend of mine living at Sudbury, where there is a large preparatory school for boys. At his house I purpose placing Clarence. Mr. Eustis is a most discreet man, and a person of liberal sentiments. I feel that I can confide everything to him without the least fear of his ever divulging a breath of it. He is a gentleman in the fullest sense of the term, and at his house the boy will have the advantage of good society, and will associate with the best people of the place." "Has he a family?" asked Mr. Walters. "He is a widower," answered Mr. Balch; "a maiden sister of his wife's presides over his establishment; she will be kind to Clarence, I am confident; she has a motherly soft heart, and is remarkably fond of children. I have not the least doubt but that he will be very happy and comfortable there. I think it very fortunate, Walters," he continued, "that he has so few coloured acquaintances—no boyish intimacies to break up; and it will be as well to send him away before he has an opportunity of forming them. Besides, being here, where everything will be so constantly reviving the remembrance of his recent loss, he may grow melancholy and stupid. I have several times noticed his reserve, so unusual in a child. His dreadful loss and the horrors that attended it have made, a deep impression—stupified him, to a certain extent, I think. Well, well! we will get him off, and once away at school, and surrounded by lively boys, this dulness will soon wear off." The gentlemen having fully determined upon his being sent, it was proposed to bring him in immediately and talk to him relative to it. He was accordingly sent for, and came into the room, placing himself beside the chair of Mr. Walters. Clarence had altered very much since the death of his parents. His face had grown thin and pale, and he was much taller than when he came to Philadelphia: a shade of melancholy had overspread his face; there was now in his eyes that expression of intense sadness that characterized his mother's. "You sent for me?" he remarked, inquiringly, to Mr. Walters. "Yes, my boy," he rejoined, "we sent for you to have a little talk about school. Would you like to go to school again?" "Oh, yes!" answered Clarence, his face lighting up with pleasure; "I should like it of all things; it would be much better than staying at home all day, doing nothing; the days are so long," concluded he, with a sigh. "Ah! we will soon remedy that," rejoined Mr. Balch, "when you go to Sudbury." "Sudbury!" repeated Clarence, with surprise; "where is that? I thought you meant, to go to school here." "Oh, no, my dear," said Mr. Balch, "I don't know of any good school here, such as you would like; we wish to send you to a place where you will enjoy yourself finely,—where you will have a number of boys for companions in your studies and pleasures." "And is Em going with me?" he asked. "Oh, no, that is not possible; it is a school for boys exclusively; you can't take your sister there," rejoined Mr. Walters. "Then I don't want to go," said Clarence, decidedly; "I don't want to go where I can't take Em with me." Mr. Balch exchanged glances with Mr. Walters, and looked quite perplexed at this new opposition to his scheme. Nothing daunted, however, by this difficulty, he, by dint of much talking and persuasion, brought Clarence to look upon the plan with favour, and to consent reluctantly to go without his sister. But the most delicate part of the whole business was yet to come—they must impress upon the child the necessity of concealing the fact that he was of African origin. Neither seemed to know how to approach the subject. Clarence, however, involuntarily made an opening for them by inquiring if Emily was to go to Miss Jordan's school again. "No, my dear," answered Mr. Balch, "Miss Jordan won't permit her to attend school there." "Why?" asked Clarence. "Because she is a coloured child," rejoined Mr. Balch. "Now, Clarence," he continued, "you are old enough, I presume, to know the difference that exists between the privileges and advantages enjoyed by the whites, and those that are at the command of the coloured people. White boys can go to better schools, and they can enter college and become professional men, lawyers, doctors, &c, or they may be merchants—in fact, they can be anything they please. Coloured people can enjoy none of these advantages; they are shut out from them entirely. Now which of the two would you rather be—coloured or white?" "I should much rather be white, of course," answered Clarence; "but I am coloured, and can't help myself," said he, innocently. "But, my child, we are going to send you where it is not known that you are coloured; and you must never, never tell it, because if it became known, you would be expelled from the school, as you were from Miss Jordan's." "I didn't know we were expelled," rejoined Clarence. "I know she sent us home, but I could not understand what it was for. I'm afraid they will send me from the other school. Won't they know I am coloured?" "No, my child, I don't think they will discover it unless you should be foolish enough to tell it yourself, in which case both Mr. Walters and myself would be very much grieved." "But suppose some one should ask me," suggested Clarence. "No one will ever ask you such a question," said Mr. Balch, impatiently; "all you have to do is to be silent yourself on the subject. Should any of your schoolmates ever make inquiries respecting your parents, all you have to answer is, they were from Georgia, and you are an orphan." Clarence's eyes began to moisten as Mr. Balch spoke of his parents, and after a few moments he asked, with some hesitation, "Am I never to speak of mother? I love to talk of mother." "Yes, my dear, of course you can talk of your mother," answered Mr. Balch, with great embarrassment; "only, you know, my child, you need not enter into particulars as regards her appearance; that is, you—ah!—need not say she was a coloured woman. You must not say that; you understand?" "Yes, sir," answered Clarence. "Very well, then; bear that in mind. You must know, Clarence," continued he, "that this concealment is necessary for your welfare, or we would not require it; and you must let me impress it upon you, that it is requisite that you attend strictly to our directions." Mr. Walters remained silent during most of this conversation. He felt a repugnance to force upon the child a concealment the beneficial results of which were the reverse of obvious, so he merely gave Clarence some useful advice respecting his general conduct, and then permitted him to leave the room. The morning fixed upon for their departure for Sudbury turned out to be cold and cheerless; and Clarence felt very gloomy as he sat beside his sister at their early breakfast, of which he was not able to eat a morsel. "Do eat something, Clary," said she, coaxingly; "only look what nice buckwheat cakes these are; cook got up ever so early on purpose to bake them for you." "No, sis," he replied, "I can't eat. I feel so miserable, everything chokes me." "Well, eat a biscuit, then," she continued, as she buttered it and laid it on his plate; "do eat it, now." More to please her than from a desire to eat, he forced down a few mouthfuls of it, and drank a little tea; then, laying his arm round her neck, he said, "Em, you must try hard to learn to write soon, so that I may hear from you at least once a week." "Oh! I shall soon know how, I'm in g's and h's now. Aunt Esther—she says I may call her Aunt Esther—teaches me every day. Ain't I getting on nicely?" "Oh, yes, you learn very fast," said Esther, encouragingly, as she completed the pile of sandwiches she was preparing for the young traveller; then, turning to look at the timepiece on the mantel, she exclaimed, "Quarter to seven—how time flies! Mr. Balch will soon be here. You must be all ready, Clarence, so as not to keep him waiting a moment." Clarence arose from his scarcely tasted meal, began slowly to put on his overcoat, and make himself ready for the journey. Em tied on the warm woollen neck-comforter, kissing him on each cheek as she did so, and whilst they were thus engaged, Mr. Balch drove up to the door. Charlie, who had come down to see him off, tried (with his mouth full of buckwheat cake) to say something consolatory, and gave it as his experience, "that a fellow soon got over that sort of thing; that separations must occur sometimes," &c.—and, on the whole, endeavoured to talk in a very manly and philosophical strain; but his precepts and practice proved to be at utter variance, for when the moment of separation really came and he saw the tearful embrace of Em and her brother, he caught the infection of grief, and cried as heartily as the best of them. There was but little time, however, to spare for leave-takings, and the young traveller and his guardian were soon whirling over the road towards New York. By a singular chance, Clarence found himself in the same car in which he had formerly rode when they were on their way to Philadelphia: he recognized it by some peculiar paintings on the panel of the door, and the ornamental border of the ceiling. This brought back a tide of memories, and he began contrasting that journey with the present. Opposite was the seat on which his parents had sat, in the bloom of health, and elate with; joyous anticipations; he remembered—oh! so well—his father's pleasant smile, his mother's soft and gentle voice. Both now were gone. Death had made rigid that smiling face—her soft voice was hushed for ever—and the cold snow was resting on their bosoms in the little churchyard miles away. Truly the contrast between now and then was extremely saddening, and the child bowed his head upon the seat, and sobbed in bitter grief. "What is the matter?" asked Mr. Balch; "not crying again, I hope. I thought you were going to be a man, and that we were not to have any more tears. Come!" continued he, patting him encouragingly on the back, "cheer up! You are going to a delightful place, where you will find a number of agreeable playmates, and have a deal of fun, and enjoy yourself amazingly." "But it won't be home," replied Clarence. "True," replied Mr. Balch, a little touched, "it won't seem so at first; but you'll soon like it, I'll guarantee that." Clarence was not permitted to indulge his grief to any great extent, for Mr. Balch soon succeeded in interesting him in the various objects that they passed on the way. On the evening of the next day they arrived at their destination, and Clarence alighted from the cars, cold, fatigued, and spiritless. There had been a heavy fall of snow a few days previous, and the town of Sudbury, which was built upon the hill-side, shone white and sparkling in the clear winter moonlight. It was the first time that Clarence had ever seen the ground covered with snow, and he could not restrain his admiration at the novel spectacle it presented to him. "Oh, look!—oh, do look! Mr. Balch," he exclaimed, "how beautifully white it looks; it seems as if the town was built of salt." It was indeed a pretty sight. Near them stood a clump of fantastic-shaped trees, their gnarled limbs covered with snow, and brilliant with the countless icicles that glistened like precious stones in the bright light that was reflected upon them from the windows of the station. A little farther on, between them and the town, flowed a small stream, the waters of which were dimpling and sparkling in the moonlight. Beside its banks arose stately cotton-mills, and from their many windows hundreds of lights were shining. Behind them, tier above tier, were the houses of the town; and crowning the hill was the academy, with its great dome gleaming on its top like a silver cap upon a mountain of snow. The merry sleigh-bells and the crisp tramp of the horses upon the frozen ground were all calculated to make a striking impression on one beholding such a scene for the first time. Clarence followed Mr. Balch into the sleigh, delighted and bewildered with the surrounding objects. The driver whipped up his horses, they clattered over the bridge, dashed swiftly through the town, and in a very short period arrived at the dwelling of Mr. Eustis. The horses had scarcely stopped, when the door flew open, and a stream of light from the hall shone down the pathway to the gate. Mr. Eustis came out on the step to welcome them. After greeting Mr. Balch warmly, he took Clarence by the hand, and led him into the room where his sister was sitting. "Here is our little friend," said he to her, as she arose and approached them; "try and get him warm, Ada—his hands are like ice." Miss Ada Bell welcomed Clarence in the most affectionate manner, assisted him to remove his coat, unfastened his woollen neck-tie, and smoothed down his glossy black hair; then, warming a napkin, she wrapped it round his benumbed hands, and held them in her own until the circulation was restored and they were supple and comfortable again. Miss Ada Bell appeared to be about thirty-five. She had good regular features, hazel eyes, and long chestnut curls: a mouth with the sweetest expression, and a voice so winning and affectionate in its tone that it went straight to the hearts of all that listened to its music. "Had you a pleasant journey?" she asked. "It was rather cold," answered Clarence, "and I am not accustomed to frosty weather." "And did you leave all your friends well?" she continued, as she chafed his hands. "Quite well, I thank you," he replied. "I hear you have a little sister; were you not sorry to leave her behind?" This question called up the tearful face of little Em and her last embrace. He could not answer; he only raised his mournful dark eyes to the face of Miss Ada, and as he looked at her they grew moist, and a tear sparkled on his long lashes. Miss Ada felt that she had touched a tender chord, so she stooped down and kissed his forehead, remarking, "You have a good face, Clarence, and no doubt an equally good heart; we shall get on charmingly together, I know." Those kind words won the orphan's heart, and from that day forth. Clarence loved her. Tea was soon brought upon the table, and they all earnestly engaged in the discussion of the various refreshments that Miss Ada's well-stocked larder afforded. Everything was so fresh and nicely flavoured that both the travellers ate very heartily; then, being much fatigued with their two days' journey, they seized an early opportunity to retire. * * * * * Here we leave Clarence for many years; the boy will have become a man ere we re-introduce him, and, till then, we bid him adieu. CHAPTER XXVIII. Charlie seeks Employment. Charlie had been at borne some weeks, comparatively idle; at least he so considered himself, as the little he did in the way of collecting rents and looking up small accounts for Mr. Walters he regarded as next to nothing, it not occupying half his time. A part of each day he spent in attendance on his father, who seemed better satisfied with his ministrations than with those of his wife and daughters. This proved to be very fortunate for all parties, as it enabled the girls to concentrate their attention on their sewing—of which they had a vast deal on hand. One day, when Esther and Charlie were walking out together, the latter remarked: "Ess, I wish I could find some regular and profitable employment, or was apprenticed to some good trade that would enable me to assist mother a little; I'd even go to service if I could do no better—anything but being idle whilst you are all so hard at work. It makes me feel very uncomfortable." "I would be very glad if you could procure some suitable employment. I don't wish you to go to service again, that is out of the question. Of whom have you made inquiry respecting a situation." "Oh, of lots of people; they can tell me of any number of families who are in want of a footman, but no one appears to know of a 'person who is willing to receive a black boy as an apprentice to a respectable calling. It's too provoking; I really think, Ess, that the majority of white folks imagine that we are only fit for servants, and incapable of being rendered useful in any other capacity. If that terrible misfortune had not befallen father, I should have learned his trade." "Ah!" sighed Esther, "but for that we should all have been happier. But, Charlie," she added, "how do you know that you cannot obtain any other employment than that of a servant? Have you ever applied personally to any one?" "No, Esther, I haven't; but you know as well as I that white masters won't receive coloured apprentices." "I think a great deal of that is taken for granted," rejoined Esther, "try some one yourself." "I only wish I knew of any one to try," responded Charlie, "I'd hazard the experiment at any rate." "Look over the newspaper in the morning," advised Esther; "there are always a great many wants advertised—amongst them you may perhaps find something suitable." "Well, I will Ess—now then we won't talk about that any more—pray tell me, if I'm not too inquisitive, what do you purpose buying with your money—a wedding-dress, eh?" he asked, with a merry twinkle in his eye. Esther blushed and sighed, as she answered: "No, Charlie, that is all over for the present. I told him yesterday I could not think of marrying now, whilst we are all so unsettled. It grieved me to do it, Charlie, but I felt that it was my duty. Cad and I are going to add our savings to mother's; that, combined with what we shall receive for father's tools, good-will, &c, will be sufficient to furnish another house; and as soon as we can succeed in that, we will leave Mr. Walters, as it is embarrassing to remain under present circumstances." "And what is to become of little Em?—she surely won't remain alone with him?" "Mr. Walters has proposed that when we procure a house she shall come and board with us. He wants us to take one of his houses, and offers some fabulous sum for the child's board, which it would be unreasonable in us to take. Dear, good man, he is always complaining that we are too proud, and won't let him assist us when he might. If we find a suitable house I shall be delighted to have her. I love the child for her mother's sake and her own." "I wonder if they will ever send her away, as they did Clarence?" asked Charlie. "I do not know," she rejoined. "Mr. Balch told me that he should not insist upon it if the child was unwilling." The next day Charlie purchased all the morning papers he could obtain, and sat down to look over the list of wants. There were hungry people in want of professed cooks; divers demands for chamber-maids, black or white; special inquiries for waiters and footmen, in which the same disregard of colour was observable; advertisements for partners in all sorts of businesses, and for journeymen in every department of mechanical operations; then there were milliners wanted, sempstresses, and even theatrical assistants, but nowhere in the long columns could he discover: "Wanted, a boy." Charlie searched them over and over, but the stubborn fact stared him in the face—there evidently were no boys wanted; and he at length concluded that he either belonged to a very useless class, or that there was an unaccountable prejudice existing in the city against the rising generation. Charlie folded up the papers with a despairing sigh, and walked to the post-office to mail a letter to Mrs. Bird that he had written the previous evening. Having noticed a number of young men examining some written notices that were posted up, he joined the group, and finding it was a list of wants he eagerly read them over. To his great delight he found there was one individual at least, who thought boys could be rendered useful to society, and who had written as follows: "Wanted, a youth of about thirteen years of age who writes a good hand, and is willing to make himself useful in an office.—Address, Box No. 77, Post-office." "I'm their man!" said Charlie to himself, as he finished perusing it—"I'm just the person. I'll go home and write to them immediately;" and accordingly he hastened back to the house, sat down, and wrote a reply to the advertisement. He then privately showed it to Esther, who praised the writing and composition, and pronounced the whole very neatly done. Charlie then walked down to the post-office to deposit his precious reply; and after dropping it into the brass mouth of the mail-box, he gazed in after it, and saw it glide slowly down into the abyss below. How many more had stopped that day to add their contributions to the mass which Charlie's letter now joined? Merchants on the brink of ruin had deposited missives whose answer would make or break them; others had dropped upon the swelling heap tidings that would make poor men rich—rich men richer; maidens came with delicately written notes, perfumed and gilt-edged, eloquent with love—and cast them amidst invoices and bills of lading. Letters of condolence and notes of congratulation jostled each other as they slid down the brass throat; widowed mothers' tender epistles to wandering sons; the letters of fond wives to absent husbands; erring daughters' last appeals to outraged parents; offers of marriage; invitations to funerals; hope and despair; joy and sorrow; misfortune and success—had glided in one almost unbroken stream down that ever-distended and insatiable brass throat. Charlie gave one more look at the opening, then sauntered homeward, building by the way houses of fabulous dimensions, with the income he anticipated from the situation if he succeeded in procuring it. Throughout the next day he was in a state of feverish anxiety and expectation, and Mrs. Ellis two or three times inquired the meaning of the mysterious whisperings and glances that were exchanged between him and Esther. The day wore away, and yet no answer—the next came and passed, still no communication; and Charlie had given up in despair, when he was agreeably surprised by the following:—— "Messrs. Twining, Western, and Twining will be much obliged to Charles Ellis, if he will call at their office, 567, Water-street, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, as they would like to communicate further with him respecting a situation in their establishment." Charlie flew up stairs to Esther's room, and rushing in precipitately, exclaimed, "Oh! Ess—I've got it, I've got it—see here," he shouted, waving the note over his head; "Hurrah! Hurrah! Just read it, Ess, only just read it!" "How can I, Charlie?" said she, with a smile, "if you hold it in your hand and dance about in that frantic style—give it me. There now—keep quiet a moment, and let me read it." After perusing it attentively, Esther added, "Don't be too sanguine, Charlie. You see by the tenor of the note that the situation is not promised you; they only wish to see you respecting it. You may not secure it, after all—some obstacle may arise of which we are not at present aware." "Go on, old raven—croak away!" said Charlie, giving her at the same time a facetious poke. "There's many a slip between the cup and the lip," she added. "Oh, Ess!" he rejoined, "don't throw cold water on a fellow in that style—don't harbour so many doubts. Do you think they would take the trouble to write if they did not intend to give me the situation? Go away, old raven," concluded he, kissing her, "and don't let us have any more croaking." Charlie was bounding from the room, when he was stopped by his sister, who begged him not to say anything to their mother respecting it, but wait until they knew the issue of the interview; and, if he secured the situation, it would be a very agreeable surprise to her. We will now visit, in company with the reader, the spacious offices of Messrs. Twining, Western, and Twining, where we shall find Mr. Western about consigning to the waste-paper basket a large pile of letters. This gentleman was very fashionably dressed, of dark complexion, with the languid air and drawling intonation of a Southerner. At an adjoining desk sat an elderly sharp-faced gentleman, who was looking over his spectacles at the movements of his partner. "What a mass of letters you are about to destroy," he remarked. Mr. Western took from his month the cigar he was smoking, and after puffing from between his lips a thin wreath of smoke, replied: "Some of the most atwocious scwawls that man ever attempted to pewuse,—weplies to the advertisement. Out of the whole lot there wasn't more than a dozen amongst them that were weally pwesentable. Here is one wemawkably well witten: I have desiwed the witer to call this morning at eleven. I hope he will make as favouwable an impwession as his witing has done. It is now almost eleven—I pwesume he will be here soon." Scarcely had Mr. Western finished speaking, ere the door opened, and Esther entered, followed by Charlie. Both the gentlemen rose, and Mr. Twining offered her a chair. Esther accepted the proffered seat, threw up her veil, and said, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "My brother here, took the liberty of replying to an advertisement of yours, and you were kind enough to request him to call at eleven to-day." "We sent a note to your brother?" said Mr. Twining, in a tone of surprise. "Yes, sir, and here it is," said she, extending it to him. Mr. Twining glanced over it, and remarked, "This is your writing, Western;" then taking Charlie's letter from the desk of Mr. Western, he asked, in a doubting tone, "Is this your own writing and composition?" "My own writing and composing," answered Charlie. "And it is vewy cweditable to you, indeed," said Mr. Western. Both the gentlemen looked at the note again, then at Charlie, then at Esther, and lastly at each other; but neither seemed able to say anything, and evident embarrassment existed on both sides. "And so you thought you would twy for the situation," at last remarked Mr. Western to Charlie. "Yes, sir," he answered. "I was and am very anxious to obtain some employment." "Have you a father?" asked Mr. Twining. "Yes, sir; but he was badly injured by the mob last summer, and will never be able to work again." "That's a pity," said Western, sympathisingly; "and what have you been doing?" "Nothing very recently. I broke my arm last spring, and was obliged to go into the country for my health. I have not long returned." "Do your pawents keep house?" "Not at present. We are staying with a friend. Our house was burned down by the rioters." This conversation recalled so vividly their past trials, that Esther's eyes grew watery, and she dropped her veil to conceal a tear that was trembling on the lid. "How vewy unfortunate!" said Mr. Western, sympathisingly; "vewy twying, indeed!" then burying his chin in his hand, he sat silently regarding them for a moment or two. "Have you come to any decision about taking him?" Esther at last ventured to ask of Mr. Twining. "Taking him!—oh, dear me, I had almost forgot. Charles, let me see you write something—here, take this seat." Charlie sat down as directed, and dashed off a few lines, which he handed to Mr. Twining, who looked at it over and over; then rising, he beckoned to his partner to follow him into an adjoining room. "Well, what do you say?" asked Western, after they had closed the door behind them. "Don't you think we had better engage him?" "Engage him!" exclaimed Twining—"why, you surprise me, Western—the thing's absurd; engage a coloured boy as under clerk! I never heard of such a thing." "I have often," drawled Western; "there are the gweatest number of them in New Orleans." "Ah, but New Orleans is a different place; such a thing never occurred in Philadelphia." "Well, let us cweate a pwecedent, then. The boy wites wemarkably well, and will, no doubt, suit us exactly. It will be a chawity to take him. We need not care what others say—evewybody knows who we are and what we are?" "No, Western; I know the North better than you do; it wouldn't answer at all here. We cannot take the boy—it is impossible; it would create a rumpus amongst the clerks, who would all feel dreadfully insulted by our placing a nigger child on an equality with them. I assure you the thing is out of the question." "Well, I must say you Northern people are perfectly incompwehensible. You pay taxes to have niggers educated, and made fit for such places—and then won't let them fill them when they are pwepared to do so. I shall leave you, then, to tell them we can't take him. I'm doosed sowwy for it—I like his looks." Whilst Mr. Western and his partner were discussing in one room, Charlie and Esther were awaiting with some anxiety their decision in the other. "I think they are going to take me," said Charlie; "you saw how struck they appeared to be with the writing." "They admired it, I know, my dear; but don't be too sanguine." "I feel sure they are going to take me," repeated he with a hopeful countenance. Esther made no reply, and they remained in silence until Mr. Twining returned to the room. After two or three preparatory ahems, he said to Esther; "I should like to take your brother very much; but you see, in consequence of there being so much excitement just now, relative to Abolitionism and kindred subjects, that my partner and myself—that is, I and Mr. Western—think—or rather feel—that just now it would be rather awkward for us to receive him. We should like to take him; but his colour, miss—his complexion is a fatal objection. It grieves me to be obliged to tell you this; but I think, under the circumstances, it would be most prudent for us to decline to receive him. We are very sorry—but our clerks are all young men, and have a great deal of prejudice, and I am sure he would be neither comfortable nor happy with them. If I can serve you in any other way—" "There is nothing that you can do that I am aware of," said Esther, rising; "I thank you, and am sorry that we have occupied so much of your time." "Oh, don't mention it," said Mr. Twining, evidently happy to get rid of them; and, opening the door, he bowed them out of the office. The two departed sadly, and they walked on for some distance in silence. At last Esther pressed his hand, and, in a choking voice, exclaimed, "Charlie, my dear boy, I'd give my life if it would change your complexion—if it would make you white! Poor fellow! your battle of life will be a hard one to fight!" "I know it, Ess; but I shouldn't care to be white if I knew I would not have a dear old Ess like you for a sister," he answered, pressing her hand affectionately. "I don't intend to be conquered," he continued; "I'll fight it out to the last—this won't discourage me. I'll keep on trying," said he, determinedly—"if one won't, perhaps another will." For two or three days Charlie could hear of nothing that would be at all suitable for him. At last, one morning he saw an advertisement for a youth to learn the engraver's business—one who had some knowledge of drawing preferred; to apply at Thomas Blatchford's, bank-note engraver. "Thomas Blatchford," repeated Mr. Walters, as Charlie read it over—"why that is the Mr. Blatchford, the Abolitionist. I think you have some chance there most decidedly—I would advise you to take those sketches of yours and apply at once." Charlie ran upstairs, and selecting the best-executed of his drawings, put them in a neat portfolio, and, without saying anything to Esther or his mother, hastened away to Mr. Blatchford's. He was shown into a room where a gentleman was sitting at a table examining some engraved plates. "Is this Mr. Blatchford's?" asked Charlie. "That is my name, my little man—do you want to see me," he kindly inquired. "Yes, sir. You advertised for a boy to learn the engraving business, I believe." "Well; and what then?" "I have come to apply for the situation." "You—you apply?" said he, in a tone of surprise. "Yes, sir," faltered Charlie; "Mr. Walters recommended me to do so." "Ah, you know Mr. Walters, then," he rejoined. "Yes, sir; he is a great friend of my father's—we are living with him at present." "What have you in your portfolio, there?" enquired Mr. Blatchford. Charlie spread before him the sketches he had made during the summer, and also some ornamental designs suitable for the title-pages of books. "Why, these are excellently well done," exclaimed he, after examining them attentively; "who taught you?" Charlie hereupon briefly related his acquaintance with the artist, and his efforts to obtain employment, and their results, besides many other circumstances connected with himself and family. Mr. Blatchford became deeply interested, and, at the end of a long conversation, delighted Charlie by informing him that if he and his mother could agree as to terms he should be glad to receive him as an apprentice. Charlie could scarcely believe the evidence of his own ears, and leaving his portfolio on the table was hastening away. "Stop! stop!" cried Mr. Blatchford, with a smile; "you have not heard all I wish to say. I would be much obliged to your mother if she would call at my house this evening, and then we can settle the matter definitely." Charlie seemed to tread on air as he walked home. Flying up to Esther—his usual confidant—be related to her the whole affair, and gave at great length his conversation with Mr. Blatchford. "That looks something like," said she; "I am delighted with the prospect that is opening to you. Let us go and tell mother,"—and, accordingly, off they both started, to carry the agreeable intelligence to Mrs. Ellis. That, evening Charlie, his mother, and Mr. Walters went to the house of Mr. Blatchford. They were most, kindly received, and all the arrangements made for Charlie's apprenticeship. He was to remain one month on trial; and if, at the end of that period, all parties were satisfied, he was to be formally indentured. Charlie looked forward impatiently to the following Monday, on which day he was to commence his apprenticeship. In the intervening time he held daily conferences with Kinch, as he felt their intimacy would receive a slight check after he entered upon his new pursuit. "Look here, old fellow," said Charlie; "it won't do for you to be lounging on the door-steps of the office, nor be whistling for me under the windows. Mr. Blatchford spoke particularly against my having playmates around in work hours; evenings I shall always be at home, and then you can come and see me as often as you like." Since his visit to Warmouth, Charlie had been much more particular respecting his personal appearance, dressed neater, and was much more careful of his clothes. He had also given up marbles, and tried to persuade Kinch to do the same. "I'd cut marbles, Kinch," said he to him one evening, when they were walking together, "if I were you; it makes one such a fright—covers one with chalk-marks and dirt from head to foot. And another thing, Kinch; you have an abundance of good clothes—do wear them, and try and look more like a gentleman." "Dear me!" said Kinch, rolling up the white of his eyes—"just listen how we are going on! Hadn't I better get an eye-glass and pair of light kid gloves?" "Oh, Kinch!" said Charlie, gravely, "I'm not joking—I mean what I say. You don't know how far rough looks and an untidy person go against one. I do wish you would try and keep yourself decent." "Well, there then—I will," answered Kinch. "But, Charlie, I'm afraid, with your travelling and one thing or other, you will forget your old playmate by-and-by, and get above him." Charlie's eyes moistened; and, with a boy's impulsiveness, he threw his arm over Kinch's shoulder, and exclaimed with emphasis, "Never, old fellow, never—not as long as my name is Charlie Ellis! You mustn't be hurt at what I said, Kinch—I think more of these things than I used to—I see the importance of them. I find that any one who wants to get on must be particular in little things as well great, and I must try and be a man now—for you know things don't glide on as smoothly with us as they used. I often think of our fun in the old house—ah, perhaps we'll have good times in another of our own yet!"—and with this Charlie and his friend separated for the night. CHAPTER XXIX. Clouds and Sunshine. The important Monday at length arrived, and Charlie hastened to the office of Mr. Blatchford, which he reached before the hour for commencing labour. He found some dozen or more journeymen assembled in the work-room; and noticed that upon his entrance there was an interchange of significant glances, and once or twice he overheard the whisper of "nigger." Mr. Blatchford was engaged in discussing some business matter with a gentleman, and did not observe the agitation that Charlie's entrance had occasioned. The conversation having terminated, the gentleman took up the morning paper, and Mr. Blatchford, noticing Charlie, said, "Ah! you have come, and in good time, too. Wheeler," he continued, turning to one of the workmen, "I want you to take this boy under your especial charge: give him a seat at your window, and overlook his work." At this there was a general uprising of the workmen, who commenced throwing off their caps and aprons. "What is all this for?" asked Mr. Blatchford in astonishment—"why this commotion?" "We won't work with niggers!" cried one; "No nigger apprentices!" cried another; and "No niggers—no niggers!" was echoed from all parts of the room. "Silence!" cried Mr. Blatchford, stamping violently—"silence, every one of you!" As soon as partial order was restored, he turned to Wheeler, and demanded, "What is the occasion of all this tumult—what does it mean?" "Why, sir, it means just this: the men and boys discovered that you intended to take a nigger apprentice, and have made up their minds if you do they will quit in a body." "It cannot be possible," exclaimed the employer, "that any man or boy in my establishment has room in his heart for such narrow contemptible prejudices. Can it be that you have entered into a conspiracy to deprive an inoffensive child of an opportunity of earning his bread in a respectable manner? Come, let me persuade you—the boy is well-behaved and educated!" "Damn his behaviour and education!" responded a burly fellow; "let him be a barber or shoe-black—that is all niggers are good for. If he comes, we go—that's so, ain't it, boys?" There was a general response of approval to this appeal; and Mr. Blatchford, seeing the utter uselessness of further parleying, left the room, followed by Charlie and the gentleman with whom he had been conversing. Mr. Blatchford was placed in a most disagreeable position by this revolt on the part of his workmen; he had just received large orders from some new banks which were commencing operations, and a general disruption of his establishment at that moment would have ruined him. To accede to his workmen's demands he must do violence to his own conscience; but he dared not sacrifice his business and bring ruin on himself and family, even though he was right. "What would you do, Burrell?" he asked of the gentleman who had followed them out. "There is no question as to what you must do. You mustn't ruin yourself for the sake of your principles. You will have to abandon the lad; the other alternative is not to be thought of for a moment." "Well, Charles, you see how it is," said Mr. Blatchford, reluctantly. Charlie had been standing intently regarding the conversation that concerned him so deeply. His face was pale and his lips quivering with agitation. "I'd like to keep you, my boy, but you see how I'm situated, I must either give up you or my business; the latter I cannot afford to do." With a great effort Charlie repressed his tears, and bidding them good morning in a choking voice, hastened from the room. "It's an infernal shame!" said Mr. Blatchford, indignantly; "and I shall think meanly of myself for ever for submitting to it; but I can't help myself, and must make the best of it." Charlie walked downstairs with lingering steps, and took the direction of home. "All because I'm coloured," said he, bitterly, to himself—"all because I'm coloured! What will mother and Esther say? How it will distress them—they've so built upon it! I wish," said he, sadly, "that I was dead!" No longer able to repress the tears that were welling up, he walked towards the window of a print-store, where he pretended to be deeply interested in some pictures whilst he stealthily wiped his eyes. Every time he turned to leave the window, there came a fresh flood of tears; and at last he was obliged to give way entirely, and sobbed as if his heart would break. He was thus standing when he felt a hand laid familiarly on his shoulder, and, on turning round, he beheld the gentleman he had left in Mr. Blatchford's office. "Come, my little man," said he, "don't take it so much to heart. Cheer up—you may find some other person willing to employ you. Come, walk on with me—where do you live?" Charlie dried his eyes and gave him his address as they walked on up the street together. Mr. Burrell talked encouragingly, and quite succeeded in soothing him ere they separated. "I shall keep a look out for you," said he, kindly; "and if I hear of anything likely to suit you, I shall let you know." Charlie thanked him and sauntered slowly home. When he arrived, and they saw his agitated looks, and his eyes swollen from the effect of recent tears, there was a general inquiry of "What has happened? Why are you home so early; are you sick?" Charlie hereupon related all that had transpired at the office—his great disappointment and the occasion of it—to the intense indignation and grief of his mother and sisters. "I wish there were no white folks," said Caddy, wrathfully; "they are all, I believe, a complete set of villains and everything else that is bad." "Don't be so sweeping in your remarks, pray don't, Caddy," interposed Esther; "you have just heard what Charlie said of Mr. Blatchford—his heart is kindly disposed, at any rate; you see he is trammelled by others." "Oh! well, I don't like any of them—I hate them all!" she continued bitterly, driving her needle at the same time into the cloth she was sewing, as if it was a white person she had in her lap and she was sticking pins in him. "Don't cry, Charlie," she added; "the old white wretches, they shouldn't get a tear out of me for fifty trades!" But Charlie could not be comforted; he buried his head in his mother's lap, and wept over his disappointment until he made himself sick. That day, after Mr. Burrell had finished his dinner, he remarked to his wife, "I saw something this morning, my dear, that made a deep impression on me. I haven't been able to get it out of my head for any length of time since; it touched me deeply, I assure you." "Why, what could it have been? Pray tell me what it was." Thereupon, he gave his wife a graphic account of the events that had transpired at Blatchford's in the morning; and in conclusion, said, "Now, you know, my dear, that no one would call me an Abolitionist; and I suppose I have some little prejudice, as well as others, against coloured people; but I had no idea that sensible men would have carried it to that extent, to set themselves up, as they did, in opposition to a little boy anxious to earn his bread by learning a useful trade." Mrs. Burrell was a young woman of about twenty-two, with a round good-natured face and plump comfortable-looking figure; she had a heart overflowing with kindness, and was naturally much affected by what he related. "I declare it's perfectly outrageous," exclaimed she, indignantly; "and I wonder at Blatchford for submitting to it. I wouldn't allow myself to be dictated to in that manner—and he such an Abolitionist too! Had I been him, I should have stuck to my principles at any risk. Poor little fellow! I so wonder at Blatchford; I really don't think he has acted manly." "Not so fast, my little woman, if you please—that is the way with almost all of you, you let your hearts run away with your heads. You are unjust to Blatchford; he could not help himself, he was completely in their power. It is almost impossible at present to procure workmen in our business, and he is under contract to finish a large amount of work within a specified time; and if he should fail to fulfil his agreement it would subject him to immense loss—in fact, it would entirely ruin him. You are aware, my dear, that I am thoroughly acquainted with the state of his affairs; he is greatly in debt from unfortunate speculations, and a false step just now would overset him completely; he could not have done otherwise than he has, and do justice to himself and his family. I felt that he could not; and in fact advised him to act as he did." "Now, George Burrell, you didn't," said she, reproachfully. "Yes I did, my dear, because I thought of his family; I really believe though, had I encouraged him, he would have made the sacrifice." "And what became of the boy?" "Oh; poor lad, he seemed very much cut down by it—I was quite touched by his grief. When I came out, I found him standing by a shop window crying bitterly. I tried to pacify him, and told him I would endeavour to obtain a situation for him somewhere—and I shall." "Has he parents?" asked Mrs. Burrell. "Yes; and, by the way, don't you remember whilst the mob was raging last summer, we read an account of a man running to the roof of a house to escape from the rioters? You remember they chopped his hands off and threw him over?" "Oh, yes, dear, I recollect; don't—don't mention it," said she, with a shudder of horror. "I remember it perfectly." "Well, this little fellow is his son," continued Mr. Burrell. "Indeed! and what has become of his father—did he die?" "No, he partially recovered, but is helpless, and almost an idiot. I never saw a child, apparently so anxious to get work; he talked more like a man with a family dependent upon him for support, than a youth. I tell you what, I became quite interested in him; he was very communicative, and told me all their circumstances; their house was destroyed by the mob, and they are at present residing with a friend." Just then the cry of a child was heard in the adjoining room, and Mrs. Burrell rushed precipitately away, and soon returned with a fat, healthy-looking boy in her arms, which, after kissing, she placed in her husband's lap. He was their first-born and only child, and, as a matter of course, a great pet, and regarded by them as a most wonderful boy; in consequence, papa sat quite still, and permitted him to pull the studs out of his shirt, untie his cravat, rumple his hair, and take all those little liberties to which babies are notoriously addicted. Mrs. Burrell sat down on a stool at her husband's feet, and gazed at him and the child in silence for some time. "What's the matter, Jane; what has made you so grave?" "I was trying to imagine, Burrell, how I should feel if you, I, and baby were coloured; I was trying to place myself in such a situation. Now we know that our boy, if he is honest and upright—is blest with great talent or genius—may aspire to any station in society that he wishes to obtain. How different it would be if he were coloured!—there would be nothing bright in the prospective for him. We could hardly promise him a living at any respectable calling. I think, George, we treat coloured people with great injustice, don't you?" Mr. Burrell hemmed and ha'd at this direct query, and answered, "Well, we don't act exactly right toward them, I must confess." Mrs. Burrell rose, and took the vacant knee of her husband, and toying with the baby, said, "Now, George Burrell, I want to ask a favour of you. Why can't you take this boy ?" "I take him! why, my dear, I don't want an apprentice." "Yes, but you must make a want. You said he was a bright boy, and sketched well. Why, I should think that he's just what you ought to have. There is no one at your office that would oppose it. Cummings and Dalton were with your father before you, they would never object to anything reasonable that you proposed. Come, dear! do now make the trial—won't you?" Mr. Burrell was a tender-hearted, yielding sort of an individual; and what was more, his wife was fully aware of it; and like a young witch as she was, she put on her sweetest looks, and begged so imploringly, that he was almost conquered. But when she took up the baby, and made him put his chubby arms round his father's neck, and say "pese pop-pop," he was completely vanquished, and surrendered at discretion. "I'll see what can be done," said he, at last. "And will you do it afterwards?" she asked, archly. "Yes, I will, dear, I assure you," he rejoined. "Then I know it will be done," said she, confidently; "and none of us will be the worse off for it, I am sure." After leaving home, Mr. Burrell went immediately to the office of Mr. Blatchford; and after having procured Charlie's portfolio, he started in the direction of his own establishment. He did not by any means carry on so extensive a business as Mr. Blatchford, and employed only two elderly men as journeymen. After he had sat down to work, one of them remarked, "Tucker has been here, and wants some rough cuts executed for a new book. I told him I did not think you would engage to do them; that you had given up that description of work." "I think we lose a great deal, Cummings, by being obliged to give up those jobs," rejoined Mr. Burrell. "Why don't you take an apprentice then," he suggested; "it's just the kind of work for them to learn upon." "Well I've been thinking of that," replied he, rising and producing the drawings from Charlie's portfolio. "Look here," said he, "what do you think of these as the work of a lad of twelve or fourteen, who has never had more than half a dozen lessons?" "I should say they were remarkably well done," responded Cummings. "Shouldn't you say so, Dalton?" The party addressed took the sketches, and examined them thoroughly, and gave an approving opinion of their merits. "Well," said Mr. Burrell, "the boy that executed those is in want of a situation, and I should like to take him; but I thought I would consult you both about it first. I met with him under very singular circumstances, and I'll tell you all about it." And forthwith he repeated to them the occurrences of the morning, dwelling upon the most affecting parts, and concluding by putting the question to them direct, as to whether they had any objections to his taking him. "Why no, none in the world," readily answered Cummings. "Laws me! colour is nothing after all; and black fingers can handle a graver as well as white ones, I expect." "I thought it best to ask you, to avoid any after difficulty. You have both been in the establishment so long, that I felt that you ought to be consulted." "You needn't have taken that trouble," said Dalton. "You might have known that anything done by your father's son, would be satisfactory to us. I never had anything to do with coloured people, and haven't anything against them; and as long as you are contented I am." "Well, we all have our little prejudices against various things; and as I did not know how you both would feel, I thought I wouldn't take any decided steps without consulting you; but now I shall consider it settled, and will let the lad know that I will take him." In the evening, he hastened home at an earlier hour than usual, and delighted his wife by saying—"I have succeeded to a charm, my dear—there wasn't the very slightest objection. I'm going to take the boy, if he wishes to come." "Oh, I'm delighted," cried she, clapping her hands. "Cry hurrah for papa!" said she to the baby; "cry hurrah for papa!" The scion of the house of Burrell gave vent to some scarcely intelligible sounds, that resembled "Hoo-rogler pop-pop!" which his mother averred was astonishingly plain, and deserving of a kiss; and, snatching him up, she gave him two or three hearty ones, and then planted him in his father's lap again." "My dear," said her husband, "I thought, as you proposed my taking this youth, you might like to have the pleasure of acquainting him with his good fortune. After tea, if you are disposed, we will go down there; the walk will do you good." "Oh, George Burrell," said she, her face radiant with pleasure, "you are certainly trying to outdo yourself. I have been languishing all day for a walk! What a charming husband you are! I really ought to do something for you. Ah, I know what—I'll indulge you; you may smoke all the way there and back. I'll even go so far as to light the cigars for you myself." "That is a boon," rejoined her husband with a smile; "really 'virtue rewarded,' I declare." Tea over, the baby kissed and put to bed, Mrs. Burrell tied on the most bewitching of bonnets, and donning her new fur-trimmed cloak, declared herself ready for the walk; and off they started. Mr. Burrell puffed away luxuriously as they walked along, stopping now and then at her command, to look into such shop-windows as contained articles adapted to the use of infants, from india-rubber rings and ivory rattles, to baby coats and shoes. At length they arrived at the door of Mr. Walters, and on, looking up at the house, he exclaimed, "This is 257, but it can't be the place; surely coloured people don't live in as fine an establishment as this." Then, running up the steps, he examined the plate upon the door. "The name corresponds with the address given me," said he; "I'll ring. Is there a lad living here by the name of Charles Ellis?" he asked of the servant who opened the door. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "Will you walk in?" When they were ushered into the drawing-room, Mr. Burrell said,—"Be kind enough to say that a gentleman wishes to see him." The girl departed, closing the door behind her, leaving them staring about the room. "How elegantly it is furnished!" said she. "I hadn't an idea that there were any coloured people living in such style." "Some of them are very rich," remarked her husband. "But you said this boy was poor." "So he is. I understand they are staying with the owner of this house." Whilst they were thus conversing the door opened, and Esther entered. "I am sorry," said she, "that my brother has retired. He has a very severe head-ache, and was unable to remain up longer. His mother is out: I am his sister, and shall be most happy to receive any communication for him." "I regret to hear of his indisposition," replied Mr. Burrell; "I hope it is not consequent upon his disappointment this morning?" "I fear it is. Poor fellow! he took it very much to heart. It was a disappointment to us all. We were congratulating ourselves on having secured him an eligible situation." "I assure you the disappointment is not all on one side; he is a very promising boy, and the loss of his prospective services annoying. Nothing but stern necessity caused the result." "Oh, we entirely acquit you, Mr. Blatchford, of all blame in the matter. We are confident that what happened was not occasioned by any indisposition on your part to fulfil your agreement." "My dear," interrupted Mrs. Burrell, "she thinks you are Mr. Blatchford." "And are you not?" asked Esther, with some surprise. "Oh, no; I'm an intimate friend of his, and was present this morning when the affair happened." "Oh, indeed," responded Esther. "Yes; and he came home and related it all to me,—the whole affair," interrupted Mrs. Burrell. "I was dreadfully provoked; I assure you, I sympathized with him very much. I became deeply interested in the whole affair; I was looking at my little boy,—for I have a little boy," said she, with matronly dignity,—"and I thought, suppose it was my little boy being treated so, how should I like it? So bringing the matter home to myself in that way made me feel all the more strongly about it; and I just told George Burrell he must take him, as he is an engraver; and I and the baby gave him no rest until he consented to do so. He will take him on the same terms offered by Mr. Blatchford; and then we came down to tell you; and—and," said she, quite out of breath, "that is all about it." Esther took the little woman's plump hand in both her own, and, for a moment, seemed incapable of even thanking her. At last she said, in a husky voice, "You can't think what a relief this is to us. My brother has taken his disappointment so much to heart—I can't tell you how much I thank you. God will reward you for your sympathy and kindness. You must excuse me," she continued, as her voice faltered; "we have latterly been so unaccustomed to receive such sympathy and kindness from persons of your complexion, that this has quite overcome me." "Oh, now, don't! I'm sure it's no more than our duty, and I'm as much pleased as you can possibly be—it has given me heartfelt gratification, I assure you." Esther repeated her thanks, and followed them to the door, where she shook hands with Mrs. Burrell, who gave her a pressing invitation to come and see her baby. "How easy it is, George Burrell," said the happy little woman, "to make the hearts of others as light as our own-mine feels like a feather," she added, as she skipped along, clinging to his arm. "What a nice, lady-like girl his sister is—is her brother as handsome as she ?" "Not quite," he answered; "still, he is very good-looking, I'll bring him home with me to-morrow at dinner, and then you can see him." Chatting merrily, they soon arrived at home. Mrs. Burrell ran straightway upstairs to look at that "blessed baby;" she found him sleeping soundly, and looking as comfortable and happy as it is possible for a sleeping baby to look—so she bestowed upon him a perfect avalanche of kisses, and retired to her own peaceful pillow. And now, having thus satisfactorily arranged for our young friend Charlie, we will leave him for a few years engaged in his new pursuits. CHAPTER XXX. Many Years After. Old Father Time is a stealthy worker. In youth we are scarcely able to appreciate his efforts, and oftentimes think him an exceedingly slow and limping old fellow. When we ripen into maturity, and are fighting our own way through the battle of life, we deem him swift enough of foot, and sometimes rather hurried; but when old age comes on, and death and the grave are foretold by trembling limbs and snowy locks, we wonder that our course has been so swiftly run, and chide old Time for a somewhat hasty and precipitate individual. The reader must imagine that many years have passed away since the events narrated in the preceding chapters transpired, and permit us to re-introduce the characters formerly presented, without any attempt to describe how that long period has been occupied. First of all, let us resume our acquaintance with Mr. Stevens. To effect this, we must pay that gentleman a visit at his luxurious mansion in Fifth Avenue, the most fashionable street of New York—the place where the upper ten thousand of that vast, bustling city most do congregate. As he is an old acquaintance (we won't say friend), we will disregard ceremony, and walk boldly into the library where that gentleman is sitting. He is changed—yes, sadly changed. Time has been hard at work with him, and, dissatisfied with what his unaided agency could produce, has called in conscience to his aid, and their united efforts have left their marks upon him. He looks old—aye, very old. The bald spot on his head has extended its limits until there is only a fringe of thin white hair above the ears. There are deep wrinkles upon his forehead; and the eyes, half obscured by the bushy grey eyebrows, are bloodshot and sunken; the jaws hollow and spectral, and his lower lip drooping and flaccid. He lifts his hand to pour out another glass of liquor from the decanter at his side, when his daughter lays her hand upon it, and looks appealingly in his face. She has grown to be a tall, elegant woman, slightly thin, and with a careworn and fatigued expression of countenance. There is, however, the same sweetness in her clear blue eyes, and as she moves her head, her fair flaxen curls float about her face as dreamily and deliciously as ever they did of yore. She is still in black, wearing mourning for her mother, who not many months before had been laid in a quiet nook on the estate at Savanah. "Pray, papa, don't drink any more," said she, persuasively—"it makes you nervous, and will bring on one of those frightful attacks again." "Let me alone," he remonstrated harshly—"let me alone, and take your hand off the glass; the doctor has forbidden laudanum, so I will have brandy instead—take off your hand and let me drink, I say." Lizzie still kept her hand upon the decanter, and continued gently: "No, no, dear pa—you promised me you would only drink two glasses, and you have already taken three—it is exceedingly injurious. The doctor insisted upon it that you should decrease the quantity—and you are adding to it instead." "Devil take the doctor!" exclaimed he roughly, endeavouring to disengage her hold—"give me the liquor, I say." His daughter did not appear the least alarmed at this violence of manner, nor suffer her grasp upon the neck of the decanter to be relaxed; but all the while spoke soothing words to the angry old man, and endeavoured to persuade him to relinquish his intention of drinking any more. "You don't respect your old father," he cried, in a whining tone—"you take advantage of my helplessness, all of you—you ill-treat me and deny me the very comforts of life! I'll tell—I'll tell the doctor," he continued, as his voice subsided into an almost inaudible tone, and he sank back into the chair in a state of semi-stupor. Removing the liquor from his reach, his daughter rang the bell, and then walked towards the door of the room. "Who procured that liquor for my father?" she asked of the servant who entered. "I did, miss," answered the man, hesitatingly. "Let this be the last time you do such a thing," she rejoined, eyeing him sternly, "unless you wish to be discharged. I thought you all fully understood that on no consideration was my father to have liquor, unless by the physician's or my order—it aggravates his disease and neutralizes all the doctor's efforts—and, unless you wish to be immediately discharged, never repeat the same offence. Now, procure some assistance—it is time my father was prepared for bed." The man bowed and left the apartment; but soon returned, saying there was a person in the hall who had forced his way into the house, and who positively refused to stir until he saw Mr. Stevens. "He has been here two or three times," added the man, "and he is very rough and impudent." "This is most singular conduct," exclaimed Miss Stevens. "Did he give his name?" "Yes, miss; he calls himself McCloskey." At the utterance of this well-known name, Mr. Stevens raised his head, and stared at the speaker with a look of stupid fright, and inquired, "Who here—what name is that?—speak louder—what name?" "McCloskey," answered the man, in a louder tone. "What! he—he!" cried Mr. Stevens, with a terrified look. "Where—where is he?" he continued, endeavouring to rise—"where is he?" "Stop, pa," interposed his daughter, alarmed at his appearance and manner. "Do stop—let me go," "No—no!" said the old man wildly, seizing her by the dress to detain her—"you must not go—that would never do! He might tell her," he muttered to himself—"No, no—I'll go!"—and thus speaking, he made another ineffectual attempt to reach the door. "Dear father! do let me go!" she repeated, imploringly. "You are incapable of seeing any one—let me inquire what he wants!" she added, endeavouring to loose his hold upon her dress. "No—you shall not!" he replied, clutching her dress still tighter, and endeavouring to draw her towards him. "Oh, father!" she asked distractedly, "what can this mean? Here," said she, addressing the servant, who stood gazing in silent wonder on this singular scene, "help my father into his chair again, and then tell this strange man to wait awhile." The exhausted man, having been placed in his chair, motioned to his daughter to close the door behind the servant, who had just retired. "He wants money," said he, in a whisper—"he wants money! He'll make beggars of us all—and yet I'll have to give him some. Quick! give me my cheque-book—let me give him something before he has a chance to talk to any one—quick! quick!" The distracted girl wrung her hands with grief at what she imagined was a return of her father's malady, and exclaimed, "Oh! if George only would remain at home—it is too much for me to have the care of father whilst he is in such a state." Then pretending to be in search of the cheque-book, she turned over the pamphlets and papers upon his desk, that she might gain time, and think how it was best to proceed. Whilst she was thus hesitating, the door of the room was suddenly opened, and a shabbily dressed man, bearing a strong odour of rum about him, forced his way into the apartment, saying, "I will see him. D——n it, I don't care haporth how sick he is—let me go, or by the powers I'll murther some of yes." The old man's face was almost blanched with terror when he heard the voice and saw the abrupt entry of the intruder. He sprang from the chair with a great effort, and then, unable to sustain himself, sunk fainting on the floor. "Oh, you have killed my father—you have killed my father! Who are you, and what do you want, that you dare thrust yourself upon him in this manner?" said she, stooping to assist in raising him; "cannot you see he is entirely unfit for any business?" Mr. Stevens was replaced in his chair, and water thrown in his face to facilitate his recovery. Meanwhile, McCloskey had poured himself out a glass of brandy and water, which he stood sipping as coolly as if everything in the apartment was in a state of the most perfect composure. The singular terror of her father, and the boldness and assurance of the intruder, were to Miss Stevens something inexplicable—she stood looking from one to the other, as though seeking an explanation, and on observing symptoms of a return to consciousness on the part of her parent, she turned to McCloskey, and said, appealingly: "You see how your presence has agitated my father. Pray let me conjure you—go. Be your errand what it may, I promise you it shall have the earliest attention. Or," said she, "tell me what it is; perhaps I can see to it—I attend a great deal to father's business. Pray tell me!" "No, no!" exclaimed the old man, who had caught the last few words of his daughter. "No, no—not a syllable! Here, I'm well—I'm well enough. I'll attend to you. There, there—that will do," he continued, addressing the servant; "leave the room. And you," he added, turning to his daughter, "do you go too. I am much better now, and can talk to him. Go! go!" he cried, impatiently, as he saw evidences of a disposition to linger, on her part; "if I want you I'll ring. Go!—this person won't stay long." "Not if I get what I came for, miss," said McCloskey, insolently; "otherwise, there is no knowing how long I may stay." With a look of apprehension, Lizzie quitted the room, and the murderer and his accomplice were alone together. Mr. Stevens reached across the table, drew the liquor towards him, and recklessly pouring out a large quantity, drained the glass to the bottom—this seemed to nerve him up and give him courage, for he turned to McCloskey and said, with a much bolder air than he had yet shown in addressing him, "So, you're back again, villain! are you? I thought and hoped you were dead;" and he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as if to shut out some horrid spectre. "I've been divilish near it, squire, but Providence has preserved me, ye see—jist to be a comfort to ye in yer old age. I've been shipwrecked, blown up in steamboats, and I've had favers and choleray and the divil alone knows what—but I've been marcifully presarved to ye, and hope ye'll see a good dale of me this many years to come." Mr. Stevens glared at him fiercely for a few seconds, and then rejoined, "You promised me solemnly, five years ago, that you would never trouble me again, and I gave you money enough to have kept you in comfort—ay, luxury—for the remainder of your life. Where is it all now?" "That's more than I can tell you, squire. I only know how it comes. I don't trouble myself how it goes—that's your look out. If ye are anxious on that score you'd better hire a bookkeeper for me—he shall send yer honour a quarterly account, and then it won't come on ye so sudden when it's all out another time." "Insolent!" muttered Mr. Stevens. McCloskey gave Mr. Stevens an impudent look, but beyond that took no farther notice of his remark, but proceeded with the utmost coolness to pour out another glass of brandy—after which he drew his chair closer to the grate, and placed his dirty feet upon the mantelpiece in close proximity to an alabaster clock. "You make yourself very much at home," said Stevens, indignantly. "Why shouldn't I?" answered his tormentor, in a tone of the most perfect good humour. "Why shouldn't I—in the house of an ould acquaintance and particular friend—just the place to feel at home, eh, Stevens?" then folding his arms and tilting back his chair, he asked, coolly: "You haven't a cigar, have ye?" "No," replied Stevens, surlily; "and if I had, you should not have it. Your insolence is unbearable; you appear," continued he, with some show of dignity, "to have forgotten who I am, and who you are." "Ye're mistaken there, squire. Divil a bit have I. I'm McCloskey, and you are Slippery George—an animal that's known over the 'varsal world as a Philadelphia lawyer—a man that's chated his hundreds, and if he lives long enough, he'll chate as many more, savin' his friend Mr. McCloskey, and him he'll not be afther chating, because he won't be able to get a chance, although he'd like to if he could—divil a doubt of that." "It's false—I never tried to cheat you," rejoined Stevens, courageously, for the liquor was beginning to have a very inspiriting effect. "It's a lie—I paid you all I agreed upon, and more besides; but you are like a leech—never satisfied. You have had from me altogether nearly twenty thousand dollars, and you'll not get much more—now, mind I tell you." "The divil I won't," rejoined he, angrily; "that is yet to be seen. How would you like to make yer appearance at court some fine morning, on the charge of murther, eh?" Mr. Stevens gave a perceptible shudder, and looked round, whereupon McCloskey said, with a malevolent grin, "Ye see I don't stick at words, squire; I call things by their names." "So I perceive," answered Stevens. "You were not so bold once." "Ha, ha!" laughed McCloskey. "I know that as well as you—then I was under the thumb—that was before we were sailing in the one boat; now ye see, squire, the boot is on the other leg." Mr. Stevens remained quiet for a few moments, whilst his ragged visitor continued to leisurely sip his brandy and contemplate the soles of his boots as they were reflected in the mirror above—they were a sorry pair of boots, and looked as if there would soon be a general outbreak of his toes—so thin and dilapidated did the soles appear. "Look at thim boots, and me suit ginerally, and see if your conscience won't accuse ye of ingratitude to the man who made yer fortune—or rather lets ye keep it, now ye have it. Isn't it a shame now for me, the best friend you've got in the world, to be tramping the streets widdout a penny in his pocket, and ye livin' in clover, with gold pieces as plenty as blackberries. It don't look right, squire, and mustn't go on any longer." "What do you want—whatever will satisfy you?" asked Stevens. "If I give you ever so much now, what guarantee have I that you'll not return in a month or so, and want as much more?" "I'll pledge ye me honour," said McCloskey, grandly. "Your honour!" rejoined Stevens, "that is no security." "Security or no security," said McCloskey, impatiently, "you'll have to give me the money—it's not a bit of use now this disputin, bekase ye see I'm bound to have it, and ye are wise enough to know ye'd better give it to me. What if ye have give me thousands upon thousands," continued he, his former good-humoured expression entirely vanishing; "it's nothing more than you ought to do for keeping yer secrets for ye—and as long as ye have money, ye may expect to share it with me: so make me out a good heavy cheque, and say no more about it." "What do you call a heavy cheque?" asked Stevens, in a despairing tone. "Five or six thousand," coolly answered his visitor. "Five or six thousand!" echoed Mr. Stevens, "it is impossible." "It had better not be," said McCloskey, looking angry; "it had better not be—I'm determined not to be leading a beggar's life, and you to be a rolling in wealth." "I can't give it, and won't give it—if it must come to that," answered Stevens, desperately. "It is you that have the fortune—I am only your banker at this rate. I can't give it to you—I haven't got that much money." "You must find it then, and pretty quick at that," said McCloskey. "I'm not to be fooled with—I came here for money, and I must and will have it." "I am willing to do what is reasonable," rejoined Mr. Stevens, in a more subdued tone. "You talk of thousands as most men do of hundreds. I really haven't got it." "Oh, bother such stuff as that," interrupted McCloskey, incredulously. "I don't believe a word of it—I've asked them that know, and every one says you've made a mint of money by speculation—that since ye sold out in the South and came here to live, there's no end to the money ye've made; so you see it don't do to be making a poor mouth to me. I've come here for a check for five thousand dollars, and shan't go away without it," concluded he, in a loud and threatening tone. During this conversation, Lizzie Stevens had been standing at the door, momentarily expecting a recall to the apartment. She heard the low rumble of their voices, but could not distinguish words. At length, hearing McCloskey's raised to a higher key, she could no longer restrain her impatience, and gently opening the door, looked into the room. Both their faces were turned in the opposite direction, so that neither noticed the gentle intrusion of Lizzie, who, fearing to leave her father longer alone, ventured into the apartment. "You need not stand looking at me in that threatening manner. You may do as you please—go tell what you like; but remember, when I fall, so do you; I have not forgotten that affair in Philadelphia from which I saved you—don't place me in a situation that will compel me to recur to it to your disadvantage." "Ah, don't trouble yerself about that, squire; I don't—that is entirely off my mind; for now Whitticar is dead, where is yer witnesses?" "Whitticar dead!" repeated Stevens. "Yes; and what's more, he's buried—so he's safe enough, squire; and I shouldn't be at all surprised if you'd be glad to have me gone too." "I would to God you had been, before I put myself in your power." "'Twas your own hastiness. When it came to the pinch, I wasn't equal to the job, so ye couldn't wait for another time, but out with yer pistol, and does it yerself." The wretched man shuddered and covered his face, as McCloskey coolly recounted his murder of Mr. Garie, every word of which was too true to be denied. "And haven't I suffered," said he, shaking his bald head mournfully; "haven't I suffered—look at my grey hairs and half-palsied frame, decrepit before I'm old—sinking into the tomb with a weight of guilt and sin upon me that will crush me down to the lowest depth of hell. Think you," he continued, "that because I am surrounded with all that money can buy, that I am happy, or ever shall be, with this secret gnawing at my heart; every piece of gold I count out, I see his hands outstretched over it, and hear him whisper 'Mine!' He gives me no peace night or day; he is always by me; I have no rest. And you must come, adding to my torture, and striving to tear from me that for which I bartered conscience, peace, soul, everything that would make life desirable. If there is mercy in you, leave me with what I give you, and come back no more. Life has so little to offer, that rather than bear this continued torment and apprehension I daily suffer, I will cut my throat, and then your game is over." Lizzie Stevens stood rooted to the spot whilst her father made the confession that was wrung from him by the agony of the moment. "Well, well!" said McCloskey, somewhat startled and alarmed at Stevens's threat of self-destruction—"well, I'll come down a thousand—make it four." "That I'll do," answered the old man, tremblingly; and reaching over, he drew towards him the cheque-book. After writing the order for the sum, he was placing it in the hand of McCloskey, when, hearing a faint moan, he looked towards the door, and saw his daughter fall fainting to the ground. CHAPTER XXXI. The Thorn rankles. We left the quiet town of Sudbury snow-clad and sparkling in all the glory of a frosty moonlight night; we now return to it, and discover it decked out in its bravest summer garniture. A short distance above the hill upon which it is built, the water of the river that glides along its base may be seen springing over the low dam that obstructs its passage, sparkling, glistening, dancing in the sunlight, as it falls splashing on the stones below; and then, as though subdued by the fall and crash, it comes murmuring on, stopping now and then to whirl and eddy round some rock or protruding stump, and at last glides gently under the arch of the bridge, seemingly to pause beneath its shadow and ponder upon its recent tumble from the heights above. Seated here and there upon the bridge are groups of boys, rod in hand, endeavouring, with the most delicious-looking and persuasive of baits, to inveigle finny innocents from the cool depths below. The windows of the mills are all thrown open, and now and then the voices of some operatives, singing at their work, steal forth in company with the whir and hum of the spindles, and mingle with the splash of the waterfall; and the united voices of nature, industry, and man, harmonize their swelling tones, or go floating upward on the soft July air. The houses upon the hill-side seem to be endeavouring to extricate themselves from bowers of full-leafed trees; and with their white fronts, relieved by the light green blinds, look cool and inviting in the distance. High above them all, as though looking down in pride upon the rest, stands the Academy, ennobled in the course of years by the addition of extensive wings and a row of stately pillars. On the whole, the town looked charmingly peaceful and attractive, and appeared just the quiet nook that a weary worker in cities would select as a place of retirement after a busy round of toils or pleasure. There were little knots of idlers gathered about the railroad station, as there always is in quiet towns—not that they expect any one; but that the arrival and departure of the train is one of the events of the day, and those who have nothing else particular to accomplish feel constrained to be on hand to witness it. Every now and then one of them would look down the line and wonder why the cars were not in sight. Amongst those seemingly the most impatient was Miss Ada Bell, who looked but little older than when she won the heart of the orphan Clarence, years before, by that kind kiss upon his childish brow. It was hers still—she bound it to her by long years of affectionate care, almost equalling in its sacrificing tenderness that which a mother would have bestowed upon her only child. Clarence, her adopted son, had written to her, that he was wretched, heart-sore, and ill, and longed to come to her, his almost mother, for sympathy, advice, and comfort: so she, with yearning heart, was there to meet him. At last the faint scream of the steam-whistle was heard, and soon the lumbering locomotive came puffing and snorting on its iron path, dashing on as though it could never stop, and making the surrounding hills echo with the unearthly scream of its startling whistle, and arousing to desperation every dog in the quiet little town. At last it stopped, and stood giving short and impatient snorts and hisses, whilst the passengers were alighting. Clarence stepped languidly out, and was soon in the embrace of Miss Ada. "My dear boy, how thin and pale you look!" she exclaimed; "come, get into the carriage; never mind your baggage, George will look after that; your hands are hot—very hot, you must be feverish." "Yes, Aunt Ada," for so he had insisted on his calling her "I am ill—sick in heart, mind, and everything. Cut up the horses," said he, with slight impatience of manner; "let us get home quickly. When I get in the old parlour, and let you bathe my head as you used to, I am sure I shall feel better. I am almost exhausted from fatigue and heat." "Very well then, dear, don't talk now," she replied, not in the least noticing his impatience of manner; "when you are rested, and have had your tea, will be time enough." They were soon in the old house, and Clarence looked round with a smile of pleasure on the room where he had spent so many happy hours. Good Aunt Ada would not let him talk, but compelled him to remain quiet until he had rested himself, and eaten his evening meal. He had altered considerably in the lapse of years, there was but little left to remind one of the slight, melancholy-looking boy, that once stood a heavy-hearted little stranger in the same room, in days gone by. His face was without a particle of red to relieve its uniform paleness; his eyes, large, dark, and languishing, were half hidden by unusually long lashes; his forehead broad, and surmounted with clustering raven hair; a glossy moustache covered his lip, and softened down its fulness; on the whole, he was strikingly handsome, and none would pass him without a second look. Tea over, Miss Ada insisted that he should lie down upon the sofa again, whilst she, sat by and bathed his head. "Have you seen your sister lately?" she asked. "No, Aunt Ada," he answered, hesitatingly, whilst a look of annoyance darkened his face for a moment; "I have not been to visit her since last fall—almost a year." "Oh! Clarence, how can you remain so long away?" said she, reproachfully. "Well, I can't go there with any comfort or pleasure," he answered, apologetically; "I can't go there; each year as I visit the place, their ways seem more strange and irksome to me. Whilst enjoying her company, I must of course come in familiar contact with those by whom she is surrounded. Sustaining the position that I do—passing as I am for a white man—I am obliged to be very circumspect, and have often been compelled to give her pain by avoiding many of her dearest friends when I have encountered them in public places, because of their complexion. I feel mean and cowardly whilst I'm doing it; but it is necessary—I can't be white and coloured at the same time; the two don't mingle, and I must consequently be one or the other. My education, habits, and ideas, all unfit me for associating with the latter; and I live in constant dread that something may occur to bring me out with the former. I don't avoid coloured people, because I esteem them my inferiors in refinement, education, or intelligence; but because they are subjected to degradations that I shall be compelled to share by too freely associating with them." "It is a pity," continued he, with a sigh, "that I was not suffered to grow up with them, then I should have learnt to bear their burthens, and in the course of time might have walked over my path of life, bearing the load almost unconsciously. Now it would crush me, I know. It was a great mistake to place me in my present false position," concluded he, bitterly; "it has cursed me. Only a day ago I had a letter from Em, reproaching me for my coldness; yet, God help me! What am I to do!" Miss Ada looked at him sorrowfully, and continued smoothing down his hair, and inundating his temples with Cologne; at last she ventured to inquire, "How do matters progress with you and Miss Bates? Clary, you have lost your heart there!" "Too true," he replied, hurriedly; "and what is more—little Birdie (I call her little Birdie) has lost hers too. Aunt Ada, we are engaged!" "With her parents' consent?" she asked. "Yes, with her parents' consent; we are to be married in the coming winter." "Then they know all, of course—they know you are coloured?" observed she. "They know all!" cried he, starting up. "Who said they did—who told them?—tell me that, I say! Who has dared to tell them I am a coloured man?" "Hush, Clarence, hush!" replied she, attempting to soothe him. "I do not know that any one has informed them; I only inferred so from your saying you were engaged. I thought you had informed them yourself. Don't you remember you wrote that you should?—and I took it for granted that you had." "Oh! yes, yes; so I did! I fully intended to, but found myself too great a coward. I dare not—I cannot risk losing her. I am fearful that if she knew it she would throw me off for ever." "Perhaps not, Clarence—if she loves you as she should; and even if she did, would it not be better that she should know it now, than have it discovered afterwards, and you both be rendered miserable for life." "No, no, Aunt Ada—I cannot tell her! It must remain a secret until after our marriage; then, if they find it out, it will be to their interest to smooth the matter over, and keep quiet about it." "Clary, Clary—that is not honourable!" "I know it—but how can I help it? Once or twice I thought of telling her, but my heart always failed me at the critical moment. It would kill me to lose her. Oh! I love her, Aunt Ada," said he, passionately—"love her with all the energy and strength of my father's race, and all the doating tenderness of my mother's. I could have told her long ago, before my love had grown to its present towering strength, but craft set a seal upon my lips, and bid me be silent until her heart was fully mine, and then nothing could part us; yet now even, when sure of her affections, the dread that her love would not stand the test, compels me to shrink more than ever from the disclosure." "But, Clarence, you are not acting generously; I know your conscience does not approve your actions." "Don't I know that?" he answered, almost fiercely; "yet I dare not tell—I must shut this secret in my bosom, where it gnaws, gnaws, gnaws, until it has almost eaten my heart away. Oh, I've thought of that, time and again; it has kept me awake night after night, it haunts me at all hours; it is breaking down my health and strength—wearing my very life out of me; no escaped galley-slave ever felt more than I do, or lived in more constant fear of detection: and yet I must nourish this tormenting secret, and keep it growing in my breast until it has crowded out every honourable and manly feeling; and then, perhaps, after all my sufferings and sacrifice of candour and truth, out it will come at last, when I least expect or think of it." Aunt Ada could not help weeping, and exclaimed, commiseratingly, "My poor, poor boy," as he strode up and down the room. "The whole family, except her, seem to have the deepest contempt for coloured people; they are constantly making them a subject of bitter jests; they appear to have no more feeling or regard for them than if they were brutes—and I," continued he, "I, miserable, contemptible, false-hearted knave, as I am, I—I—yes, I join them in their heartless jests, and wonder all the while my mother does not rise from her grave and curse me as I speak!" "Oh! Clarence, Clarence, my dear child!" cried the terrified Aunt Ada, "you talk deliriously; you have brooded over this until it has almost made you crazy. Come here—sit down." And seizing him by the arm, she drew him on the sofa beside her, and began to bathe his hot head with the Cologne again. "Let me walk, Aunt Ada," said he after a few moments,—"let me walk, I feel better whilst I am moving; I can't bear to be quiet." And forthwith he commenced striding up and down the room again with nervous and hurried steps. After a few moments he burst out again—— "It seems as if fresh annoyances and complications beset me every day. Em writes me that she is engaged. I was in hopes, that, after I had married, I could persuade her to come and live with me, and so gradually break off her connection with, coloured people; but that hope is extinguished now: she is engaged to a coloured man." Aunt Ada could see no remedy for this new difficulty, and could only say, "Indeed!" "I thought something of the kind would occur when I was last at home, and spoke to her on the subject, but she evaded giving me any definite answer; I think she was afraid to tell me—she has written, asking my consent." "And will you give it?" asked Aunt Ada. "It will matter but little if I don't; Em has a will of her own, and I have no means of coercing her; besides, I have no reasonable objection to urge: it would be folly in me to oppose it, simply because he is a coloured man—for, what am I myself? The only difference is, that his identity with coloured people is no secret, and he is not ashamed of it; whilst I conceal my origin, and live in constant dread that some one may find it out." When Clarence had finished, he continued to walk up and down the room, looking very careworn and gloomy. Miss Bell remained on the sofa, thoughtfully regarding him. At last, she rose up and took his hand in hers, as she used to when he was a boy, and walking beside him, said, "The more I reflect upon it, the more necessary I regard it that you should tell this girl and her parents your real position before you marry her. Throw away concealment, make a clean breast of it! you may not be rejected when they find her heart is so deeply interested. If you marry her with this secret hanging over you, it will embitter your life, make you reserved, suspicious, and consequently ill-tempered, and destroy all your domestic happiness. Let me persuade you, tell them ere it be too late. Suppose it reached them through some other source, what would they then think of you?" "Who else would tell them? Who else knows it? You, you," said he suspiciously—"you would not betray me! I thought you loved me, Aunt Ada." "Clarence, my dear boy," she rejoined, apparently hurt by his hasty and accusing tone, "you will mistake me—I have no such intention. If they are never to learn it except through me, your secret is perfectly safe. Yet I must tell you that I feel and think that the true way to promote her happiness and your own, is for you to disclose to them your real position, and throw yourself upon their generosity for the result." Clarence pondered for a long time over Miss Bell's advice, which she again and again repeated, placing it each time before him in a stronger light, until, at last, she extracted from him a promise that he would do it. "I know you are right, Aunt Ada," said he; "I am convinced of that—it is a question of courage with me. I know it would be more honourable for me to tell her now. I'll try to do it—I will make an effort, and summon up the courage necessary—God be my helper!" "That's a dear boy!" she exclaimed, kissing him affectionately; "I know you will feel happier when it is all over; and even if she should break her engagement, you will be infinitely better off than if it was fulfilled and your secret subsequently discovered. Come, now," she concluded, "I am going to exert my old authority, and send you to bed; tomorrow, perhaps, you may see this in a more hopeful light." Two days after this, Clarence was again in New York, amid the heat and dust of that crowded, bustling city. Soon, after his arrival, he dressed himself, and started for the mansion of Mr. Bates, trembling as he went, for the result of the communication he was about to make. Once on the way he paused, for the thought had occurred to him that he would write to them; then reproaching himself for his weakness and timidity, he started on again with renewed determination. "I'll see her myself," he soliloquized. "I'll tell little Birdie all, and know my fate from her own lips. If I must give her up, I'll know the worst from her." When Clarence was admitted, he would not permit himself to be announced, but walked tiptoe upstairs and gently opening the drawing-room door, entered the room. Standing by the piano, turning over the leaves of some music, and merrily humming an air, was a young girl of extremely petite and delicate form. Her complexion was strikingly fair; and the rich curls of dark auburn that fell in clusters on her shoulders, made it still more dazzling by the contrast presented. Her eyes were grey, inclining to black; her features small, and not over-remarkable for their symmetry, yet by no means disproportionate. There was the sweetest of dimples on her small round chin, and her throat white and clear as the finest marble. The expression of her face was extremely childlike; she seemed more like a schoolgirl than a young woman of eighteen on the eve of marriage. There was something deliriously airy and fairylike in her motions, and as she slightly moved her feet in time to the music she was humming, her thin blue dress floated about her, and undulated in harmony with her graceful motions. After gazing at her for a few moments, Clarence called gently, "Little Birdie." She gave a timid joyous little cry of surprise and pleasure, and fluttered into his arms. "Oh, Clary, love, how you startled me! I did not dream there was any one in the room. It was so naughty in you," said she, childishly, as he pushed back the curls from her face and kissed her. "When did you arrive?" "Only an hour ago," he answered. "And you came here at once? Ah, that was so lover-like and kind," she rejoined, smiling. "You look like a sylph to-night, Anne," said he, as she danced about him. "Ah," he continued, after regarding her for a few seconds with a look of intense admiration, "you want to rivet my chains the tighter,—you look most bewitching. Why are you so much dressed to-night?—jewels, sash, and satin slippers," he continued; "are you going out?" "No, Clary," she answered. "I was to have gone to the theatre; but just at the last moment I decided not to. A singular desire to stay at home came over me suddenly. I had an instinctive feeling that I should lose some greater enjoyment if I went; so I remained at home; and here, love, are you. But what is the matter? you look sad and weary." "I am a little fatigued," said he, seating himself and holding her hand in his: "a little weary; but that will soon wear off; and as for the sadness," concluded he, with a forced smile, "that must depart now that I am with you, Little Birdie." "I feel relieved that you have returned safe and well," said she, looking up into his face from her seat beside him; "for, Clary, love, I had such a frightful dream, such a singular dream about you. I have endeavoured to shake it out of my foolish little head; but it won't go, Clary,—I can't get rid of it. It occurred after you left us at Saratoga. Oh, it was nothing though," said she, laughing and shaking her curls,—"nothing; and now you are safely returned, I shall not think of it again. Tell me what you have seen since you went away; and how is that dear Aunt Ada of yours you talk so much about?" "Oh, she is quite well," answered he; "but tell, Anne, tell me about that dream. What was it, Birdie?—come tell me." "I don't care to," she answered, with a slight shudder,—"I don't want to, love." "Yes, yes,—do, sweet," importuned he; "I want to hear it." "Then if I must," said she, "I will. I dreamed that you and I were walking on a road together, and 'twas such a beautiful road, with flowers and fruit, and lovely cottages on either side. I thought you held my hand; I felt it just as plain as I clasp yours now. Presently a rough ugly man overtook us, and bid you let me go; and that you refused, and held me all the tighter. Then he gave you a diabolical look, and touched you on the face, and you broke out in loathsome black spots, and screamed in such agony and frightened me so, that I awoke all in a shiver of terror, and did not get over it all the next day." Clarence clutched her hand tighter as she finished, so tight indeed, that she gave a little scream of pain and looked frightened at him. "What is the matter?" she inquired; "your hand is like ice, and you are paler than ever. You haven't let that trifling dream affect you so? It is nothing." "I am superstitious in regard to dreams," said Clarence, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Go," he asked, faintly, "play me an air, love,—something quick and lively to dispel this. I wish you had not told me." "But you begged me to," said she, pouting, as she took her seat at the instrument. "How ominous," muttered he,—"became covered with black spots; that is a foreshadowing. How can I tell her," he thought. "It seems like wilfully destroying my own happiness." And he sat struggling with himself to obtain the necessary courage to fulfil the purpose of his visit, and became so deeply engrossed with his own reflections as to scarcely even hear the sound of the instrument. "It is too bad," she cried, as she ceased playing: "here I have performed some of your favourite airs, and that too without eliciting a word of commendation. You are inexpressibly dull to-night; nothing seems to enliven you. What is the matter?" "Oh," rejoined he, abstractedly, "am I? I was not aware of it." "Yes, you are," said Little Birdie, pettishly; "nothing seems to engage your attention." And, skipping off to the table, she took up the newspaper, and exclaimed,—"Let me read you something very curious." "No, no, Anne dear," interrupted he; "sit here by me. I want to say something serious to you—something of moment to us both." "Then it's something very grave and dull, I know," she remarked; "for that is the way people always begin. Now I don't want to hear anything serious to-night; I want to be merry. You look serious enough; and if you begin to talk seriously you'll be perfectly unbearable. So you must hear what I am going to read to you first." And the little tyrant put her finger on his lip, and looked so bewitching, that he could not refuse her. And the important secret hung on his lips, but was not spoken. "Listen," said she, spreading out the paper before her and running her tiny finger down the column. "Ah, I have it," she exclaimed at last, and began:— "'We learn from unimpeachable authority that the Hon. —— ——, who represents a district of our city in the State legislature, was yesterday united to the Quateroon daughter of the late Gustave Almont. She is said to be possessed of a large fortune, inherited from her father; and they purpose going to France to reside,—a sensible determination; as, after such a mesalliance, the honourable gentleman can no longer expect to retain his former social position in our midst.—New Orleans Watchman.'" "Isn't it singular," she remarked, "that a man in his position should make such a choice?" "He loved her, no doubt," suggested Clarence; "and she was almost white." "How could he love her?" asked she, wonderingly. "Love a coloured woman! I cannot conceive it possible," said she, with a look of disgust; "there is something strange and unnatural about it." "No, no," he rejoined, hurriedly, "it was love, Anne,—pure love; it is not impossible. I—I—" "am coloured," he would have said; but he paused and looked full in her lovely face. He could not tell her,—the words slunk back into his coward heart unspoken. She stared at him in wonder and perplexity, and exclaimed,—"Dear Clarence, how strangely you act! I am afraid you are not well. Your brow is hot," said she, laying her hand on his forehead; "you have been travelling too much for your strength." "It is not that," he replied. "I feel a sense of suffocation, as if all the blood was rushing to my throat. Let me get the air." And he rose and walked to the window. Anne hastened and brought him a glass of water, of which he drank a little, and then declared himself better. After this, he stood for a long time with her clasped in his arms; then giving her one or two passionate kisses, he strained her closer to him and abruptly left the house, leaving Little Birdie startled and alarmed by his strange behaviour. CHAPTER XXXII. Dear Old Ess again. Let us visit once more the room from which Mr. Walters and his friends made so brave a defence. There is but little in its present appearance to remind one of that eventful night,—no reminiscences of that desperate attack, save the bullet-hole in the ceiling, which Mr. Walters declares shall remain unfilled as an evidence of the marked attention he has received at the hands of his fellow-citizens. There are several noticeable additions to the furniture of the apartment; amongst them an elegantly-carved work-stand, upon which some unfinished articles of children's apparel are lying; a capacious rocking-chair, and grand piano. Then opposite to the portrait of Toussaint is suspended another picture, which no doubt holds a higher position in the regard of the owner of the mansion than the African warrior aforesaid. It is a likeness of the lady who is sitting at the window,—Mrs. Esther Walters, nee Ellis. The brown baby in the picture is the little girl at her side,—the elder sister of the other brown baby who is doing its best to pull from its mother's lap the doll's dress upon which she is sewing. Yes, that is "dear old Ess," as Charlie calls her yet, though why he will persist in applying the adjective we are at a loss to determine. Esther looks anything but old—a trifle matronly, we admit—but old we emphatically say she is not; her hair is parted plainly, and the tiniest of all tiny caps sits at the back of her head, looking as if it felt it had no business on such raven black hair, and ought to be ignominiously dragged off without one word of apology. The face and form are much more round and full, and the old placid expression has been undisturbed in the lapse of years. The complexion of the two children was a sort of compromise between the complexions of their parents—chubby-faced, chestnut-coloured, curly-headed, rollicking little pests, who would never be quiet, and whose little black buttons of eyes were always peering into something, and whose little plugs of fingers would, in spite of every precaution to prevent, be diving into mother's work-box, and various other highly inconvenient and inappropriate places. "There!" said Esther, putting the last stitch into a doll she had been manufacturing; "now, take sister, and go away and play." But little sister, it appeared, did not wish to be taken, and she made the best of her way off, holding on by the chairs, and tottering over the great gulfs between them, until she succeeded in reaching the music-stand, where she paused for a while before beginning to destroy the music. Just at this critical juncture a young lady entered the room, and held up her hands in horror, and baby hastened off as fast as her toddling limbs could carry her, and buried her face in her mother's lap in great consternation. Emily Garie made two or three slight feints of an endeavour to catch her, and then sat down by the little one's mother, and gave a deep sigh. "Have you answered your brother's letter?" asked Esther. "Yes, I have," she replied; "here it is,"—and she laid the letter in Esther's lap. Baby made a desperate effort to obtain it, but suffered a signal defeat, and her mother opened it, and read— "DEAR BROTHER,—I read your chilling letter with deep sorrow. I cannot say that it surprised me; it is what I have anticipated during the many months that I have been silent on the subject of my marriage. Yet, when I read it, I could not but feel a pang to which heretofore I have been a stranger. Clarence, you know I love you, and should not make the sacrifice you demand a test of my regard. True, I cannot say (and most heartily I regret it) that there exists between us the same extravagant fondness we cherished as children—but that is no fault of mine. Did you not return to me, each year, colder and colder—more distant and unbrotherly—until you drove back to their source the gushing streams of a sister's love that flowed so strongly towards you? You ask me to resign Charles Ellis and come to you. What can you offer me in exchange for his true, manly affection?—to what purpose drive from my heart a love that has been my only solace, only consolation, for your waning regard! We have grown up together—he has been warm and kind, when you were cold and indifferent—and now that he claims the reward of long years of tender regard, and my own heart is conscious that he deserves it, you would step between us, and forbid me yield the recompense that it will be my pride and delight to bestow. It grieves me to write it; yet I must, Clary—for between brother and sister there is no need of concealments; and particularly at such a time should everything be open, clear, explicit. Do not think I wish to reproach you. What you are, Clarence, your false position and unfortunate education have made you. I write it with pain—your demand seems extremely selfish. I fear it is not of me but of yourself you are thinking, when you ask me to sever, at once and for ever, my connection with a people who, you say, can only degrade me. Yet how much happier am I, sharing their degradation, than you appear to be! Is it regard for me that induces the desire that I should share the life of constant dread that I cannot but feel you endure—or do you fear that my present connections will interfere with your own plans for the future? "Even did I grant it was my happiness alone you had in view, my objections would be equally strong. I could not forego the claims of early friendship, and estrange myself from those who have endeared themselves to me by long years of care—nor pass coldly and unrecognizingly by playmates and acquaintances, because their complexions were a few shades darker than my own. This I could never do—to me it seems ungrateful: yet I would not reproach you because you can—for the circumstances by which you have been surrounded have conspired to produce that result—and I presume you regard such conduct as necessary to sustain you in your present position. From the tenor of your letter I should judge that you entertained some fear that I might compromise you with your future bride, and intimate that my choice may deprive you of yours. Surely that need not be. She need not even know of my existence. Do not entertain a fear that I, or my future husband, will ever interfere with your happiness by thrusting ourselves upon you, or endanger your social position by proclaiming our relationship. Our paths lie so widely apart that they need never cross. You walk on the side of the oppressor—I, thank God, am with the oppressed. "I am happy—more happy, I am sure, than you could make me, even by surrounding me with the glittering lights that shine upon your path, and which, alas! may one day go suddenly out, and leave you wearily groping in the darkness. I trust, dear brother, my words may not prove a prophecy; yet, should they be, trust me, Clarence, you may come back again, and a sister's heart will receive you none the less warmly that you selfishly desired her to sacrifice the happiness of a lifetime to you. I shall marry Charles Ellis. I ask you to come and see us united—I shall not reproach you if you do not; yet I shall feel strange without a single relative to kiss or bless me in that most eventful hour of a woman's life. God bless you, Clary! I trust your union may be as happy as I anticipate my own will be—and, if it is not, it will not be because it has lacked the earnest prayers of your neglected but still loving sister." "Esther, I thought I was too cold in that—tell me, do you think so?" "No, dear, not at all; I think it a most affectionate reply to a cold, selfish letter." "Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that. I can trust better to your tenderness of others' feelings than to my own heart. I felt strongly, Esther, and was fearful that it might be too harsh or reproachful. I was anxious lest my feelings should be too strikingly displayed; yet it was better to be explicit—don't you think so?" "Undoubtedly," answered Esther; and handing back the letter, she took up baby, and seated herself in the rocking-chair. Now baby had a prejudice against caps, inveterate and unconquerable; and grandmamma, nurse, and Esther were compelled to bear the brunt of her antipathies. We have before said that Esther's cap looked as though it felt itself in an inappropriate position—that it had got on the head of the wrong individual—and baby, no doubt in deference to the cap's feelings, tore it off, and threw it in the half-open piano, from whence it was extricated with great detriment to the delicate lace. Emily took a seat near the window, and drawing her work-table towards her, raised the lid. This presenting another opening for baby, she slid down from her mother's lap, and hastened towards her. She just arrived in time to see it safely closed, and toddled back to her mother, as happy as if she had succeeded in running riot over its contents, and scattering them all over the floor. Emily kept looking down the street, as though in anxious expectation of somebody; and whilst she stood there, there was an opportunity of observing how little she had changed in the length of years. She is little Em magnified, with a trifle less of the child in her face. Her hair has a slight kink, is a little more wavy than is customary in persons of entire white blood; but in no other way is her extraction perceptible, only the initiated, searching for evidences of African blood, would at all notice this slight peculiarity. Her expectation was no doubt about to be gratified, for a smile broke over her face, as she left the window and skipped downstairs; when she re-entered, she was accompanied by her intended husband. There was great commotion amongst the little folk in consequence of this new arrival. Baby kicked, and screamed out "Unker Char," and went almost frantic because her dress became entangled in the buckle of her mamma's belt, and her sister received a kiss before she could be extricated. Charlie is greatly altered—he is tall, remarkably athletic, with a large, handsomely-shaped head, covered with close-cut, woolly hair; high forehead, heavy eyebrows, large nose, and a mouth of ordinary size, filled with beautifully white teeth, which he displays at almost every word he speaks; chin broad, and the whole expression of his face thoughtful and commanding, yet replete with good humour. No one would call him handsome, yet there was something decidedly attractive in his general appearance. No one would recognize him as the Charlie of old, whose escapades had so destroyed the comfort and harmony of Mrs. Thomas's establishment; and only once, when he held up the baby, and threatened to let her tear the paper ornaments from the chandelier, was there a twinkle of the Charlie of old looking out of his eyes. "How are mother and father to-day?" asked Esther. "Oh, both well. I left them only a few minutes ago at the dinner table. I had to hurry off to go to the office." "So I perceive," observed Esther, archly, "and of course, coming here, which is four squares out of your way, will get you there much sooner." Emily blushed, and said, smilingly, Esther was "a very impertinent person;" and in this opinion Charlie fully concurred. They then walked to the window, where they stood, saying, no doubt, to each other those little tender things which are so profoundly interesting to lovers, and so exceedingly stupid to every one else. Baby, in high glee, was seated on Charlie's shoulder, where she could clutch both hands in his hair and pull until the tears almost started from his eyes. "Emily and you have been talking a long while, and I presume you have fully decided on what day you are both to be rescued from your misery, and when I am to have the exquisite satisfaction of having my house completely turned upside down for your mutual benefit," said Esther. "I trust it will be as soon as possible, as we cannot rationally expect that either of you will be bearable until it is all over, and you find yourselves ordinary mortals again. Come now, out with it. When is it to be?" "I say next week," cried Charlie. "Next week, indeed," hastily rejoined Emily. "I could not think of such a thing—so abrupt." "So abrupt," repeated Charlie, with a laugh. "Why, haven't I been courting you ever since I wore roundabouts, and hasn't everybody been expecting us to be married every week within the last two years. Fie, Em, it's anything but abrupt." Emily blushed still deeper, and looked out of the window, down the street and up the street, but did not find anything in the prospect at either side that at all assisted her to come to a decision, so she only became more confused and stared the harder; at last she ventured to suggest that day two months. "This day two months—outrageous!" said Charlie. "Come here, dear old Ess, and help me to convince this deluded girl of the preposterous manner in which she is conducting herself." "I must join her side if you will bring me into the discussion. I think she is right, Charlie—there is so much to be done: the house to procure and furnish, and numberless other things that you hasty and absurd men know nothing about." By dint of strong persuasion from Charlie, Emily finally consented to abate two weeks of the time, and they decided that a family council should be held that evening at Mrs. Ellis's, when the whole arrangements should be definitely settled. A note was accordingly despatched by Esther to her mother—that she, accompanied by Emily and the children, would come to them early in the afternoon, and that the gentlemen would join them in the evening at tea-time. Caddy was, of course, completely upset by the intelligence; for, notwithstanding that she and the maid-of-all-work lived in an almost perpetual state of house-cleaning, nothing appeared to her to be in order, and worse than all, there was nothing to eat. "Nothing to eat!" exclaimed Mrs. Ellis. "Why, my dear child, there are all manner of preserves, plenty of fresh peaches to cut and sugar down, and a large pound-cake in the house, and any quantity of bread can be purchased at the baker's." "Bread—plain bread!" rejoined Caddy, indignantly, quite astonished at her mother's modest idea of a tea—and a company-tea at that. "Do you think, mother, I'd set Mr. Walters down to plain bread, when we always have hot rolls and short-cake at their house? It is not to be thought of for a moment: they must have some kind of hot cake, be the consequences what they may." Caddy bustled herself about, and hurried up the maid-of-all-work in an astonishing manner, and before the company arrived had everything prepared, and looked as trim and neat herself as if she had never touched a rolling-pin, and did not know what an oven was used for. Behold them all assembled. Mrs. Ellis at the head of the table with a grandchild on each side of her, and her cap-strings pinned upon the side next to baby. Esther sits opposite her husband, who is grown a little grey, but otherwise is not in the least altered; next to her is her father, almost buried in a large easy-chair, where he sits shaking his head from time to time, and smiling vacantly at the children; then come Emily and Charlie at the foot, and at his other hand Caddy and Kinch—Kinch the invincible—Kinch the dirty—Kinch the mischievous, now metamorphosed into a full-blown dandy, with faultless linen, elegant vest, and fashionably-cut coat. Oh, Kinch, what a change—from the most shabby and careless of all boys to a consummate exquisite, with heavy gold watch and eye-glass, and who has been known to dress regularly twice a day! There was a mighty pouring out of tea at Mrs. Ellis's end of the table, and baby of course had to be served first with some milk and bread. Between her and the cat intimate relations seemed to exist, for by their united efforts the first cap was soon disposed of, and baby was clamouring for the second before the elder portions of the family had been once served round with tea. Charlie and Emily ate little and whispered a great deal; but Kinch, the voracity of whose appetite had not at all diminished in the length of years, makes up for their abstinence by devouring the delicious round short-cakes with astonishing rapidity. He did not pretend to make more than two bites to a cake, and they slipped away down his throat as if it was a railroad tunnel and they were a train of cars behind time. Caddy felt constrained to get up every few moments to look after something, and to assure herself by personal inspection that the reserved supplies in the kitchen were not likely to be exhausted. Esther occupied herself in attending upon her helpless father, and fed him as tenderly and carefully as if he was one of her babies. "I left you ladies in council. What was decided?" said Charlie, "don't be at all bashful as regards speaking before Kinch, for he is in the secret and has been these two months. Kinch is to be groomsman, and has had three tailors at work on his suit for a fortnight past. He told me this morning that if you did not hurry matters up, his wedding coat would be a week out of fashion before he should get a chance to wear it." "How delightful—Kinch to be groomsman," said Esther, "that is very kind in you, Kinch, to assist us to get Charlie off our hands." "And who is to be bridesmaid?" asked Walters. "Oh, Caddy of course—I couldn't have any one but Caddy," blushingly answered Emily. "That is capital," cried Charlie, giving Kinch a facetious poke, "just the thing, isn't it, Kinch—it will get her accustomed to these matters. You remember what you told me this morning, eh, old boy?" he concluded, archly. Kinch tried to blush, but being very dark-complexioned, his efforts in that direction were not at all apparent, so he evidenced his confusion by cramming a whole short-cake into his mouth, and almost caused a stoppage in the tunnel; Caddy became excessively red in the face, and was sure they wanted more cakes. But Mr. Walters was equally confident they did not, and put his back against the door and stood there, whilst Mrs. Ellis gravely informed them that she soon expected to be her own housekeeper, for that she had detected Caddy and Kinch in a furniture establishment, pricing a chest of drawers and a wash-stand; and that Kinch had unblushingly told her they had for some time been engaged to be married, but somehow or other had forgotten to mention it to her. This caused a general shout of laughter around the table, in which baby tumultuously joined, and rattled her spoon against the tea-urn until she almost deafened them. This noise frightened Mr. Ellis, who cried, "There they come! there they come!" and cowered down in his great chair, and looked so exceedingly terrified, that the noise was hushed instantly, and tears sprang into the eyes of dear old Ess, who rose and stood by him, and laid his withered face upon her soft warm bosom, smoothed down the thin grey hair, and held him close to her throbbing tender heart, until the wild light vanished from his bleared and sunken eyes, and the vacant childish smile came back on his thin, wan face again, when she said, "Pray don't laugh so very loud, it alarms father; he is composed now, pray don't startle him so again." This sobered them down a little, and they quietly recommenced discussing the matrimonial arrangements; but they were all in such capital spirits that an occasional hearty and good-humoured laugh could not be suppressed. Mr. Walters acted in his usual handsome manner, and facetiously collaring Charlie, took him into a corner and informed him that he had an empty house that be wished him to occupy, and that if he ever whispered the word rent, or offered him any money before he was worth twenty thousand dollars, he should believe that he wanted to pick a quarrel with him, and should refer him to a friend, and then pistols and coffee would be the inevitable result. Then it came out that Caddy and Kinch had been, courting for some time, if not with Mrs. Ellis's verbal consent, with at least no objection from that good lady; for Master Kinch, besides being an exceedingly good-natured fellow, was very snug in his boots, and had a good many thousand dollars at his disposal, bequeathed him by his father. The fates had conspired to make that old gentleman rich. He owned a number of lots on the outskirts of the city, on which he had been paying taxes a number of years, and he awoke one fine morning to find them worth a large sum of money. The city council having determined to cut a street just beside them, and the property all around being in the hands of wealthy and fashionable people, his own proved to be exceedingly valuable. It was a sad day for the old man, as Kinch and his mother insisted that he should give up business, which he did most reluctantly, and Kinch had to be incessantly on the watch thereafter, to prevent him from hiring cellars, and sequestering their old clothes to set up in business again. They were both gone now, and Kinch was his own master, with a well-secured income of a thousand dollars a-year, with a prospect of a large increase. They talked matters over fully, and settled all their arrangements before the time for parting, and then, finding the baby had scrambled into Mrs. Ellis's lap and gone fast asleep, and that it was long after ten o'clock, each departed, taking their several ways for home. CHAPTER XXXIII. The Fatal Discovery. There is great bustle and confusion in the house of Mr. Bates. Mantua-makers and milliners are coming in at unearthly hours, and consultations of deep importance are being duly held with maiden aunts and the young ladies who are to officiate as bridesmaids at the approaching ceremony. There are daily excursions to drapers' establishments, and jewellers, and, in fact, so much to be done and thought of, that little Birdie is in constant confusion, and her dear little curly head is almost turned topsy-turvy. Twenty times in each day is she called upstairs to where the sempstresses are at work, to have something tried on or fitted. Poor little Birdie! she declares she never can stand it: she did not dream that to be married she would have been subjected to such a world of trouble, or she would never have consented,—never! And then Clarence, too, comes in every morning, and remains half the day, teasing her to play, to talk, or sing. Inconsiderate Clarence! when she has so much on her mind; and when at last he goes, and she begins to felicitate herself that she is rid of him, back he comes again in the evening, and repeats the same annoyance. O, naughty, tiresome, Clarence! how can you plague little Birdie so? Perhaps you think she doesn't dislike it; you may be right, very likely she doesn't. She sometimes wonders why he grows paler and thinner each day, and his nervous and sometimes distracted manner teases her dreadfully; but she supposes all lovers act thus, and expects they cannot help it—and then little Birdie takes a sly peep in the glass, and does not so much wonder after all. Yet if she sometimes deems his manner startling and odd, what would she say if she knew that, night after night, when he left her side, he wandered for long hours through the cold and dreary streets, and then went to his hotel, where he paced his room until almost day? Ah, little Birdie, a smile will visit his pale face when you chirp tenderly to him, and a faint tinge comes upon his cheek when you lay your soft tiny hand upon it; yet all the while there is that desperate secret lying next his heart, and, like a vampire, sucking away, drop by drop, happiness and peace. Not so with little Birdie; she is happy—oh, so happy: she rises with a song upon her lips, and is chirping in the sunshine she herself creates, the live-long day. Flowers of innocence bloom and flourish in her peaceful lithesome heart. Poor, poor, little Birdie! those flowers are destined to wither soon, and the sunlight fade from thy happy face for ever. One morning, Clarence, little Birdie, and her intended bridesmaid, Miss Ellstowe, were chatting together, when a card was handed to the latter, who, on looking at it, exclaimed, "Oh, dear me! an old beau of mine; show him up," and scampering off to the mirror, she gave a hasty glance, to see that every curl was in its effective position. "Who is it?" asked little Birdie, all alive with curiosity; "do say who it is." "Hush!" whispered Miss Ellstowe, "here he comes, my dear; he is very rich—a great catch; are my curls all right?" Scarcely had she asked the question, and before an answer could be returned, the servant announced Mr. George Stevens, and the gentleman walked into the room. Start not, reader, it is not the old man we left bent over the prostrate form of his unconscious daughter, but George Stevens, junior, the son and heir of the old man aforesaid. The heart of Clarence almost ceased to beat at the sound of that well-known name, and had not both the ladies been so engrossed in observing the new-comer, they must have noticed the deep flush that suffused his face, and the deathly pallor that succeeded it. Mr. Stevens was presented to Miss Bates, and Miss Ellstowe turned to present him to Clarence. "Mr. Garie—Mr. Stevens," said she. Clarence bowed. "Pardon me, I did not catch the name," said the former, politely. "Mr. Clarence Garie," she repeated, more distinctly. George Stevens bowed, and then sitting down opposite Clarence, eyed him for a few moments intently. "I think we have met before," said he at last, in a cold, contemptuous tone, not unmingled with surprise, "have we not?" Clarence endeavoured to answer, but could not; he was, for a moment, incapable of speech; a slight gurgling noise was heard in his throat, as he bowed affirmatively. "We were neighbours at one time, I think," added George Stevens. "We were," faintly ejaculated Clarence. "It is a great surprise to me to meet you here," pursued George Stevens. "The surprise is mutual, I assure you, sir," rejoined Clarence, coldly, and with slightly agitated manner. Hereupon ensued an embarrassing pause in the conversation, during which the ladies could not avoid observing the livid hue of Clarence's face. There was a perfect tumult raging in his breast; he knew that now his long-treasured secret would be brought out; this was to be the end of his struggle to preserve it—to be exposed at last, when on the brink of consummating his happiness. As he sat there, looking at George Stevens, he became a murderer in his heart; and if an invisible dagger could have been placed in his hands, he would have driven it to the hilt in his breast, and stilled for ever the tongue that was destined to betray him. But it was too late; one glance at the contemptuous, malignant face of the son of his father's murderer, told him his fate was sealed—that it was now too late to avert exposure. He grew faint, dizzy, ill,—and rising, declared hurriedly he must go, staggered towards the door, and fell upon the carpet, with a slight stream of blood spirting from his mouth. Little Birdie screamed, and ran to raise him; George Stevens and Miss Ellstowe gave their assistance, and by their united efforts he was placed upon the sofa. Little Birdie wiped the bloody foam from his mouth with her tiny lace handkerchief, bathed his head, and held cold water to his lips; but consciousness was long returning, and they thought he was dying. Poor torn heart! pity it was thy beatings were not stilled then for ever. It was not thy fate; long, long months of grief and despair were yet to come before the end approached and day again broke upon thee. Just at this crisis Mr. Bates came in, and was greatly shocked and alarmed by Clarence's deathly appearance. As he returned to consciousness he looked wildly about him, and clasping little Birdie's hand in his, gazed at her with a tender imploring countenance: yet it was a despairing look—such a one as a shipwrecked seaman gives when, in sight of land, he slowly relaxes his hold upon the sustaining spar that he has no longer the strength to clutch, and sinks for ever beneath the waters. A physician was brought in, who declared he had ruptured a minor blood-vessel, and would not let him utter a whisper, and, assisted by Mr. Bates, placed him in his carriage, and the three were driven as swiftly as possible to the hotel where Clarence was staying. Little Birdie retired to her room in great affliction, followed by Miss Ellstowe, and George Stevens was left in the room alone. "What can the fellow have been doing here?" he soliloquised; "on intimate terms too, apparently; it is very singular; I will wait Miss Ellstowe's return, and ask an explanation." When Miss Ellstowe re-entered the room, he immediately inquired, "What was that Mr. Garie doing here? He seems on an exceedingly intimate footing, and your friend apparently takes a wonderful interest in him." "Of course she does; that is her fiance." "Impossible!" rejoined he, with an air of astonishment. "Impossible!—why so? I assure you he is. They are to be married in a few weeks. I am here to officiate as bridesmaid." "Phew!" whistled George Stevens; and then, after pausing a moment, he asked, "Do you know anything about this Mr. Garie—anything, I mean, respecting his family?" "Why, no—that is, nothing very definite, more than that he is an orphan, and a gentleman of education and independent means." "Humph!" ejaculated George Stevens, significantly. "Humph!" repeated Miss Ellstowe, "what do you mean? Do you know anything beyond that? One might suppose you did, from your significant looks and gestures." "Yes, I do know something about this Mr. Garie," he replied, after a short silence. "But tell me what kind of people are these you are visiting—Abolitionists, or anything of that sort?" "How absurd, Mr. Stevens, to ask such a question; of course they are not," said she, indignantly; "do you suppose I should be here if they were? But why do you ask—is this Mr. Garie one?" "No, my friend," answered her visitor; "I wish that was all." "That was all!—how strangely you talk—you alarm me," continued she, with considerable agitation. "If you know anything that will injure the happiness of my friend—anything respecting Mr. Garie that she or her father should know—make no secret of it, but disclose it to me at once. Anne is my dearest friend, and I, of course, must be interested in anything that concerns her happiness. Tell me, what is it you know?" "It is nothing, I assure you, that it will give me any pleasure to tell," answered he. "Do speak out, Mr. Stevens. Is there any stain on his character, or that of his family? Did he ever do anything dishonourable?" "I wish that was all," coolly repeated George Stevens. "I am afraid he is a villain, and has been imposing himself upon this family for what he is not." "Good Heavens! Mr. Stevens, how is he a villain or impostor?" "You all suppose him to be a white man, do you not?" he asked. "Of course we do," she promptly answered. "Then you are all grievously mistaken, for he is not. Did you not notice how he changed colour, how agitated he became, when I was presented? It was because he knew that his exposure was at hand. I know him well—in fact, he is the illegitimate son of a deceased relative of mine, by a mulatto slave." "It cannot be possible," exclaimed Miss Ellstowe, with a wild stare of astonishment. "Are you sure of it?" "Sure of it! of course I am. I should indeed be a rash man to make such a terrible charge unless perfectly able to substantiate it. I have played with him frequently when a child, and my father made a very liberal provision for this young man and his sister, after the death of their father, who lost his life through imprudently living with this woman in Philadelphia, and consequently getting himself mixed up with these detestable Abolitionists." "Can this be true?" asked Miss Ellstowe, incredulously. "I assure you it is. We had quite lost sight of them for a few years back, and I little supposed we should meet under such circumstances. I fear I shall be the cause of great discomfort, but I am sure in the end I shall be thanked. I could not, with any sense of honour or propriety, permit such a thing as this marriage to be consummated, without at least warning your friends of the real position of this fellow. I trust, Miss Ellstowe, you will inform them of what I have told you." "How can I? Oh, Mr. Stevens!" said she, in a tone of deep distress, "this will be a terrible blow—it will almost kill Anne. No, no; the task must not devolve on me—I cannot tell them. Poor little thing! it will break her heart, I am afraid." "Oh, but you must, Miss Ellstowe; it would seem very impertinent in me—a stranger—to meddle in such a matter; and, besides, they may be aware of it, and not thank me for my interference." "No, I assure you they are not; I am confident they have not the most distant idea of such a thing—they would undoubtedly regard it as an act of kindness on your part. I shall insist upon your remaining until the return of Mr. Bates, when I shall beg you to repeat to him what you have already revealed to me." "As you insist upon it, I suppose I must," repeated he, after some reflection; "but I must say I do not like the office of informer," concluded he, with assumed reluctance. "I am sorry to impose it upon you; yet, rest assured, they will thank you. Excuse me for a few moments—I will go and see how Anne is." Miss Ellstowe returned, after a short interval, with the information that little Birdie was much more composed, and would, no doubt, soon recover from her fright. "To receive a worse blow," observed George Stevens. "I pity the poor little thing—only to think of the disgrace of being engaged to a nigger. It is fortunate for them that they will make the discovery ere it be too late. Heavens! only think what the consequences might have been had she married this fellow, and his peculiar position became known to them afterwards! She would have been completely 'done for.'" Thus conversing respecting Clarence, they awaited the return of Mr. Bates. After the lapse of a couple of hours he entered the drawing-room. Mr. Stevens was presented to him by Miss Ellstowe, as a particular friend of herself and family. "I believe you were here when I came in before; I regret I was obliged to leave so abruptly," courteously spoke Mr. Bates, whilst bowing to his new acquaintance; "the sudden and alarming illness of my young friend will, I trust, be a sufficient apology." "How is he now?" asked Miss Ellstowe. "Better—much better," answered he, cheerfully; "but very wild and distracted in his manner—alarmingly so, in fact. He clung to my hand, and wrung it when we parted, and bid me good bye again and again, as if it was for the last time. Poor fellow! he is frightened at that hemorrhage, and is afraid it will be fatal; but there is not any danger, he only requires to be kept quiet—he will soon come round again, no doubt. I shall have to ask you to excuse me again," said he, in conclusion; "I must go and see my daughter." Mr. Bates was rising to depart, when George Stevens gave Miss Ellstowe a significant look, who said, in a hesitating tone, "Mr. Bates, one moment before you go. My friend, Mr. Stevens, has a communication to make to you respecting Mr. Garie, which will, I fear, cause you, as it already has me, deep distress." "Indeed!" rejoined Mr. Bates, in a tone of surprise; "What is it? Nothing that reflects upon his character, I hope." "I do not know how my information will influence your conduct towards him, for I do not know what your sentiments may be respecting such persons. I know society in general do not receive them, and my surprise was very great to find him here." "I do not understand you; what do you mean?" demanded Mr. Bates, in a tone of perplexity; "has he ever committed any crime?" "HE IS A COLOURED MAN," answered George Stevens, briefly. Mr. Bates became almost purple, and gasped for breath; then, after staring at his informant for a few seconds incredulously, repeated the words "Coloured man," in a dreamy manner, as if in doubt whether he had really heard them. "Yes, coloured man," said George Stevens, confidently; "it grieves me to be the medium of such disagreeable intelligence; and I assure you I only undertook the office upon the representation of Miss Ellstowe, that you were not aware of the fact, and would regard my communication as an act of kindness." "It—it can't be," exclaimed Mr. Bates, with the air of a man determined not to be convinced of a disagreeable truth; "it cannot be possible." Hereupon George Stevens related to him what he had recently told Miss Ellstowe respecting the parentage and position of Clarence. During the narration, the old man became almost frantic with rage and sorrow, bursting forth once or twice with the most violent exclamations; and when George Stevens concluded, he rose and said, in a husky voice— "I'll kill him, the infernal hypocrite! Oh! the impostor to come to my house in this nefarious manner, and steal the affections of my daughter—the devilish villain! a bastard! a contemptible black-hearted nigger. Oh, my child—my child! it will break your heart when you know what deep disgrace has come upon you. I'll go to him," added he, his face flushed, and his white hair almost erect with rage; "I'll murder him—there's not a man in the city will blame me for it," and he grasped his cane as though he would go at once, and inflict summary vengeance upon the offender. "Stop, sir, don't be rash," exclaimed George Stevens; "I would not screen this fellow from the effects of your just and very natural indignation—he is abundantly worthy of the severest punishment you can bestow; but if you go in your present excited state, you might be tempted to do something which would make this whole affair public, and injure, thereby, your daughter's future. You'll pardon me, I trust, and not think me presuming upon my short acquaintance in making the suggestion." Mr. Bates looked about him bewilderedly for a short time, and then replied, "No, no, you need not apologize, you are right—I thank you; I myself should have known better. But my poor child! what will become of her?" and in an agony of sorrow he resumed his seat, and buried his face in his hands. George Stevens prepared to take his departure, but Mr. Bates pressed him to remain. "In a little while," said he, "I shall be more composed, and then I wish you to go with me to this worthless scoundrel. I must see him at once, and warn him what the consequences will be should he dare approach my child again. Don't fear me," he added, as he saw George Stevens hesitated to remain; "that whirlwind of passion is over now. I promise you I shall do nothing unworthy of myself or my child." It was not long before they departed together for the hotel at which Clarence was staying. When they entered his room, they found him in his bed, with the miniature of little Birdie in his hands. When he observed the dark scowl on the face of Mr. Bates, and saw by whom he was accompanied, he knew his secret was discovered; he saw it written on their faces. He trembled like a leaf, and his heart seemed like a lump of ice in his bosom. Mr. Bates was about to speak, when Clarence held up his hand in the attitude of one endeavouring to ward off a blow, and whispered hoarsely— "Don't tell me—not yet—a little longer! I see you know all. I see my sentence written on your face! Let me dream a little longer ere you speak the words that must for ever part me and little Birdie. I know you have come to separate us—but don't tell me yet; for when you do," said he, in an agonized tone, "it will kill me!" "I wish to God it would!" rejoined Mr. Bates. "I wish you had died long ago; then you would have never come beneath my roof to destroy its peace for ever. You have acted basely, palming yourself upon us—counterfeit as you were! and taking in exchange her true love and my honest, honourable regard." Clarence attempted to speak, but Mr. Bates glared at him, and continued—"There are laws to punish thieves and counterfeits—but such as you may go unchastised, except by the abhorrence of all honourable men. Had you been unaware of your origin, and had the revelation of this gentleman been as new to you as to me, you would have deserved sympathy; but you have been acting a lie, claiming a position in society to which you knew you had no right, and deserve execration and contempt. Did I treat you as my feelings dictated, you would understand what is meant by the weight of a father's anger; but I do not wish the world to know that my daughter has been wasting her affections upon a worthless nigger; that is all that protects you! Now, hear me," he added, fiercely,—"if ever you presume to darken my door again, or attempt to approach my daughter, I will shoot you, as sure as you sit there before me!" "And serve you perfectly right!" observed George Stevens. "Silence, sir!" rejoined Clarence, sternly. "How dare you interfere? He may say what he likes—reproach me as he pleases—he is her father—I have no other reply; but if you dare again to utter a word, I'll—" and Clarence paused and looked about him as if in search of something with which to enforce silence. Feeble-looking as he was, there was an air of determination about him which commanded acquiescence, and George Stevens did not venture upon another observation during the interview. "I want my daughter's letters—every line she ever wrote to you; get them at once—I want them now," said Mr. Bates, imperatively. "I cannot give them to you immediately, they are not accessible at present. Does she want them?" he asked, feebly—"has she desired to have them back?" "Never mind that!" said the old man, sternly; "no evasions. Give me the letters!" "To-morrow I will send them," said Clarence. "I will read them all over once again," thought he. "I cannot believe you," said Mr. Bates. "I promise you upon my honour I will send them tomorrow!" "A nigger's honour!" rejoined Mr. Bates, with a contemptuous sneer. "Yes, sir—a nigger's honour!" repeated Clarence, the colour mounting to his pale cheeks. "A few drops of negro blood in a man's reins do not entirely deprive him of noble sentiments. 'Tis true my past concealment does not argue in my favour.—I concealed that which was no fault of my own, but what the injustice of society has made a crime." "I am not here for discussion; and I suppose I must trust to your honour," interrupted Mr. Bates, with a sneer. "But remember, if the letters are not forthcoming to-morrow I shall be here again, and then," concluded he in a threatening tone, "my visit will not be as harmless as this has been!" After they had gone, Clarence rose and walked feebly to his desk, which, with great effort and risk, he removed to the bed-side; then taking from it little Birdie's letters, he began their perusal. Ay! read them again—and yet again; pore over their contents—dwell on those passages replete with tenderness, until every word is stamped upon thy breaking heart—linger by them as the weary traveller amid Sahara's sand pauses by some sparkling fountain in a shady oasis, tasting of its pure waters ere he launches forth again upon the arid waste beyond. This is the last green spot upon thy way to death; beyond whose grim portals, let us believe, thou and thy "little Birdie" may meet again. CHAPTER XXXIV. "Murder will out." The city clocks had just tolled out the hour of twelve, the last omnibus had rumbled by, and the silence without was broken only at rare intervals when some belated citizen passed by with hurried footsteps towards his home. All was still in the house of Mr. Stevens—so quiet, that the ticking of the large clock in the hall could be distinctly heard at the top of the stairway, breaking the solemn stillness of the night with its monotonous "click, click—click, click!" In a richly furnished chamber overlooking the street a dim light was burning; so dimly, in fact, that the emaciated form of Mr. Stevens was scarcely discernible amidst the pillows and covering of the bed on which he was lying. Above him a brass head of curious workmanship held in its clenched teeth the canopy that overshadowed the bed; and as the light occasionally flickered and brightened, the curiously carved face seemed to light up with a sort of sardonic grin; and the grating of the curtain-rings, as the sick man tossed from side to side in his bed, would have suggested the idea that the odd supporter of the canopy was gnashing his brazen teeth at him. On the wall, immediately opposite the light, hung a portrait of Mrs. Stevens; not the sharp, hard face we once introduced to the reader, but a smoother, softer countenance—yet a worn and melancholy one in its expression. It looked as if the waves of grief had beaten upon it for a long succession of years, until they had tempered down its harsher peculiarities, giving a subdued appearance to the whole countenance. "There is twelve o'clock—give me my drops again, Lizzie," he remarked, faintly. At the sound of his voice Lizzie emerged from behind the curtains, and essayed to pour into a glass the proper quantity of medicine. She was twice obliged to pour back into the phial what she had just emptied forth, as the trembling of her hands caused her each time to drop too much; at last, having succeeded in getting the exact number of drops, she handed him the glass, the contents of which he eagerly drank. "There!" said he, "thank you; now, perhaps, I may sleep. I have not slept for two nights—such has been my anxiety about that man; nor you either, my child—I have kept you awake also. You can sleep, though, without drops. To-morrow, when you are prepared to start, wake me, if I am asleep, and let me speak to you before you go. Remember, Lizzie, frighten him if you can! Tell him, I am ill myself—that I can't survive this continued worriment and annoyance. Tell him, moreover, I am not made of gold, and will not be always giving. I don't believe he is sick—dying—do you?" he asked, looking into her face, as though he did not anticipate an affirmative answer. "No, father, I don't think he is really ill; I imagine it is another subterfuge to extract money. Don't distress yourself unnecessarily; perhaps I may have some influence with him—I had before, you know!" "Yes, yes, dear, you managed him very well that time—very well," said he, stroking down her hair affectionately. "I—I—my child, I could never have told you of that dreadful secret; but when I found that you knew it all, my heart experienced a sensible relief. It was a selfish pleasure, I know; yet it eased me to share my secret; the burden is not half so heavy now." "Father, would not your mind be easier still, if you could be persuaded to make restitution to his children? This wealth is valueless to us both. You can never ask forgiveness for the sin whilst you cling thus tenaciously to its fruits." "Tut, tut—no more of that!" said he, impatiently; "I cannot do it without betraying myself. If I gave it back to them, what would become of you and George, and how am I to stop the clamours of that cormorant? No, no! it is useless to talk of it—I cannot do it!" "There would be still enough left for George, after restoring them their own, and you might give this man my share of what is left. I would rather work day and night," said she, determinedly, "than ever touch a penny of the money thus accumulated." "I've thought all that over, long ago, but I dare not do it—it might cause inquiries to be made that might result to my disadvantage. No, I cannot do that; sit down, and let us be quiet now." Mr. Stevens lay back upon his pillow, and for a moment seemed to doze; then starting up again suddenly, he asked, "Have you told George about it? Have you ever confided anything to him?" "No, papa," answered she soothingly, "not a breath; I've been secret as the grave." "That's right!" rejoined he—"that is right! I love George, but not as I do you. He only comes to me when he wants money. He is not like you, darling—you take care of and nurse your poor old father. Has he come in yet?" "Not yet; he never gets home until almost morning, and is then often fearfully intoxicated." The old man shook his head, and muttered, "The sins of the fathers shall—what is that? Did you hear that noise?—hush!" Lizzie stood quietly by him for a short while, and then walked on tiptoe to the door—"It is George," said she, after peering into the gloom of their entry; "he has admitted him self with his night-key." The shuffling sound of footsteps was now quite audible upon the stairway, and soon the bloated face of Mr. Stevens's hopeful son was seen at the chamber door. In society and places where this young gentleman desired to maintain a respectable character he could be as well behaved, as choice in his language, and as courteous as anybody; but at home, where he was well known, and where he did not care to place himself under any restraint, he was a very different individual. "Let me in, Liz," said he, in a thick voice; "I want the old man to fork over some money—I'm cleaned out." "No, no—go to bed, George," she answered, coaxingly, "and talk to him about it in the morning." "I'm coming in now," said he, determinedly; "and besides, I want to tell you something about that nigger Garie." "Tell us in the morning," persisted Lizzy. "No—I'm going to tell you now," rejoined he, forcing his way into the room—"it's too good to keep till morning. Pick up that wick, let a fellow see if you are all alive!" Lizzie raised the wick of the lamp in accordance with his desire, and then sat down with an expression of annoyance and vexation on her countenance. George threw himself into an easy chair, and began, "I saw that white nigger Garie to-night, he was in company with a gentleman, at that—the assurance of that fellow is perfectly incomprehensible. He was drinking at the bar of the hotel; and as it is no secret why he and Miss Bates parted, I enlightened the company on the subject of his antecedents. He threatened to challenge me! Ho! ho!—fight with a nigger—that is too good a joke!" And laughing heartily, the young ruffian leant back in his chair. "I want some money to-morrow, dad," continued he. "I say, old gentleman, wasn't it a lucky go that darkey's father was put out of the way so nicely, eh?—We've been living in clover ever since—haven't we?" "How dare you address me-in that disrespectful manner? Go out of the room, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Stevens, with a disturbed countenance. "Come, George, go to bed," urged his sister wearily. "Let father sleep—it is after twelve o'clock. I am going to wake the nurse, and then retire myself." George rose stupidly from his chair, and followed his sister from the room. On the stairway he grasped her arm rudely, and said, "I don't understand how it is that you and the old man are so cursed thick all of a sudden. You are thick as two thieves, always whispering and talking together. Act fair, Liz—don't persuade him to leave you all the money. If you do, we'll quarrel—that's flat. Don't try and cozen him out of my share as well as your own—you hear!" "Oh, George!" rejoined she reproachfully—"I never had such an idea." "Then what are you so much together for? Why is there so much whispering and writing, and going off on journeys all alone? What does it all mean, eh?" "It means nothing at all, George. You are not yourself to-night," said she evasively; "you had better go to bed." "It is you that are not yourself," he retorted. "What makes you look so pale and worried—and why do you and the old man start if the door cracks, as if the devil was after you? What is the meaning of that?" asked he with a drunken leer. "You had better look out," concluded he; "I'm watching you both, and will find out all your secrets by-and-by." "Learn all our secrets! Ah, my brother!" thought she, as he disappeared into his room, "you need not desire to have their fearful weight upon you, or you will soon grow as anxious, thin, and pale as I am." The next day at noon Lizzie started on her journey, after a short conference with her father. Night had settled upon her native city, when she was driven through its straight and seemingly interminable thoroughfares. The long straight rows of lamps, the snowy steps, the scrupulously clean streets, the signs over the stores, were like the faces of old acquaintances, and at any other time would have caused agreeable recollections; but the object of her visit pre-occupied her mind, to the exclusion of any other and more pleasant associations. She ordered the coachman to take her to an obscure hotel, and, after having engaged a room, she left her baggage and started in search of the residence of McCloskey. She drew her veil down over her face very closely, and walked quickly through the familiar streets, until she arrived at the place indicated in his letter. It was a small, mean tenement, in a by street, in which there were but one or two other houses. The shutters were closed from the upper story to the lowest, and the whole place wore an uninhabited appearance. After knocking several times, she was about to give up in despair, when she discovered through the glass above the door the faint glimmer of a light, and shortly after a female voice demanded from the inside, "Who is there?" "Does Mr. McCloskey live here?" asked Lizzie. Hearing a voice not more formidable than her own, the person within partially opened the door; and, whilst shading with one hand the candle she held in the other, gazed out upon the speaker. "Does Mr. McCloskey live here?" repeated Lizzie. "Yes, he does," answered the woman, in a weak voice; "but he's got the typers." "Has the what?" inquired Lizzie, who did not exactly understand her. "Got the typers—got the fever, you know." "The typhus fever!" said Lizzie, with a start; "then he is really sick." "Really sick!" repeated the woman—"really sick! Well, I should think he was! Why, he's been a raving and swearing awful for days; he stormed and screamed so loud that the neighbours complained. Law! they had to even shave his head." "Is he any better?" asked Lizzie, with a sinking heart. "Can I see him?" "'Praps you can, if you go to the hospital to-morrow; but whether you'll find him living or dead is more than I can say. I couldn't keep him here—I wasn't able to stand him. I've had the fever myself—he took it from me. You must come in," continued the woman, "if you want to talk—I'm afraid of catching cold, and can't stand at the door. Maybe you're afraid of the fever," she further observed, as she saw Lizzie hesitate on the door-step. "Oh, no, I'm not afraid of that," answered Lizzie quickly—"I am not in the least afraid." "Come in, then," reiterated the woman, "and I'll tell you all about it." The woman looked harmless enough, and Lizzie hesitated no longer, but followed her through the entry into a decently furnished room. Setting the candlestick upon the mantelpiece, she offered her visitor a chair, and then continued— "He came home this last time in an awful state. Before he left some one sent him a load of money, and he did nothing but drink and gamble whilst it lasted. I used to tell him that he ought to take care of his money, and he'd snap his fingers and laugh. He used to say that he owned the goose that laid the golden eggs, and could have money whenever he wanted it. Well, as I was a saying, he went; and when he came back he had an awful attack of delirium tremens, and then he took the typers. Oh, laws mercy!" continued she, holding up her bony hands, "how that critter raved! He talked about killing people." "He did!" interrupted Lizzie, with a gesture of alarm, and laying her hand upon her heart, which beat fearfully—"did he mention any name?" The woman did not stop to answer this question, but proceeded as if she had not been interrupted. "He was always going on about two orphans and a will, and he used to curse and swear awfully about being obliged to keep something hid. It was dreadful to listen to—it would almost make your hair stand on end to hear him." "And he never mentioned names?" said Lizzie inquiringly. "No, that was so strange; he never mentioned no names—never. He used to rave a great deal about two orphans and a will, and he would ransack the bed, and pull up the sheets, and look under the pillows, as if he thought it was there. Oh, he acted very strange, but never mentioned no names. I used to think he had something in his trunk, he was so very special about it. He was better the day they took him off; and the trunk went with him—he would have it; but since then he's had a dreadful relapse, and there's no knowin' whether he is alive or dead." "I must go to the hospital," said Lizzie, rising from her seat, and greatly relieved to learn that nothing of importance had fallen from McCloskey during his delirium. "I shall go there as quickly as I can," she observed, walking to the door. "You'll not see him to-night if you do," rejoined the woman. "Are you a relation?" "Oh, no," answered Lizzie; "my father is an acquaintance of his. I learned that he was ill, and came to inquire after him." Had the woman not been very indifferent or unobservant, she would have noticed the striking difference between the manner and appearance of Lizzie Stevens and the class who generally came to see McCloskey. She did not, however, appear to observe it, nor did she manifest any curiosity greater than that evidenced by her inquiring if he was a relative. Lizzie walked with a lonely feeling through the quiet streets until she arrived at the porter's lodge of the hospital. She pulled the bell with trembling hands, and the door was opened by the little bald-headed man whose loquacity was once (the reader will remember) so painful to Mrs. Ellis. There was no perceptible change in his appearance, and he manifestly took as warm an interest in frightful accidents as ever. "What is it—what is it?" he asked eagerly, as Lizzie's pale face became visible in the bright light that shone from the inner office. "Do you want a stretcher?" The rapidity with which he asked these questions, and his eager manner, quite startled her, and she was for a moment unable to tell her errand. "Speak up, girl—speak up! Do you want a stretcher—is it burnt or run over. Can't you speak, eh?" It now flashed upon Lizzie that the venerable janitor was labouring under the impression that she had come to make application for the admission of a patient, and she quickly answered— "Oh, no; it is nothing of the kind, I am glad to say." "Glad to say," muttered the old man, the eager, expectant look disappearing from his face, giving place to one of disappointment—"glad to say; why there hasn't been an accident to-day, and here you've gone and rung the bell, and brought me here to the door for nothing. What do you want then?" "I wish to inquire after a person who is here." "What's his number?" gruffly inquired he. "That I cannot tell," answered she; "his name is McCloskey." "I don't know anything about him. Couldn't tell who he is unless I go all over the books to-night. We don't know people by their names here; come in the morning—ten o'clock, and don't never ring that bell again," concluded he, sharply, "unless you want a stretcher: ringing the bell, and no accident;" and grumbling at being disturbed for nothing, he abruptly closed the door in Lizzie's face. Anxious and discomfited, she wandered back to her hotel; and after drinking a weak cup of tea, locked her room-door, and retired to bed. There she lay, tossing from side to side—she could not sleep—her anxiety respecting her father's safety; her fears, lest in the delirium of fever McCloskey should discover their secret, kept her awake far into the night, and the city clocks struck two ere she fell asleep. When she awoke in the morning the sun was shining brightly into her room; for a few moments she could not realize where she was; but the events of the past night soon came freshly to her; looking at her watch, she remembered that she was to go to the hospital at ten, and it was already half-past nine; her wakefulness the previous night having caused her to sleep much later than her usual hour. Dressing herself in haste, she hurried down to breakfast; and after having eaten a slight meal, ordered a carriage, and drove to the hospital. The janitor was in his accustomed seat, and nodded smilingly to her as she entered. He beckoned her to him, and whispered, "I inquired about him. McCloskey, fever-ward, No. 21, died this morning at two o'clock and forty minutes." "Dead!" echoed Lizzie, with a start of horror. "Yes, dead," repeated he, with a complacent look; "any relation of yours—want an order for the body?" Lizzie was so astounded by this intelligence, that she could not reply; and the old man continued mysteriously. "Came to before he died—wish he hadn't—put me to a deal of trouble—sent for a magistrate—then for a minister—had something on his mind—couldn't die without telling it, you know; then there was oaths, depositions—so much trouble. Are you his relation—want an order for the body?" "Oaths! magistrate!—a confession no doubt," thought Lizzie; her limbs trembled; she was so overcome with terror that she could scarcely stand; clinging to the railing of the desk by which she was standing for support, she asked, hesitatingly, "He had something to confess then?" The janitor looked at her for a few moments attentively, and seemed to notice for the first time her ladylike appearance and manners; a sort of reserve crept over him at the conclusion of his scrutiny, for he made no answer to her question, but simply asked, with more formality than before, "Are you a relation—do you want an order for the body?" Ere Lizzie could answer his question, a man, plainly dressed, with keen grey eyes that seemed to look restlessly about in every corner of the room, came and stood beside the janitor. He looked at Lizzie from the bow on the top of her bonnet to the shoes on her feet; it was not a stare, it was more a hasty glance—and yet she could not help feeling that he knew every item of her dress, and could have described her exactly. "Are you a relative of this person," he asked, in a clear sharp voice, whilst his keen eyes seemed to be piercing her through in search of the truth. "No, sir," she answered, faintly. "A friend then, I presume," continued he, respectfully. "An acquaintance," returned she. The man paused for a few moments, then taking out his watch, looked at the time, and hastened from the office. This man possessed Lizzie with a singular feeling of dread—why she could not determine; yet, after he was gone, she imagined those cold grey eyes were resting on her, and bidding the old janitor, who had grown reserved so suddenly, good morning, she sprang into her carriage as fast as her trembling limbs could carry her, and ordered the coachman to drive back to the hotel. "Father must fly!" soliloquized she; "the alarm will, no doubt, lend him energy. I've heard of people who have not been able to leave their rooms for months becoming suddenly strong under the influence of terror. We must be off to some place of concealment until we can learn whether he is compromised by that wretched man's confession." Lizzie quickly paid her bill, packed her trunk, and started for the station in hopes of catching the mid-day train for New York. The driver did not spare his horses, but at her request drove them at their utmost speed—but in vain. She arrived there only time enough to see the train move away; and there, standing on the platform, looking at her with a sort of triumphant satisfaction, was the man with the keen grey eyes. "Stop! stop!" cried she. "Too late, miss," said a bystander, sympathizingly; "just too late—no other train for three hours." "Three hours!" said Lizzie, despairingly; "three hours! Yet I must be patient—there is no remedy," and she endeavoured to banish her fears and occupy herself in reading the advertisements that were posted up about the station. It was of no avail, that keen-looking man with his piercing grey eyes haunted her; and she could not avoid associating him in her thoughts with her father and McCloskey. What was he doing on the train, and why did he regard her with that look of triumphant satisfaction. Those were to her the three longest hours of her life. Wearily and impatiently she paced up and down the long saloon, watching the hands of the clock as they appeared to almost creep over the dial-plate. Twenty times during those three hours did she compare the clock with her watch, and found they moved on unvaryingly together. At last the hour for the departure of the train arrived; and seated in the car, she was soon flying at express speed on the way towards her home. "How much sooner does the other train arrive than we?" she asked of the conductor. "Two hours and a half, miss," replied he, courteously; "we gain a half-hour upon them." "A half-hour—that is something gained," thought she; "I may reach my father before that man. Can he be what I suspect?" On they went—thirty—forty—fifty miles an hour, yet she thought it slow. Dashing by villages, through meadows, over bridges,—rattling, screaming, puffing, on their way to the city of New York. In due time they arrived at the ferry, and after crossing the river were in the city itself. Lizzie took the first carriage that came to hand, and was soon going briskly through the streets towards her father's house. The nearer she approached it, the greater grew her fears; a horrible presentiment that something awful had occurred, grew stronger and stronger as she drew nearer home. She tried to brave it off—resist it—crush it—but it came back upon her each time with redoubled force. On she went, nearer and nearer every moment, until at last she was in the avenue itself. She gazed eagerly from the carriage, and thought she observed one or two persons run across the street opposite her father's house. It could not be!—she looked again—yes, there was a group beneath his window. "Faster! faster!" she cried frantically; "faster if you can." The door was at last reached; she sprang from the carriage and pressed through the little knot of people who were gathered on the pavement. Alas! her presentiments were correct. There, lying on the pavement, was the mangled form of her father, who had desperately sprung from the balcony above, to escape arrest from the man with the keen grey eyes, who, with the warrant in his hand, stood contemplating the lifeless body. "Father! father!" cried Lizzie, in an anguished voice; "father, speak once!" Too late! too late! the spirit had passed away—the murderer had rushed before a higher tribunal—a mightier Judge—into the presence of One who tempers justice with mercy. CHAPTER XXXV. The Wedding. The night that Lizzie Stevens arrived in Philadelphia was the one decided upon for the marriage of Emily Garie and Charles Ellis; and whilst she was wandering so lonely through the streets of one part of the city, a scene of mirth and gaiety was transpiring in another, some of the actors in which would be made more happy by events that would be productive of great sorrow to her. Throughout that day bustle and confusion had reigned supreme in the house of Mr. Walters. Caddy, who had been there since the break of day, had taken the domestic reins entirely from the hands of the mistress of the mansion, and usurped command herself. Quiet Esther was well satisfied to yield her full control of the domestic arrangements for the festivities, and Caddy was nothing loath to assume them. She entered upon the discharge of her self-imposed duties with such ardour as to leave no doubt upon the minds of the parties most interested but that they would be thoroughly performed, and with an alacrity too that positively appalled quiet Esther's easy-going servants. Great doubts had been expressed as to whether Caddy could successfully sustain the combined characters of chef de cuisine and bridesmaid, and a failure had been prophesied. She therefore felt it incumbent upon her to prove these prognostications unfounded, and demonstrate the practicability of the undertaking. On the whole, she went to work with energy, and seemed determined to establish the fact that her abilities were greatly underrated, and that a woman could accomplish more than one thing at a time when she set about it. The feelings of all such persons about the establishment of Mr. Walters as were "constitutionally tired" received that day divers serious shocks at the hands of Miss Caddy—who seemed endowed with a singular faculty which enabled her to discover just what people did not want to do, and of setting them at it immediately. For instance, Jane, the fat girl, hated going upstairs excessively. Caddy employed her in bringing down glass and china from a third-story pantry; and, moreover, only permitted her to bring a small quantity at a time, which rendered a number of trips strictly necessary, to the great aggravation and serious discomfort of the fat girl in question. On the other hand, Julia, the slim chambermaid, who would have been delighted with such employment, and who would have undoubtedly refreshed herself on each excursion upstairs with a lengthened gaze from the window, was condemned to the polishing of silver and dusting of plates and glass in an obscure back pantry, which contained but one window, and that commanding a prospect of a dead wall. Miss Caddy felt in duty bound to inspect each cake, look over the wine, and (to the great discomfiture of the waiter) decant it herself, not liking to expose him to any unnecessary temptation. She felt, too, all the more inclined to assume the office of butler from the fact that, at a previous party of her sister's, she had detected this same gentleman with a bottle of the best sherry at his mouth, whilst he held his head thrown back in a most surprising manner, with a view, no doubt, of contemplating the ceiling more effectually from that position. Before night such was the increasing demand for help in the kitchen that Caddy even kidnapped the nurse, and locked the brown baby and her sister in the bath-room, where there was no window in their reach, nor any other means at hand from which the slightest injury could result to them. Here they were supplied with a tub half filled with water, and spent the time most delightfully in making boats of their shoes, and lading them with small pieces of soap, which they bit off from the cake for the occasion; then, coasting along to the small towns on the borders of the tub, they disposed of their cargoes to imaginary customers to immense advantage. Walters had declared the house uninhabitable, and had gone out for the day. Esther and Emily busied themselves in arranging the flowers in the drawing-room and hall, and hanging amidst the plants on the balcony little stained glass lamps; all of which Caddy thought very well in its way, but which she was quite confident would be noticed much less by the guests than the supper—in which supposition she was undoubtedly correct. Kinch also lounged in two or three times during the day, to seek consolation at the hands of Esther and Emily. He was in deep distress of mind—in great perturbation. His tailor had promised to send home a vest the evening previous and had not fulfilled his agreement. After his first visit Kinch entered the house in the most stealthy manner, for fear of being encountered by Caddy; who, having met him in the hall during the morning, posted him off for twenty pounds of sugar, a ball of twine, and a stone jar, despite his declaration of pre-engagements, haste, and limited knowledge of the articles in question. Whilst Lizzie Stevens was tremblingly ringing the bell at the lodge of the hospital, busy hands were also pulling at that of Mr. Walters's dwelling. Carriage after carriage rolled up, and deposited their loads of gay company, who skipped nimbly over the carpet that was laid down from the door to the curbstone. Through the wide hall and up the stairway, flowers of various kinds mingled their fragrance and loaded the air with their rich perfume; and expressions of delight burst from the lips of the guests as they passed up the brilliantly-lighted stairway and thronged the spacious drawing-rooms. There were but few whites amongst them, and they particular friends. There was Mrs. Bird, who had travelled from Warmouth to be present at the ceremony; Mr. Balch, the friend and legal adviser of the bride's father; Father Banks, who was to tie the happy knot; and there, too, was Mrs. Burrell, and that baby, now grown to a promising lad, and who would come to the wedding because Charlie had sent him a regular invitation written like that sent his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Ellis were of course there,—the latter arrayed in a rich new silk made up expressly for the occasion—and the former almost hidden in his large easy chair. The poor old gentleman scarcely seemed able to comprehend the affair, and apparently laboured under the impression that it was another mob, and looked a little terrified at times when the laughter or conversation grew louder than usual. The hour for the ceremony was fast approaching, and Esther left the assembled guests and went up into Emily Garie's room to assist the young ladies in preparing the bride. They all besought her to be calm, not to agitate herself upon any consideration; and then bustled about her, and flurried themselves in the most ridiculous manner, with a view, no doubt, of tranquillizing her feelings more effectually. "Little Em," soon to be Mrs. Ellis, was busily engaged in dressing; the toilet-table was covered with lighted candles, and all the gas-burners in the room were in full blaze, bringing everything out in bold relief. "We are having quite an illumination; the glare almost blinds me," said Emily. "Put out some of the candles." "No, no, my dear," rejoined one of the young ladies engaged in dressing her; "we cannot sacrifice a candle. We don't need them to discern your charms, Em; only to enable us to discover how to deck them to the best advantage. How sweet you look!" Emily gazed into the mirror; and from the blush that suffused her face and the look of complacency that followed, it was quite evident that she shared her friend's opinion. She did, indeed, look charming. There was a deeper colour than usual on her cheeks, and her eyes were illumined with a soft, tender light. Her wavy brown hair was parted smoothly on the front, and gathered into a cluster of curls at the back. Around her neck glistened a string of pearls, a present from Mr. Winston, who had just returned from South America. The pure white silk fitted to a nicety, and the tiny satin slippers seemed as if they were made upon her feet, and never intended to come off again. Her costume was complete, with the exception of the veil and wreath, and Esther opened the box that she supposed contained them, for the purpose of arranging them on the bride. "Where have you put the veil, my dear?" she asked, after raising the lid of the box, and discovering that they were not there. "In the box, are they not?" answered one of the young ladies. "No, they are not there," continued Esther, as she turned over the various articles with which the tables were strewed. All in vain; the veil and wreath could be nowhere discovered. "Are you sure it came home?" asked one. "Of course," replied another; "I had it in my hand an hour ago." Then a thorough search was commenced, all the drawers ransacked, and everything turned over again and again; and just when they were about to abandon the search in despair, one of the party returned from the adjoining room, dragging along the brown baby, who had the veil wrapped about her chubby shoulders as a scarf, and the wreath ornamenting her round curly head. Even good-natured Esther was a little ruffled at this daring act of baby's, and hastily divested that young lady of her borrowed adornments, amidst the laughter of the group. Poor baby was quite astonished at the precipitate manner in which she was deprived of her finery, and was for a few moments quite overpowered by her loss; but, perceiving a drawer open in the toilet-table, she dried her eyes, and turned her attention in that direction, and in tossing its contents upon the floor amply solaced herself for the deprivation she had just undergone. "Caddy is a famous chief bridesmaid—hasn't been here to give the least assistance," observed Esther; "she is not even dressed herself. I will ring, and ask where she can be—in the kitchen or supper-room I've no doubt. Where is Miss Ellis?" she asked of the servant who came in answer her summons. "Downstairs, mem—the boy that brought the ice-cream kicked over a candy ornament, and Miss Ellis was very busy a shaking of him when I came up." "Do beg her to stop," rejoined Esther, with a laugh, "and tell her I say she can shake him in the morning—we are waiting for her to dress now; and also tell Mr. De Younge to come here to the door—I want him." Kinch soon made his appearance, in accordance with Esther's request, and fairly dazzled her with his costume. His blue coat was brazen with buttons, and his white cravat tied with choking exactness; spotless vest, black pants, and such patent leathers as you could have seen your face in with ease. "How fine you look, Kinch," said Esther admiringly. "Yes," he answered; "the new vest came home—how do you like it?" "Oh, admirable! But, Kinch, can't you go down, and implore Caddy to come up and dress—time is slipping away very fast?" "Oh, I daren't," answered Kinch, with a look of alarm—"I don't dare to go down now that I'm dressed. She'll want me to carry something up to the supper-room if I do—a pile of dishes, or something of the kind. I'd like to oblige you, Mrs. Walters, but it's worth my new suit to do it." Under these circumstances, Kinch was excused; and a deputation, headed by Mr. Walters, was sent into the lower regions to wait upon Caddy, who prevailed upon her to come up and dress, which she did, being all the while very red in the face, and highly indignant at being sent for so often. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "what a pucker you are all in!" "Why, Caddy, it's time to be," replied Esther—"it wants eight minutes of the hour." "And that is just three minutes more than I should want for dressing if I was going to be married myself," rejoined she; and hastening away, she returned in an incredibly short time, all prepared for the ceremony. Charlie was very handsomely got up for the occasion. Emily, Esther, Caddy—in fact, all of them—agreed that he never looked better in his life. "That is owing to me—all my doings," said Kinch exultingly. "He wanted to order his suit of old Forbes, who hasn't looked at a fashion-plate for the last ten years, and I wouldn't let him. I took him to my man, and see what he has made of him—turned him out looking like a bridegroom, instead of an old man of fifty! It's all owing to me," said the delighted Kinch, who skipped about the entry until he upset a vase of flowers that stood on a bracket behind him; whereupon Caddy ran and brought a towel, and made him take off his white gloves and wipe up the water, in spite of his protestations that the shape of his pantaloons would not bear the strain of stooping. At last the hour arrived, and the bridal party descended to the drawing-room in appropriate order, and stood up before Father Banks. The ceremony was soon over, and Emily was clasped in Mrs. Ellis's arms, who called her "daughter," and kissed her cheek with such warm affection that she no longer felt herself an orphan, and paid back with tears and embraces the endearments that were lavished upon her by her new relatives. Father Banks took an early opportunity to give them each some good advice, and managed to draw them apart for that purpose. He told them how imperfect and faulty were all mankind—that married life was not all couleur de rose—that the trials and cares incident to matrimony fully equalled its pleasures; and besought them to bear with each other patiently, to be charitable to each other's faults—and a reasonable share of earthly happiness must be the result. Then came the supper. Oh! such a supper!—such quantities of nice things as money and skill alone can bring together. There were turkeys innocent of a bone, into which you might plunge your knife to the very hilt without coming in contact with a splinter—turkeys from which cunning cooks had extracted every bone leaving the meat alone behind, with the skin not perceptibly broken. How brown and tempting they looked, their capacious bosoms giving rich promise of high-seasoned dressing within, and looking larger by comparison with the tiny reed-birds beside them, which lay cosily on the golden toast, looking as much as to say, "If you want something to remember for ever, come and give me a bite!" Then there were dishes of stewed terrapin, into which the initiated dipped at once, and to which they for some time gave their undivided attention, oblivious, apparently, of the fact that there was a dish of chicken-salad close beside them. Then there were oysters in every variety—silver dishes containing them stewed, their fragrant macey odour wafting itself upward, and causing watery sensations about the mouth. Waiters were constantly rushing into the room, bringing dishes of them fried so richly brown, so smoking hot, that no man with a heart in his bosom could possibly refuse them. Then there were glass dishes of them pickled, with little black spots of allspice floating on the pearly liquid that contained them. And lastly, oysters broiled, whose delicious flavour exceeds my powers of description—these, with ham and tongue, were the solid comforts. There were other things, however, to which one could turn when the appetite grew more dainty; there were jellies, blancmange, chocolate cream, biscuit glace, peach ice, vanilla ice, orange-water ice, brandy peaches, preserved strawberries and pines; not to say a word of towers of candy, bonbons, kisses, champagne, Rhine wine, sparkling Catawba, liquors, and a man in the corner making sherry cobblers of wondrous flavour, under the especial supervision of Kinch; on the whole, it was an American supper, got up regardless of expense—and whoever has been to such an entertainment knows very well what an American supper is. What a merry happy party it was—how they all seemed to enjoy themselves—and how they all laughed, when the bride essayed to cut the cake, and could not get the knife through the icing—and how the young girls put pieces away privately, that they might place them under their pillows to dream upon! What a happy time they had! Father Banks enjoyed himself amazingly; he eat quantities of stewed terrapin, and declared it the best he ever tasted. He talked gravely to the old people—cheerfully and amusingly to the young; and was, in fact, having a most delightful time—when a servant whispered to him that there was a person in the entry who wished to see him immediately. "Oh dear!" he exclaimed to Mr. Balch, "I was just congratulating myself that I should have one uninterrupted evening, and you see the result—called off at this late hour." Father Banks followed the servant from the room, and inquired of the messenger what was wanted. "You must come to the hospital immediately, sir; the man with the typhus-fever—you saw him yesterday—he's dying; he says he must see you—that he has something important to confess. I'm to go for a magistrate as well." "Ah!" said Father Banks, "you need go no further, Alderman Balch is here—he is quite competent to receive his depositions." "I'm heartily glad of it," replied the man, "it will save me another hunt. I had a hard time finding you. I've been to your house and two or three other places, and was at last sent here. I'll go back and report that you are coming and will bring a magistrate with you." "Very good," rejoined Father Banks, "do so. I will be there immediately." Hastening back to the supper room, he discovered Mr. Balch in the act of helping himself to a brandy peach, and apprised him of the demand for his services. "Now, Banks," said he, good-humouredly, "that is outrageous. Why did you not let him go for some one else? It is too bad to drag me away just when the fun is about to commence." There was no alternative, however, and Mr. Balch prepared to follow the minister to the bedside of McCloskey. When they arrived at the hospital, they found him fast sinking—the livid colour of his face, the sunken glassy eyes, the white lips, and the blue tint that surrounded the eyes and mouth told at once the fearful story. Death had come. He was in full possession of his faculties, and told them all. How Stevens had saved him from the gallows—and how he agreed to murder Mr. Garie—of his failure when the time of action arrived, and how, in consequence, Stevens had committed the deed, and how he had paid him time after time to keep his secret. "In my trunk there," said he, in a dying whisper,—"in my trunk is the will. I found it that night amongst his papers. I kept it to get money out of his children with when old Stevens was gone. Here," continued he, handing his key from beneath the pillow, "open my trunk and get it." Mr. Balch eagerly unlocked the trunk, and there, sure enough, lay the long-sought-for and important document. "I knew it would be found at last. I always told Walters so; and now," said he, exultingly, "see my predictions are verified." McCloskey seemed anxious to atone for the past by making an ample confession. He told them all he knew of Mr. Stevens's present circumstances—how his property was situated, and every detail necessary for their guidance. Then his confession was sworn to and witnessed; and the dying man addressed himself to the affairs of the next world, and endeavoured to banish entirely from his mind all thoughts of this. After a life passed in the exercise of every Christian virtue—after a lengthened journey over its narrow stony pathway, whereon temptations have been met and triumphed over—where we have struggled with difficulties, and borne afflictions without murmur or complaint, cheering on the weary we have found sinking by the wayside, comforting and assisting the fallen, endeavouring humbly and faithfully to do our duty to God and humanity—even after a life thus passed, when we at last lie down to die the most faithful and best may well shrink and tremble when they approach the gloomy portals of death. At such an hour memory, more active than every other faculty, drags all the good and evil from the past and sets them in distinct array before us. Then we discover how greatly the latter exceeds the former in our lives, and how little of our Father's work we have accomplished after all our toils and struggles. 'Tis then the most devoted servant of our common Master feels compelled to cry, "Mercy! O my Father!—for justice I dare not ask." If thus the Christian passes away—what terror must fill the breast of one whose whole life has been a constant warfare upon the laws of God and man? How approaches he the bar of that awful Judge, whose commands he has set at nought, and whose power he has so often contemned? With a fainting heart, and tongue powerless to crave the mercy his crimes cannot deserve! McCloskey struggled long with death—died fearfully hard. The phantoms of his victims seemed to haunt him in his dying hour, interposing between him and God; and with distorted face, clenched hands, and gnashing teeth, he passed away to his long account. From the bedside of the corpse Mr. Balch went—late as it was—to the office of the chief of police. There he learned, to his great satisfaction, that the governor was in town; and at an early hour the next morning he procured a requisition for the arrest of Mr. Stevens, which he put into the hands of the man with the keen grey eyes for the purpose of securing the criminal; and with the result of his efforts the reader is already acquainted. CHAPTER XXXVI. And the last. With such celerity did Mr. Balch work in behalf of his wards, that he soon had everything in train for the recovery of the property. At first George Stevens was inclined to oppose the execution of the will, but he was finally prevailed upon by his advisers to make no difficulty respecting it, and quietly resign what he must inevitably sooner or later relinquish. Lizzie Stevens, on the contrary, seemed rather glad that an opportunity was afforded to do justice to her old playmates, and won the good opinion of all parties by her gentleness and evident anxiety to atone for the wrong done them by her father. Even after the demands of the executors of Mr. Garie were fully satisfied, such had been the thrift of her father that there still remained a comfortable support for her and her brother. To poor Clarence this accession of fortune brought no new pleasure; he already had sufficient for his modest wants; and now that his greatest hope in life had been blighted, this addition of wealth became to him rather a burden than a pleasure. He was now completely excluded from the society in which he had so long been accustomed to move; the secret of his birth had become widely known, and he was avoided by his former friends and sneered at as a "nigger." His large fortune kept some two or three whites about him, but he knew they were leeches seeking to bleed his purse, and he wisely avoided their society. He was very wretched and lonely: he felt ashamed to seek the society of coloured men now that the whites despised and rejected him, so he lived apart from both classes of society, and grew moody and misanthropic. Mr. Balch endeavoured to persuade him to go abroad—to visit Europe: he would not. He did not confess it, but the truth was, he could not tear himself away from the city where little Birdie dwelt, where he now and then could catch a glimpse of her to solace him in his loneliness. He was growing paler and more fragile-looking each day, and the doctor at last frankly told him that, if he desired to live, he must seek some warmer climate for the winter. Reluctantly Clarence obeyed; in the fall he left New York, and during the cold months wandered through the West India islands. For a while his health improved, but when the novelty produced by change of scene began to decline he grew worse again, and brooded more deeply than ever over his bitter disappointment, and consequently derived but little benefit from the change; the spirit was too much broken for the body to mend—his heart was too sore to beat healthily or happily. He wrote often now to Emily and her husband, and seemed desirous to atone for his past neglect. Emily had written to him first; she had learned of his disappointment, and gave him a sister's sympathy in his loneliness and sorrow. The chilly month of March had scarcely passed away when they received a letter from him informing them of his intention to return. He wrote, "I am no better, and my physician says that a longer residence here will not benefit me in the least—that I came too late. I cough, cough, cough, incessantly, and each day become more feeble. I am coming home, Emmy; coming home, I fear, to die. I am but a ghost of my former self. I write you this that you may not be alarmed when you see me. It is too late now to repine, but, oh! Em, if my lot had only been cast with yours—had we never been separated—I might have been to-day as happy as you are." It was a clear bright morning when Charlie stepped into a boat to be conveyed to the ship in which Clarence had returned to New York: she had arrived the evening previous, and had not yet come up to the dock. The air came up the bay fresh and invigorating from the sea beyond, and the water sparkled as it dripped from the oars, which, with monotonous regularity, broke the almost unruffled surface of the bay. Some of the ship's sails were shaken out to dry in the morning sun, and the cordage hung loosely and carelessly from the masts and yards. A few sailors lounged idly about the deck, and leaned over the side to watch the boat as it approached. With their aid it was soon secured alongside, and Charlie clambered up the ladder, and stood upon the deck of the vessel. On inquiring for Clarence, he was shown into the cabin, where he found him extended on a sofa. He raised himself as he saw Charlie approach, and, extending his hand, exclaimed,—"How kind! I did not expect you until we reached the shore." For a moment, Charlie could not speak. The shock caused by Clarence's altered appearance was too great,—the change was terrible. When he had last seen him, he was vigorous-looking, erect, and healthful; now he was bent and emaciated to a frightful extent. The veins on his temples were clearly discernible; the muscles of his throat seemed like great cords; his cheeks were hollow, his sunken eyes were glassy bright and surrounded with a dark rim, and his breathing was short and evidently painful. Charlie held his thin fleshless hand in his own, and gazed in his face with an anguished expression. "I look badly,—don't I Charlie?" said he, with assumed indifference; "worse than you expected, eh?" Charlie hesitated a little, and then answered,—"Rather bad; but it is owing to your sea-sickness, I suppose; that has probably reduced you considerably; then this close cabin must be most unfavourable to your health. Ah, wait until we get you home, we shall soon have you better." "Home!" repeated Clarence,—"home! How delightful that word sounds! I feel it is going home to go to you and Em." And he leant back and repeated the word "home," and paused afterward, as one touches some favourite note upon an instrument, and then silently listens to its vibrations. "How is Em?" he asked at length. "Oh, well—very well," replied Charlie. "She has been busy as a bee ever since she received your last letter; such a charming room as she has prepared for you!" "Ah, Charlie," rejoined Clarence, mournfully, "I shall not live long to enjoy it, I fear." "Nonsense!" interrupted Charlie, hopefully; "don't be so desponding, Clary: here is spring again,—everything is thriving and bursting into new life. You, too, will catch the spirit of the season, and grow in health and strength again. Why, my dear fellow," continued he, cheerfully, "you can't help getting better when we once get hold of you. Mother's gruels, Doctor Burdett's prescriptions, and Em's nursing, would lift a man out of his coffin. Come, now, don't let us hear anything more about dying." Clarence pressed his hand and looked at him affectionately, as though he appreciated his efforts to cheer him and felt thankful for them; but he only shook his head and smiled mournfully. "Let me help your man to get you up. When once you get ashore you'll feel better, I've no doubt. We are not going to an hotel, but to the house of a friend who has kindly offered to make you comfortable until you are able to travel." With the assistance of Charlie and the servant, Clarence was gradually prepared to go ashore. He was exceedingly weak, could scarcely totter across the deck; and it was with some difficulty that they at last succeeded in placing him safely in the boat. After they landed, a carriage was soon procured, and in a short time thereafter Clarence was comfortably established in the house of Charlie's friend. Their hostess, a dear old motherly creature, declared that she knew exactly what Clarence needed; and concocted such delicious broths, made such strengthening gruels, that Clarence could not avoid eating, and in a day or two he declared himself better than he had been for a month, and felt quite equal to the journey to Philadelphia. The last night of their stay in New York was unusually warm; and Clarence informed Charlie he wished to go out for a walk. "I wish to go a long distance,—don't think me foolish when I tell you where. I want to look at the house where little Birdie lives. It may be for the last time. I have a presentiment that I shall see her if I go,—I am sure I shall," added he, positively, as though he felt a conviction that his desire would be accomplished. "I would not, Clary," remonstrated Charlie. "Your health won't permit the exertion; it is a long distance, too, you say; and, moreover, don't you think, my dear fellow, that it is far more prudent to endeavour, if possible, to banish her from your mind entirely. Don't permit yourself to think about her, if you can help it. You know she is unattainable by you, and you should make an effort to conquer your attachment." "It is too late—too late now, Charlie," he replied, mournfully. "I shall continue to love her as I do now until I draw my last breath. I know it is hopeless—I know she can never be more to me than she already is; but I cannot help loving her. Let us go; I may see her once again. Ah, Charlie, you cannot even dream what inexpressible pleasure the merest glimpse of her affords me! Come, let us go." Charlie would not permit him to attempt to walk; and they procured a carriage, in which they rode to within a short distance of the house. The mansion of Mr. Bates appeared quite gloomy as they approached it. The blinds were down, and no lights visible in any part of the house. "I am afraid they are out of town," remarked Charlie, when Clarence pointed out the house; "everything looks so dull about it. Let us cross over to the other pavement." And they walked over to the other side of the street, and gazed upward at the house. "Let us sit down here," suggested Clarence,—"here, on this broad stone; it is quite dark now, and no one will observe us." "No, no!" remonstrated Charlie; "the stone is too damp and cold." "Is it?" said Clarence vacantly. And taking out his handkerchief, he spread it out, and, in spite of Charlie's dissuasions, sat down upon it. "Charlie," said he, after gazing at the house a long time in silence, "I have often come here and remained half the night looking at her windows. People have passed by and stared at me as though they thought me crazy; I was half crazy then, I think. One night I remember I came and sat here for hours; far in the night I saw her come to the window, throw up the casement, and look out. That was in the summer, before I went away, you know. There she stood in the moonlight, gazing upward at the sky, so pale, so calm and holy-looking, in her pure white dress, that I should not have thought it strange if the heavens had opened, and angels descended and borne her away with them on their wings." And Clarence closed his eyes as he concluded, to call back upon the mirror of his mind the image of little Birdie as she appeared that night. They waited a long while, during which there was no evidence exhibited that there was any one in the house. At last, just as they were about to move away, they descried the glimmer of a light in the room which Clarence declared to be her room. His frame trembled with expectation, and he walked to and fro opposite the house with an apparent strength that surprised his companion. At length the light disappeared again, and with it Clarence's hopes. "Now then we must go," said Charlie, "it is useless for you to expose yourself in this manner. I insist upon your coming home." Reluctantly Clarence permitted himself to be led across the street again. As they were leaving the pavement, he turned to look back again, and, uttering a cry of surprise and joy, he startled Charlie by clutching his arm. "Look! look!" he cried, "there she is—my little Birdie." Charlie looked up at the window almost immediately above them, and observed a slight pale girl, who was gazing up the street in an opposite direction. "Little Birdie—little Birdie," whispered Clarence, tenderly. She did not look toward them, but after standing there a few seconds, moved from between the curtains and disappeared. "Thank God for that!" exclaimed Clarence, passionately, "I knew—I knew I should see her. I knew it," repeated he, exultingly; and then, overcome with joy, he bowed his head upon Charlie's shoulder and wept like a child. "Don't think me foolish, Charlie," apologized he, "I cannot help it. I will go home now. Oh, brother, I feel so much happier." And with a step less faint and trembling, he walked back to the carriage. The following evening he was at home, but so enfeebled with the exertions of the last two days, as to be obliged to take to his bed immediately after his arrival. His sister greeted him affectionately, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him tenderly; years of coldness and estrangement were forgotten in that moment, and they were once more to each other as they were before they parted. Emily tried to appear as though she did not notice the great change in his appearance, and talked cheerfully and encouragingly in his presence; but she wept bitterly, when alone, over the final separation which she foresaw was not far distant. The nest day Doctor Burdett called, and his grave manner and apparent disinclination to encourage any hope, confirmed the hopeless impression they already entertained. Aunt Ada came from Sudbury at Emily's request; she knew her presence would give pleasure to Clarence, she accordingly wrote her to come, and she and Emily nursed by turns the failing sufferer. Esther and her husband, Mrs. Ellis and Caddy, and even Kinch, were unremitting in their attentions, and did all in their power to amuse and comfort him. Day by day he faded perceptibly, grew more and more feeble, until at last Doctor Burdett began to number days instead of weeks as his term of life. Clarence anticipated death with calmness—did not repine or murmur. Father Banks was often with him cheering him with hopes of a happier future beyond the grave. One day he sent for his sister and desired her to write a letter for him. "Em," said he, "I am failing fast; these fiery spots on my cheek, this scorching in my palms, these hard-drawn, difficult breaths, warn me that the time is very near. Don't weep, Em!" continued he, kissing her—"there, don't weep—I shall be better off—happier—I am sure! Don't weep now—I want you to write to little Birdie for me. I have tried, but my hand trembles so that I cannot write legibly—I gave it up. Sit down beside me here, and write; here is the pen." Emily dried her eyes, and mechanically sat down to write as he desired. Motioning to him that she was ready, he dictated— "My Dear Little Birdie,—I once resolved never to write to you again, and partially promised your father that I would not; then I did not dream that I should be so soon compelled to break my resolution. Little Birdie, I am dying! My physician informs me that I have but a few more days to live. I have been trying to break away from earth's affairs and fix my thoughts on other and better things. I have given up all but you, and feel that I cannot relinquish you until I see you once again. Do not refuse me, little Birdie! Show this to your father—he must consent to a request made by one on the brink of the grave." "There, that will do; let me read it over," said he, extending his hand for the note. "Yes, I will sign it now—then do you add our address. Send it now, Emily—send it in time for to-night's mail." "Clary, do you think she will come?" inquired his sister. "Yes," replied he, confidently; "I am sure she will if the note reaches her." Emily said no more, but sealed and directed the note, which she immediately despatched to the post-office; and on the following day it reached little Birdie. From the time when the secret of Clarence's birth had been discovered, until the day she had received his note, she never mentioned his name. At the demand of her father she produced his letters, miniature, and even the little presents he had given her from time to time, and laid them down before him without a murmur; after this, even when he cursed and denounced him, she only left the room, never uttering a word in his defence. She moved about like one who had received a stunning blow—she was dull, cold, apathetic. She would smile vacantly when her father smoothed her hair or kissed her cheek; but she never laughed, or sang and played, as in days gone by; she would recline for hours on the sofa in her room gazing vacantly in the air, and taking apparently no interest in anything about her. She bent her head when she walked, complained of coldness about her temples, and kept her hand constantly upon her heart. Doctors were at last consulted; they pronounced her physically well, and thought that time would restore her wonted animation; but month after month she grew more dull and silent, until her father feared she would become idiotic, and grew hopeless and unhappy about her. For a week before the receipt of the note from Clarence, she had been particularly apathetic and indifferent, but it seemed to rouse her into life again. She started up after reading it, and rushed wildly through the hall into her father's library. "See here!" exclaimed she, grasping his arm—"see there—I knew it! I've felt day after day that it was coming to that! You separated us, and now he is dying—dying!" cried she. "Read it—read it!" Her father took the note, and after perusing it laid it on the table, and said coldly, "Well—" "Well!" repeated she, with agitation—"Oh, father, it is not well! Father!" said she, hurriedly, "you bid me give him up—told me he was unworthy—pointed out to me fully and clearly why we could not marry: I was convinced we could not, for I knew you would never let it be. Yet I have never ceased to love him. I cannot control my heart, but I could my voice, and never since that day have I spoken his name. I gave him up—not that I would not have gladly married, knowing what he was—because you desired it—because I saw either your heart must break or mine. I let mine go to please you, and have suffered uncomplainingly, and will so suffer until the end; but I must see him once again. It will be a pleasure to him to see me once again in his dying hour, and I must go. If you love me," continued she, pleadingly, as her father made a gesture of dissent, "let us go. You see he is dying—begs you from the brink of the grave. Let me go, only to say good bye to him, and then, perhaps," concluded she, pressing her hand upon her heart, "I shall be better here." Her father had not the heart to make any objection, and the next day they started for Philadelphia. They despatched a note to Clarence, saying they had arrived, which Emily received, and after opening it, went to gently break its contents to her brother. "You must prepare yourself for visitors, Clary," said she, "no doubt some of our friends will call to-day, the weather is so very delightful." "Do you know who is coming?" he inquired. "Yes, dear," she answered, seating herself beside him, "I have received a note stating that a particular friend will call to-day—one that you desire to see." "Ah!" he exclaimed, "it is little Birdie, is it not?" "Yes," she replied, "they have arrived in town, and will be here to-day." "Did not I tell you so?" said he, triumphantly. "I knew she would come. I knew it," continued he, joyfully. "Let me get up—I am strong enough—she is come—O! she has come." Clarence insisted on being dressed with extraordinary care. His long fierce-looking beard was trimmed carefully, and he looked much better than he had done for weeks; he was wonderfully stronger, walked across the room, and chatted over his breakfast with unusual animation. At noon they came, and were shown into the drawing-room, where Emily received them. Mr. Bates bowed politely, and expressed a hope that Mr. Garie was better. Emily held out her hand to little Birdie, who clasped it in both her own, and said, inquiringly: "You are his sister?" "Yes," answered Emily. "You, I should have known from Clarence's description—you are his little Birdie?" She did not reply—her lip quivered, and she pressed Emily's hand and kissed her. "He is impatient to see you," resumed Emily, "and if you are so disposed, we will go up immediately." "I will remain here," observed Mr. Bates, "unless Mr. Garie particularly desires to see me. My daughter will accompany you." Emily took the hand of little Birdie in her own, and they walked together up the stairway. "You must not be frightened at his appearance," she remarked, tearfully, "he is greatly changed." Little Birdie only shook her head—her heart seemed too full for speech—and she stepped on a little faster, keeping her hand pressed on her breast all the while. When they reached the door, Emily was about to open it, but her companion stopped her, by saying: "Wait a moment—stop! How my heart beats—it almost suffocates me." They paused for a few moments to permit little Birdie to recover from her agitation, then throwing open the door they advanced into the room. "Clarence!" said his sister. He did not answer; he was looking down into the garden. She approached nearer, and gently laying her hand on his shoulder, said, "Here is your little Birdie, Clarence." He neither moved nor spoke. "Clarence!" cried she, louder. No answer. She touched his face—it was warm. "He's fainted!" exclaimed she; and, ringing the bell violently, she screamed for help. Her husband and the nurse rushed into the room; then came Aunt Ada and Mr. Bates. They bathed his temples, held strong salts to his nostrils—still he did not revive. Finally, the nurse opened his bosom and placed her hand upon his heart. It was still—quite still: Clarence was dead! At first they could not believe it. "Let me speak to him," exclaimed little Birdie, distractedly; "he will hear my voice, and answer. Clarence! Clarence!" she cried. All in vain—all in vain. Clarence was dead! They gently bore her away. That dull, cold look came back again upon her face, and left it never more in life. She walked about mournfully for a few years, pressing her hand upon her heart; and then passed away to join her lover, where distinctions in race or colour are unknown, and where the prejudices of earth cannot mar their happiness. Our tale is now soon finished. They buried Clarence beside his parents; coloured people followed him to his last home, and wept over his grave. Of all the many whites that he had known, Aunt Ada and Mr. Balch were the only ones that mingled their tears with those who listened to the solemn words of Father Banks, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." We, too, Clarence, cast a tear upon thy tomb—poor victim of prejudice to thy colour! and deem thee better off resting upon thy cold pillow of earth, than battling with that malignant sentiment that persecuted thee, and has crushed energy, hope, and life from many stronger hearts. * * * * * Aunt Ada Bell remained for a short time with Emily, and then returned to Sudbury, where, during the remainder of her life, she never omitted an opportunity of doing a kindness to a coloured person; and when the increasing liberality of sentiment opened a way for the admission of coloured pupils to the famous schools of Sudbury, they could always procure board at her house, and Aunt Ada was a friend and mother to them. Walters and dear old Ess reared a fine family; and the brown baby and her sister took numberless premiums at school, to the infinite delight of their parents. They also had a boy, whom they named "Charlie;" he inherited his uncle's passionate fondness for marbles, which fondness, it has been ascertained, is fostered by his uncle, who, 'tis said, furnishes the sinews of war when there is a dearth in the treasury of Master Walters. Kinch and Caddy were finally united, after various difficulties raised by the latter, who found it almost impossible to procure a house in such a state of order as would warrant her entering upon the blissful state of matrimony. When it was all over, Kinch professed to his acquaintances generally to be living in a perfect state of bliss; but he privately intimated to Charlie that if Caddy would permit him to come in at the front door, and not condemn him to go through the alley, whenever there happened to be a shower—and would let him smoke where he liked—he would be much more contented. When last heard from they had a little Caddy, the very image of its mother—a wonderful little girl, who, instead of buying candy and cake with her sixpences, as other children did, gravely invested them in miniature wash-boards and dust-brushes, and was saving up her money to purchase a tiny stove with a full set of cooking utensils. Caddy declares her a child worth having. Charles and Emily took a voyage to Europe for the health of the latter, and returned after a two years' tour to settle permanently in his native city. They were unremitting in their attention to father and mother Ellis, who lived to good old age, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARIES AND THEIR FRIENDS *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org. This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. URL https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11214/pg11214.html Some Background for him His parents and older siblings were among thousands of free African Americans who had left the United States in 1824 and returned in 1826, attempting to immigrate to Haiti. Webb's mother, Louisa Burr, was a daughter of Aaron Burr. She and her brother John Pierre Burr, a prominent activist in Philadelphia's black community,were born to a Bengali mother from Calcutta, India named Mary Emmons, who served in Burr's household as a governess. After Francis Webb's death, Louisa remarried and became Louisa Darius. Webb's father, Francis Webb, served in Philadelphia as an elder in the First African Presbyterian Church, a parishioner at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, a founding member of the Pennsylvania Augustine Education Society formed in 1818, and secretary of the Haytien Emigration Society organized in 1824. He worked as the Philadelphia distribution agent for Freedom's Journal from 1827 to 1829. While living in Port au Platt, Haiti, from 1824 to 1826, he served on the Board of Instruction of a joint Episcopal-Presbyterian church school. He died of unknown causes in 1829, a year after Frank's birth. In 1845, at the age of 17, Webb married Mary Espartero, who had been born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1828, shortly after her mother had escaped from slavery in Virginia. Her father was described as "a Spanish gentleman of wealth [who] had made many efforts to purchase the freedom of her mother". Through her mother's efforts, Mary was admitted to a school where her education included poetry and dramatic literature, and developed a talent for performance. As an adult in Philadelphia, she studied elocution. Mary soon gained renown for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Philip Sheridan. She attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe and other prominent literary abolitionists. Stowe acted as her patron, adapting scenes from her best selling novel Uncle Tom's Cabin expressly for Mary Webb's performance. In late 1855 and 1856, Mary Webb toured the north-eastern United States,  including a performance of Uncle Tom attended by Longfellow, who wrote, "A striking scene, this Cleopatra with a white wreath in her dark hair, and a sweet, musical voice, reading to a great, unimpassioned, immovable Boston audience." [NOTE: Can't Stand Boston] Engraved drawing of Mary E. Webb, captioned "Mrs. Mary E. Webb (a Coloured Native of Philadelphia) Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, in the Hall of Stafford-House" Date 2 August 1856 Source Engraving from The Illustrated London News, August 2, 1856 Stowe arranged a transatlantic tour for the Webbs, and provided a letter of introduction and a postscript that Longfellow which said "...much pleased with Mrs. Webb's reading of his new poem Hiawatha". The Webbs traveled to England in 1856, where Mary's dramatic readings garnered further acclaim. The couple received a warm welcome from many British nobles. While in London, Webb asked his friend, Charles Sumner, to write an introductory letter for his wife during her reading tour in Liverpool. In 1857, when Frank Webb was 29, the London firm of G. Routledge and Company published his first and only novel, The Garies and Their Friends. Webb dedicated his book to supporter Lady Noel Byron, who had encouraged him, and Henry, Lord Brougham wrote an introduction. It was published with an additional preface by Stowe. The international tour had taken a severe toll on Mary Webb's health, and on the advice of physicians who recommended a warmer climate, the Webbs made an extended visit to Cannes in 1857–1858. The Webbs then relocated in 1858 to Kingston, Jamaica, where Webb's British friends secured him a job with the postal service. However, Mary Webb died there on June 17, 1859 of tuberculosis. After her death, Frank Webb lived in Jamaica for over ten years, from 1858 to 1869, and remarried there before returning to the United States. Webb's second wife was Mary Rosabelle Rodgers (b. 1845), the daughter of a Jamaican merchant. They had four children before moving in 1869 to the United States, where they had two more children. From late 1869 through 1870, Webb lived in Washington, DC, where he resumed writing. Webb published several essays, poems, and two novellas for the African American journal The New Era. The weekly had been founded in Washington, DC and was taken over that year by Frederick Douglass, who published it through 1874. While in Washington writing for The New Era in 1869–1870, Webb lived with his niece, teacher Sara Iredell, who had recently married Christian Fleetwood, recipient of the Medal of Honor for his military service during the Civil War. Fleetwood was then a clerk for the Freedmen's Bureau, established during the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War. Later in 1870, the Webbs moved to Galveston, Texas, which had developed a vibrant black community after the Civil War. In 1876, Webb served as an alternative delegate to the Republican state convention. Webb worked in Galveston first as a newspaper editor, then as a postal clerk, and finally for thirteen years as principal of the Barnes Institute, a segregated school for "colored children". He died in Galveston, Texas in 1894. Webb had six children, all of whom were from his second marriage. They were: Dr. Frank J. Webb Jr. (1865–1901), an 1895 graduate of Howard University Medical School Evangeline Webb (1866–1945) Ruth M.A. Webb (1867–1930) Clarice Webb (1869–1962) Ethelind Webb (1874–1969) Thomas Rodgers Webb (1877–1964) Works The Garies and Their Friends (novel, 1857) "None Spoke a Single Word to Me" (poem, The New Era, 1870) "Waiting" (poem, 1870) "International Exhibition" (editorial, The New Era, 1870) "The Mixed School Question" (editorial, The New Era, 1870) "An Old Foe with a New Face" (editorial, The New Era, 1870) Two Wolves and a Lamb (novella, The New Era, 1870) Marvin Hayle (novella, The New Era, 1870) NOTE Hoping to perform at Charles Dickens's seasonal theatre in Stafford House, Mary Webb had an interview with the novelist's wife, Catherine Dickens, at Gravesend, Kent in early April 1857. While moved by Catherine's description of Webb, Dickens reacted unfavorably to the idea of assisting the "poor woman" further on her reading tour, stating to the Earl of Carlisle in a letter of 15 April 1857, "I myself for example am the meekest of men, and in abhorrence of Slavery yield to no human creature—and yet I dont [sic] admit the sequence that I want Uncle Tom (or Aunt Tomasina) to expound King Lear to me. And I believe my case to be the case of thousands." Laura Korobkin interprets Dickens's dismissal of Webb, an educated African American woman, as evidence of racial and social anxiety regarding his own status. Calendar URL https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/444-francis-johnson-webb-born-1828/

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. full text https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/346-clotel-from-william-wells-brown/ The Project Gutenberg eBook of Clotel; Or, The President's Daughter This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Clotel; Or, The President's Daughter Author: William Wells Brown Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2046] Most recently updated: April 3, 2015 Language: English *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER *** CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER. PREFACE MORE than two hundred years have elapsed since the first cargo of slaves was landed on the banks of the James River, in the colony of Virginia, from the West coast of Africa. From the introduction of slaves in 1620, down to the period of the separation of the Colonies from the British Crown, the number had increased to five hundred thousand; now there are nearly four million. In fifteen of the thirty-one States, Slavery is made lawful by the Constitution, which binds the several States into one confederacy. On every foot of soil, over which Stars and Stripes wave, the Negro is considered common property, on which any white man may lay his hand with perfect impunity. The entire white population of the United States, North and South, are bound by their oath to the constitution, and their adhesion to the Fugitive Slaver Law, to hunt down the runaway slave and return him to his claimant, and to suppress any effort that may be made by the slaves to gain their freedom by physical force. Twenty-five millions of whites have banded themselves in solemn conclave to keep four millions of blacks in their chains. In all grades of society are to be found men who either hold, buy, or sell slaves, from the statesmen and doctors of divinity, who can own their hundreds, down to the person who can purchase but one. Were it not for persons in high places owning slaves, and thereby giving the system a reputation, and especially professed Christians, Slavery would long since have been abolished. The influence of the great "honours the corruption, and chastisement doth therefore hide his head." The great aim of the true friends of the slave should be to lay bare the institution, so that the gaze of the world may be upon it, and cause the wise, the prudent, and the pious to withdraw their support from it, and leave it to its own fate. It does the cause of emancipation but little good to cry out in tones of execration against the traders, the kidnappers, the hireling overseers, and brutal drivers, so long as nothing is said to fasten the guilt on those who move in a higher circle. The fact that slavery was introduced into the American colonies, while they were under the control of the British Crown, is a sufficient reason why Englishmen should feel a lively interest in its abolition; and now that the genius of mechanical invention has brought the two countries so near together, and both having one language and one literature, the influence of British public opinion is very great on the people of the New World. If the incidents set forth in the following pages should add anything new to the information already given to the Public through similar publications, and should thereby aid in bringing British influence to bear upon American slavery, the main object for which this work was written will have been accomplished. W. WELLS BROWN 22, Cecil Street, Strand, London. CONTENTS. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR THE NEGRO SALE GOING TO THE SOUTH THE NEGRO CHASE THE QUADROON'S HOME THE SLAVE MASTER THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER THE POOR WHITES, SOUTH THE SEPARATION THE MAN OP HONOUR THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN THE PARSON POET A NIGHT IN THE PARSON'S KITCHEN A SLAVE HUNT A FREE WOMAN REDUCED TO SLAVERY TO-DAY A MISTRESS, TO-MORROW A SLAVE DEATH OF THE PARSON RETALIATION THE LIBERATOR ESCAPE OF CLOTEL A TRUE DEMOCRAT THE CHRISTIAN'S DEATH A RIDE IN A STAGE COACH TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION DEATH IS FREEDOM THE ESCAPE THE MYSTERY THE HAPPY MEETING CONCLUSION CHAPTER I THE NEGRO SALE "Why stands she near the auction stand, That girl so young and fair? What brings her to this dismal place, Why stands she weeping there?" WITH the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners and their mothers slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair. The late Henry Clay, some years since, predicted that the abolition of Negro slavery would be brought about by the amalgamation of the races. John Randolph, a distinguished slaveholder of Virginia, and a prominent statesman, said in a speech in the legislature of his native state, that "the blood of the first American statesmen coursed through the veins of the slave of the South." In all the cities and towns of the slave states, the real Negro, or clear black, does not amount to more than one in every four of the slave population. This fact is, of itself, the best evidence of the degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America. In all the slave states, the law says:—"Slaves shall be deemed, sold [held], taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever. A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labour. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law entirely under the control of the man who claims him, body and soul, as property, what else could be expected than the most depraved social condition? The marriage relation, the oldest and most sacred institution given to man by his Creator, is unknown and unrecognised in the slave laws of the United States. Would that we could say, that the moral and religious teaching in the slave states were better than the laws; but, alas! we cannot. A few years since, some slaveholders became a little uneasy in their minds about the rightfulness of permitting slaves to take to themselves husbands and wives, while they still had others living, and applied to their religious teachers for advice; and the following will show how this grave and important subject was treated:— "Is a servant, whose husband or wife has been sold by his or her master into a distant country, to be permitted to marry again?" The query was referred to a committee, who made the following report; which, after discussion, was adopted:— "That, in view of the circumstances in which servants in this country are placed, the committee are unanimous in the opinion, that it is better to permit servants thus circumstanced to take another husband or wife." Such was the answer from a committee of the "Shiloh Baptist Association;" and instead of receiving light, those who asked the question were plunged into deeper darkness! A similar question was put to the "Savannah River Association," and the answer, as the following will show, did not materially differ from the one we have already given:— "Whether, in a case of involuntary separation, of such a character as to preclude all prospect of future intercourse, the parties ought to be allowed to marry again." Answer:— "That such separation among persons situated as our slaves are, is civilly a separation by death; and they believe that, in the sight of God, it would be so viewed. To forbid second marriages in such cases would be to expose the parties, not only to stronger hardships and strong temptation, but to church-censure for acting in obedience to their masters, who cannot be expected to acquiesce in a regulation at variance with justice to the slaves, and to the spirit of that command which regulates marriage among Christians. The slaves are not free agents; and a dissolution by death is not more entirely without their consent, and beyond their control than by such separation." Although marriage, as the above indicates, is a matter which the slaveholders do not think is of any importance, or of any binding force with their slaves; yet it would be doing that degraded class an injustice, not to acknowledge that many of them do regard it as a sacred obligation, and show a willingness to obey the commands of God on this subject. Marriage is, indeed, the first and most important institution of human existence—the foundation of all civilisation and culture—the root of church and state. It is the most intimate covenant of heart formed among mankind; and for many persons the only relation in which they feel the true sentiments of humanity. It gives scope for every human virtue, since each of these is developed from the love and confidence which here predominate. It unites all which ennobles and beautifies life,—sympathy, kindness of will and deed, gratitude, devotion, and every delicate, intimate feeling. As the only asylum for true education, it is the first and last sanctuary of human culture. As husband and wife, through each other become conscious of complete humanity, and every human feeling, and every human virtue; so children, at their first awakening in the fond covenant of love between parents, both of whom are tenderly concerned for the same object, find an image of complete humanity leagued in free love. The spirit of love which prevails between them acts with creative power upon the young mind, and awakens every germ of goodness within it. This invisible and incalculable influence of parental life acts more upon the child than all the efforts of education, whether by means of instruction, precept, or exhortation. If this be a true picture of the vast influence for good of the institution of marriage, what must be the moral degradation of that people to whom marriage is denied? Not content with depriving them of all the higher and holier enjoyments of this relation, by degrading and darkening their souls, the slaveholder denies to his victim even that slight alleviation of his misery, which would result from the marriage relation being protected by law and public opinion. Such is the influence of slavery in the United States, that the ministers of religion, even in the so-called free states, are the mere echoes, instead of the correctors, of public sentiment. We have thought it advisable to show that the present system of chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man, so as to prepare the reader for the following narrative of slave life, in that otherwise happy and prosperous country. In all the large towns in the Southern States, there is a class of slaves who are permitted to hire their time of their owners, and for which they pay a high price. These are mulatto women, or quadroons, as they are familiarly known, and are distinguished for their fascinating beauty. The handsomest usually pays the highest price for her time. Many of these women are the favourites of persons who furnish them with the means of paying their owners, and not a few are dressed in the most extravagant manner. Reader, when you take into consideration the fact, that amongst the slave population no safeguard is thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave women to be chaste, you will not be surprised when we tell you that immorality and vice pervade the cities of the Southern States in a manner unknown in the cities and towns of the Northern States. Indeed most of the slave women have no higher aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man. And at Negro balls and parties, this class of women usually cut the greatest figure. At the close of the year, the following advertisement appeared in a newspaper published in Richmond, the capital of the state of Virginia:—"Notice: Thirty-eight Negroes will be offered for sale on Monday, November 10th, at twelve o'clock, being the entire stock of the late John Graves, Esq. The Negroes are in good condition, some of them very prime; among them are several mechanics, able-bodied field hands, ploughboys, and women with children at the breast, and some of them very prolific in their generating qualities, affording a rare opportunity to any one who wishes to raise a strong and healthy lot of servants for their own use. Also several mulatto girls of rare personal qualities: two of them very superior. Any gentleman or lady wishing to purchase, can take any of the above slaves on trial for a week, for which no charge will be made." Amongst the above slaves to be sold were Currer and her two daughters, Clotel and Althesa; the latter were the girls spoken of in the advertisement as "very superior." Currer was a bright mulatto, and of prepossessing appearance, though then nearly forty years of age. She had hired her time for more than twenty years, during which time she had lived in Richmond. In her younger days Currer had been the housekeeper of a young slaveholder; but of later years had been a laundress or washerwoman, and was considered to be a woman of great taste in getting up linen. The gentleman for whom she had kept house was Thomas Jefferson, by whom she had two daughters. Jefferson being called to Washington to fill a government appointment, Currer was left behind, and thus she took herself to the business of washing, by which means she paid her master, Mr. Graves, and supported herself and two children. At the time of the decease of her master, Currer's daughters, Clotel and Althesa, were aged respectively sixteen and fourteen years, and both, like most of their own sex in America, were well grown. Currer early resolved to bring her daughters up as ladies, as she termed it, and therefore imposed little or no work upon them. As her daughters grew older, Currer had to pay a stipulated price for them; yet her notoriety as a laundress of the first class enabled her to put an extra price upon her charges, and thus she and her daughters lived in comparative luxury. To bring up Clotel and Althesa to attract attention, and especially at balls and parties, was the great aim of Currer. Although the term "Negro ball" is applied to most of these gatherings, yet a majority of the attendants are often whites. Nearly all the Negro parties in the cities and towns of the Southern States are made up of quadroon and mulatto girls, and white men. These are democratic gatherings, where gentlemen, shopkeepers, and their clerks, all appear upon terms of perfect equality. And there is a degree of gentility and decorum in these companies that is not surpassed by similar gatherings of white people in the Slave States. It was at one of these parties that Horatio Green, the son of a wealthy gentleman of Richmond, was first introduced to Clotel. The young man had just returned from college, and was in his twenty-second year. Clotel was sixteen, and was admitted by all to be the most beautiful girl, coloured or white, in the city. So attentive was the young man to the quadroon during the evening that it was noticed by all, and became a matter of general conversation; while Currer appeared delighted beyond measure at her daughter's conquest. From that evening, young Green became the favourite visitor at Currer's house. He soon promised to purchase Clotel, as speedily as it could be effected, and make her mistress of her own dwelling; and Currer looked forward with pride to the time when she should see her daughter emancipated and free. It was a beautiful moonlight night in August, when all who reside in tropical climes are eagerly gasping for a breath of fresh air, that Horatio Green was seated in the small garden behind Currer's cottage, with the object of his affections by his side. And it was here that Horatio drew from his pocket the newspaper, wet from the press, and read the advertisement for the sale of the slaves to which we have alluded; Currer and her two daughters being of the number. At the close of the evening's visit, and as the young man was leaving, he said to the girl, "You shall soon be free and your own mistress." As might have been expected, the day of sale brought an unusual large number together to compete for the property to be sold. Farmers who make a business of raising slaves for the market were there; slave-traders and speculators were also numerously represented; and in the midst of this throng was one who felt a deeper interest in the result of the sale than any other of the bystanders; this was young Green. True to his promise, he was there with a blank bank check in his pocket, awaiting with impatience to enter the list as a bidder for the beautiful slave. The less valuable slaves were first placed upon the auction block, one after another, and sold to the highest bidder. Husbands and wives were separated with a degree of indifference that is unknown in any other relation of life, except that of slavery. Brothers and sisters were torn from each other; and mothers saw their children leave them for the last time on this earth. It was late in the day, when the greatest number of persons were thought to be present, that Currer and her daughters were brought forward to the place of sale.—Currer was first ordered to ascend the auction stand, which she did with a trembling step. The slave mother was sold to a trader. Althesa, the youngest, and who was scarcely less beautiful than her sister, was sold to the same trader for one thousand dollars. Clotel was the last, and, as was expected, commanded a higher price than any that had been offered for sale that day. The appearance of Clotel on the auction block created a deep sensation amongst the crowd. There she stood, with a complexion as white as most of those who were waiting with a wish to become her purchasers; her features as finely defined as any of her sex of pure Anglo-Saxon; her long black wavy hair done up in the neatest manner; her form tall and graceful, and her whole appearance indicating one superior to her position. The auctioneer commenced by saying, that "Miss Clotel had been reserved for the last, because she was the most valuable. How much, gentlemen? Real Albino, fit for a fancy girl for any one. She enjoys good health, and has a sweet temper. How much do you say?" "Five hundred dollars." "Only five hundred for such a girl as this? Gentlemen, she is worth a deal more than that sum; you certainly don't know the value of the article you are bidding upon. Here, gentlemen, I hold in my hand a paper certifying that she has a good moral character." "Seven hundred." "Ah; gentlemen, that is something like. This paper also states that she is very intelligent." "Eight hundred." "She is a devoted Christian, and perfectly trustworthy." "Nine hundred." "Nine fifty." "Ten." "Eleven." "Twelve hundred." Here the sale came to a dead stand. The auctioneer stopped, looked around, and began in a rough manner to relate some anecdotes relative to the sale of slaves, which, he said, had come under his own observation. At this juncture the scene was indeed strange. Laughing, joking, swearing, smoking, spitting, and talking kept up a continual hum and noise amongst the crowd; while the slave-girl stood with tears in her eyes, at one time looking towards her mother and sister, and at another towards the young man whom she hoped would become her purchaser. "The chastity of this girl is pure; she has never been from under her mother's care; she is a virtuous creature." "Thirteen." "Fourteen." "Fifteen." "Fifteen hundred dollars," cried the auctioneer, and the maiden was struck for that sum. This was a Southern auction, at which the bones, muscles, sinews, blood, and nerves of a young lady of sixteen were sold for five hundred dollars; her moral character for two hundred; her improved intellect for one hundred; her Christianity for three hundred; and her chastity and virtue for four hundred dollars more. And this, too, in a city thronged with churches, whose tall spires look like so many signals pointing to heaven, and whose ministers preach that slavery is a God-ordained institution! What words can tell the inhumanity, the atrocity, and the immorality of that doctrine which, from exalted office, commends such a crime to the favour of enlightened and Christian people? What indignation from all the world is not due to the government and people who put forth all their strength and power to keep in existence such an institution? Nature abhors it; the age repels it; and Christianity needs all her meekness to forgive it. Clotel was sold for fifteen hundred dollars, but her purchaser was Horatio Green. Thus closed a Negro sale, at which two daughters of Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the presidents of the great republic, were disposed of to the highest bidder! "O God! my every heart-string cries, Dost thou these scenes behold In this our boasted Christian land, And must the truth be told? "Blush, Christian, blush! for e'en the dark, Untutored heathen see Thy inconsistency; and, lo! They scorn thy God, and thee!" CHAPTER II GOING TO THE SOUTH "My country, shall thy honoured name, Be as a bye-word through the world? Rouse! for, as if to blast thy fame, This keen reproach is at thee hurled; The banner that above the waves, Is floating o'er three million slaves." DICK WALKER, the slave speculator, who had purchased Currer and Althesa, put them in prison until his gang was made up, and then, with his forty slaves, started for the New Orleans market. As many of the slaves had been brought up in Richmond, and had relations residing there, the slave trader determined to leave the city early in the morning, so as not to witness any of those scenes so common where slaves are separated from their relatives and friends, when about departing for the Southern market. This plan was successful; for not even Clotel, who had been every day at the prison to see her mother and sister, knew of their departure. A march of eight days through the interior of the state, and they arrived on the banks of the Ohio river, where they were all put on board a steamer, and then speedily sailed for the place of their destination. Walker had already advertised in the New Orleans papers, that he would be there at a stated time with "a prime lot of able bodied slaves ready for field service; together with a few extra ones, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five." But, like most who make a business of buying and selling slaves for gain, he often bought some who were far advanced in years, and would always try to sell them for five or ten years younger than they actually were. Few persons can arrive at anything like the age of a Negro, by mere observation, unless they are well acquainted with the race. Therefore the slave-trader very frequently carried out this deception with perfect impunity. After the steamer had left the wharf, and was fairly on the bosom of the Father of Waters, Walker called his servant Pompey to him, and instructed him as to "getting the Negroes ready for market." Amongst the forty Negroes were several whose appearance indicated that they had seen some years, and had gone through some services. Their grey hair and whiskers at once pronounced them to be above the ages set down in the trader's advertisement. Pompey had long been with the trader, and knew his business; and if he did not take delight in discharging his duty, he did it with a degree of alacrity, so that he might receive the approbation of his master. "Pomp," as Walker usually called him, was of real Negro blood, and would often say, when alluding to himself, "Dis nigger is no countefit; he is de genewine artekil." Pompey was of low stature, round face, and, like most of his race, had a set of teeth, which for whiteness and beauty could not be surpassed; his eyes large, lips thick, and hair short and woolly. Pompey had been with Walker so long, and had seen so much of the buying and selling of slaves, that he appeared perfectly indifferent to the heartrending scenes which daily occurred in his presence. It was on the second day of the steamer's voyage that Pompey selected five of the old slaves, took them in a room by themselves, and commenced preparing them for the market. "Well," said Pompey, addressing himself to the company, "I is de gentman dat is to get you ready, so dat you will bring marser a good price in de Orleans market. How old is you?" addressing himself to a man who, from appearance, was not less than forty. "If I live to see next corn-planting time I will either be forty-five or fifty-five, I don't know which." "Dat may be," replied Pompey; "But now you is only thirty years old; dat is what marser says you is to be." "I know I is more den dat," responded the man. "I knows nothing about dat," said Pompey; "but when you get in de market, an anybody axe you how old you is, an you tell 'em forty-five, marser will tie you up an gib you de whip like smoke. But if you tell 'em dat you is only thirty, den he wont." "Well den, I guess I will only be thirty when dey axe me," replied the chattel. "What your name?" inquired Pompey. "Geemes," answered the man. "Oh, Uncle Jim, is it?" "Yes." "Den you must have off dem dare whiskers of yours, an when you get to Orleans you must grease dat face an make it look shiney." This was all said by Pompey in a manner which clearly showed that he knew what he was about. "How old is you?" asked Pompey of a tall, strong-looking man. "I was twenty-nine last potato-digging time," said the man. "What's your name?" "My name is Tobias, but dey call me 'Toby.'" "Well, Toby, or Mr. Tobias, if dat will suit you better, you is now twenty-three years old, an no more. Dus you hear dat?" "Yes," responded Toby. Pompey gave each to understand how old he was to be when asked by persons who wished to purchase, and then reported to his master that the "old boys" were all right. At eight o'clock on the evening of the third day, the lights of another steamer were seen in the distance, and apparently coming up very fast. This was a signal for a general commotion on the Patriot, and everything indicated that a steamboat race was at hand. Nothing can exceed the excitement attendant upon a steamboat race on the Mississippi river. By the time the boats had reached Memphis, they were side by side, and each exerting itself to keep the ascendancy in point of speed. The night was clear, the moon shining brightly, and the boats so near to each other that the passengers were calling out from one boat to the other. On board the Patriot, the firemen were using oil, lard, butter, and even bacon, with the wood, for the purpose of raising the steam to its highest pitch. The blaze, mingled with the black smoke, showed plainly that the other boat was burning more than wood. The two boats soon locked, so that the hands of the boats were passing from vessel to vessel, and the wildest excitement prevailed throughout amongst both passengers and crew. At this moment the engineer of the Patriot was seen to fasten down the safety-valve, so that no steam should escape. This was, indeed, a dangerous resort. A few of the boat hands who saw what had taken place, left that end of the boat for more secure quarters. The Patriot stopped to take in passengers, and still no steam was permitted to escape. At the starting of the boat cold water was forced into the boilers by the machinery, and, as might have been expected, one of the boilers immediately exploded. One dense fog of steam filled every part of the vessel, while shrieks, groans, and cries were heard on every hand. The saloons and cabins soon had the appearance of a hospital. By this time the boat had landed, and the Columbia, the other boat, had come alongside to render assistance to the disabled steamer. The killed and scalded (nineteen in number) were put on shore, and the Patriot, taken in tow by the Columbia, was soon again on its way. It was now twelve o'clock at night, and instead of the passengers being asleep the majority were ambling in the saloons. Thousands of dollars change hands during a passage from Louisville or St. Louis to New Orleans on a Mississippi steamer, and many men, and even ladies, are completely ruined. "Go call my boy, steward," said Mr. Smith, as he took his cards one by one from the table. In a few moments a fine looking, bright-eyed mulatto boy, apparently about fifteen years of age, was standing by his master's side at the table. "I will see you, and five hundred dollars better," said Smith, as his servant Jerry approached the table. "What price do you set on that boy?" asked Johnson, as he took a roll of bills from his pocket. "He will bring a thousand dollars, any day, in the New Orleans market," replied Smith. "Then you bet the whole of the boy, do you?" "Yes." "I call you, then," said Johnson, at the same time spreading his cards out upon the table. "You have beat me," said Smith, as soon as he saw the cards. Jerry, who was standing on top of the table, with the bank notes and silver dollars round his feet, was now ordered to descend from the table. "You will not forget that you belong to me," said Johnson, as the young slave was stepping from the table to a chair. "No, sir," replied the chattel. "Now go back to your bed, and be up in time to-morrow morning to brush my clothes and clean my boots, do you hear?" "Yes, sir," responded Jerry, as he wiped the tears from his eyes. Smith took from his pocket the bill of sale and handed it to Johnson; at the same time saying, "I claim the right of redeeming that boy, Mr. Johnson. My father gave him to me when I came of age, and I promised not to part with him." "Most certainly, sir, the boy shall be yours, whenever you hand me over a cool thousand," replied Johnson. The next morning, as the passengers were assembling in the breakfast saloons and upon the guards of the vessel, and the servants were seen running about waiting upon or looking for their masters, poor Jerry was entering his new master's stateroom with his boots. "Who do you belong to?" said a gentleman to an old black man, who came along leading a fine dog that he had been feeding. "When I went to sleep last night, I belonged to Governor Lucas; but I understand dat he is bin gambling all night, so I don't know who owns me dis morning." Such is the uncertainty of a slave's position. He goes to bed at night the property of the man with whom he has lived for years, and gets up in the morning the slave of some one whom he has never seen before! To behold five or six tables in a steamboat's cabin, with half-a-dozen men playing at cards, and money, pistols, bowie-knives, all in confusion on the tables, is what may be seen at almost any time on the Mississippi river. On the fourth day, while at Natchez, taking in freight and passengers, Walker, who had been on shore to see some of his old customers, returned, accompanied by a tall, thin-faced man, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth, which immediately proclaimed him to be a clergyman. "I want a good, trusty woman for house service," said the stranger, as they entered the cabin where Walker's slaves were kept. "Here she is, and no mistake," replied the trader. "Stand up, Currer, my gal; here's a gentleman who wishes to see if you will suit him." Althesa clung to her mother's side, as the latter rose from her seat. "She is a rare cook, a good washer, and will suit you to a T, I am sure." "If you buy me, I hope you will buy my daughter too," said the woman, in rather an excited manner. "I only want one for my own use, and would not need another," said the man in black, as he and the trader left the room. Walker and the parson went into the saloon, talked over the matter, the bill of sale was made out, the money paid over, and the clergyman left, with the understanding that the woman should be delivered to him at his house. It seemed as if poor Althesa would have wept herself to death, for the first two days after her mother had been torn from her side by the hand of the ruthless trafficker in human flesh. On the arrival of the boat at Baton Rouge, an additional number of passengers were taken on board; and, amongst them, several persons who had been attending the races. Gambling and drinking were now the order of the day. Just as the ladies and gentlemen were assembling at the supper-table, the report of a pistol was heard in the direction of the Social Hall, which caused great uneasiness to the ladies, and took the gentlemen to that part of the cabin. However, nothing serious had occurred. A man at one of the tables where they were gambling had been seen attempting to conceal a card in his sleeve, and one of the party seized his pistol and fired; but fortunately the barrel of the pistol was knocked up, just as it was about to be discharged, and the ball passed through the upper deck, instead of the man's head, as intended. Order was soon restored; all went on well the remainder of the night, and the next day, at ten o'clock, the boat arrived at New Orleans, and the passengers went to the hotels and the slaves to the market! "Our eyes are yet on Afric's shores, Her thousand wrongs we still deplore; We see the grim slave trader there; We hear his fettered victim's prayer; And hasten to the sufferer's aid, Forgetful of our own 'slave trade.' "The Ocean 'Pirate's' fiend-like form Shall sink beneath the vengeance-storm; His heart of steel shall quake before The battle-din and havoc roar: The knave shall die, the Law hath said, While it protects our own 'slave trade.' "What earthly eye presumes to scan The wily Proteus-heart of man?— What potent hand will e'er unroll The mantled treachery of his soul!— O where is he who hath surveyed The horrors of our own 'slave trade?' "There is an eye that wakes in light, There is a hand of peerless might; Which, soon or late, shall yet assail And rend dissimulation's veil: Which will unfold the masquerade Which justifies our own 'slave trade.'" CHAPTER III THE NEGRO CHASE WE shall now return to Natchez, where we left Currer in the hands of the Methodist parson. For many years, Natchez has enjoyed a notoriety for the inhumanity and barbarity of its inhabitants, and the cruel deeds perpetrated there, which have not been equalled in any other city in the Southern States. The following advertisements, which we take from a newspaper published in the vicinity, will show how they catch their Negroes who believe in the doctrine that "all men are created free." "NEGRO DOGS.—The undersigned, having bought the entire pack of Negro dogs (of the Hay and Allen stock), he now proposes to catch runaway Negroes. His charges will be three dollars a day for hunting, and fifteen dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and one half miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones' Bluff Road. "Nov. 6, 1845." "NOTICE.—The subscriber, Lying on Carroway Lake, on Hoe's Bayou, in Carroll parish, sixteen miles on the road leading from Bayou Mason to Lake Providence, is ready with a pack of dogs to hunt runaway Negroes at any time. These dogs are well trained, and are known throughout the parish. Letters addressed to me at Providence will secure immediate attention. My terms are five dollars per day for hunting the trails, whether the Negro is caught or not. Where a twelve hours' trail is shown, and the Negro not taken, no charge is made. For taking a Negro, twenty-five dollars, and no charge made for hunting. "Nov. 26, 1847." These dogs will attack a Negro at their master's bidding and cling to him as the bull-dog will cling to a beast. Many are the speculations, as to whether the Negro will be secured alive or dead, when these dogs once get on his track. A slave hunt took place near Natchez, a few days after Currer's arrival, which was calculated to give her no favourable opinion of the people. Two slaves had run off owing to severe punishment. The dogs were put upon their trail. The slaves went into the swamps, with the hope that the dogs when put on their scent would be unable to follow them through the water. The dogs soon took to the swamp, which lies between the highlands, which was now covered with water, waist deep: here these faithful animals, swimming nearly all the time, followed the zigzag course, the tortuous twistings and windings of these two fugitives, who, it was afterwards discovered, were lost; sometimes scenting the tree wherein they had found a temporary refuge from the mud and water; at other places where the deep mud had pulled off a shoe, and they had not taken time to put it on again. For two hours and a half, for four or five miles, did men and dogs wade through this bushy, dismal swamp, surrounded with grim-visaged alligators, who seemed to look on with jealous eye at this encroachment of their hereditary domain; now losing the trail—then slowly and dubiously taking it off again, until they triumphantly threaded it out, bringing them back to the river, where it was found that the Negroes had crossed their own trail, near the place of starting. In the meantime a heavy shower had taken place, putting out the trail. The Negroes were now at least four miles ahead. It is well known to hunters that it requires the keenest scent and best blood to overcome such obstacles, and yet these persevering and sagacious animals conquered every difficulty. The slaves now made a straight course for the Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara road, about four miles distant. Feeling hungry now, after their morning walk, and perhaps thirsty, too, they went about half a mile off the road, and ate a good, hearty, substantial breakfast. Negroes must eat, as well as other people, but the dogs will tell on them. Here, for a moment, the dogs are at fault, but soon unravel the mystery, and bring them back to the road again; and now what before was wonderful, becomes almost a miracle. Here, in this common highway—the thoroughfare for the whole country around through mud and through mire, meeting waggons and teams, and different solitary wayfarers, and, what above all is most astonishing, actually running through a gang of Negroes, their favourite game, who were working on the road, they pursue the track of the two Negroes; they even ran for eight miles to the very edge of the plain—the slaves near them for the last mile. At first they would fain believe it some hunter chasing deer. Nearer and nearer the whimpering pack presses on; the delusion begins to dispel; all at once the truth flashes upon them like a glare of light; their hair stands on end; 'tis Tabor with his dogs. The scent becomes warmer and warmer. What was an irregular cry, now deepens into one ceaseless roar, as the relentless pack rolls on after its human prey. It puts one in mind of Actaeon and his dogs. They grow desperate and leave the road, in the vain hope of shaking them off. Vain hope, indeed! The momentary cessation only adds new zest to the chase. The cry grows louder and louder; the yelp grows short and quick, sure indication that the game is at hand. It is a perfect rush upon the part of the hunters, while the Negroes call upon their weary and jaded limbs to do their best, but they falter and stagger beneath them. The breath of the hounds is almost upon their very heels, and yet they have a vain hope of escaping these sagacious animals. They can run no longer; the dogs are upon them; they hastily attempt to climb a tree, and as the last one is nearly out of reach, the catch-dog seizes him by the leg, and brings him to the ground; he sings out lustily and the dogs are called off. After this man was secured, the one in the tree was ordered to come down; this, however, he refused to do, but a gun being pointed at him, soon caused him to change his mind. On reaching the ground, the fugitive made one more bound, and the chase again commenced. But it was of no use to run and he soon yielded. While being tied, he committed an unpardonable offence: he resisted, and for that he must be made an example on their arrival home. A mob was collected together, and a Lynch court was held, to determine what was best to be done with the Negro who had had the impudence to raise his hand against a white man. The Lynch court decided that the Negro should be burnt at the stake. A Natchez newspaper, the Free Trader, giving an account of it says, "The body was taken and chained to a tree immediately on the banks of the Mississippi, on what is called Union Point. Faggots were then collected and piled around him, to which he appeared quite indifferent. When the work was completed, he was asked what he had to say. He then warned all to take example by him, and asked the prayers of all around; he then called for a drink of water, which was handed to him; he drank it, and said, 'Now set fire—I am ready to go in peace!' The torches were lighted, and placed in the pile, which soon ignited. He watched unmoved the curling flame that grew, until it began to entwine itself around and feed upon his body; then he sent forth cries of agony painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out; at the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree (not being well secured) drew out, and he leaped from the burning pile. At that moment the sharp ringing of several rifles was heard: the body of the Negro fell a corpse on the ground. He was picked up by some two or three, and again thrown into the fire, and consumed, not a vestige remaining to show that such a being ever existed." Nearly 4,000 slaves were collected from the plantations in the neighbourhood to witness this scene. Numerous speeches were made by the magistrates and ministers of religion to the large concourse of slaves, warning them, and telling them that the same fate awaited them, if they should prove rebellious to their owners. There are hundreds of Negroes who run away and live in the woods. Some take refuge in the swamps, because they are less frequented by human beings. A Natchez newspaper gave the following account of the hiding-place of a slave who had been captured:— "A runaway's den was discovered on Sunday, near the Washington Spring, in a little patch of woods, where it had been for several months so artfully concealed under ground, that it was detected only by accident, though in sight of two or three houses, and near the road and fields where there has been constant daily passing. The entrance was concealed by a pile of pine straw, representing a hog-bed, which being removed, discovered a trap-door and steps that led to a room about six feet square, comfortably ceiled with plank, containing a small fire-place, the flue of which was ingeniously conducted above ground and concealed by the straw. The inmates took the alarm, and made their escape; but Mr. Adams and his excellent dogs being put upon the trail, soon run down and secured one of them, which proved to be a Negro-fellow who had been out about a year. He stated that the other occupant was a woman, who had been a runaway a still longer time. In the den was found a quantity of meal, bacon, corn, potatoes, &c. and various cooking utensils and wearing apparel."—Vicksburg Sentinel, Dec. 6th, 1838. Currer was one of those who witnessed the execution of the slave at the stake, and it gave her no very exalted opinion of the people of the cotton growing district. CHAPTER IV THE QUADROON'S HOME "How sweetly on the hill-side sleeps The sunlight with its quickening rays! The verdant trees that crown the steeps, Grow greener in its quivering blaze." ABOUT three miles from Richmond is a pleasant plain, with here and there a beautiful cottage surrounded by trees so as scarcely to be seen. Among them was one far retired from the public roads, and almost hidden among the trees. It was a perfect model of rural beauty. The piazzas that surrounded it were covered with clematis and passion flower. The pride of China mixed its oriental looking foliage with the majestic magnolia, and the air was redolent with the fragrance of flowers, peeping out of every nook and nodding upon you with a most unexpected welcome. The tasteful hand of art had not learned to imitate the lavish beauty and harmonious disorder of nature, but they lived together in loving amity, and spoke in accordant tones. The gateway rose in a gothic arch, with graceful tracery in iron work, surmounted by a cross, round which fluttered and played the mountain fringe, that lightest and most fragile of vines. This cottage was hired by Horatio Green for Clotel, and the quadroon girl soon found herself in her new home. The tenderness of Clotel's conscience, together with the care her mother had with her and the high value she placed upon virtue, required an outward marriage; though she well knew that a union with her proscribed race was unrecognised by law, and therefore the ceremony would give her no legal hold on Horatio's constancy. But her high poetic nature regarded reality rather than the semblance of things; and when he playfully asked how she could keep him if he wished to run away, she replied, "If the mutual love we have for each other, and the dictates of your own conscience do not cause you to remain my husband, and your affections fall from me, I would not, if I could, hold you by a single fetter." It was indeed a marriage sanctioned by heaven, although unrecognised on earth. There the young couple lived secluded from the world, and passed their time as happily as circumstances would permit. It was Clotel's wish that Horatio should purchase her mother and sister, but the young man pleaded that he was unable, owing to the fact that he had not come into possession of his share of property, yet he promised that when he did, he would seek them out and purchase them. Their first-born was named Mary, and her complexion was still lighter than her mother. Indeed she was not darker than other white children. As the child grew older, it more and more resembled its mother. The iris of her large dark eye had the melting mezzotints, which remains the last vestige of African ancestry, and gives that plaintive expression, so often observed, and so appropriate to that docile and injured race. Clotel was still happier after the birth of her dear child; for Horatio, as might have been expected, was often absent day and night with his friends in the city, and the edicts of society had built up a wall of separation between the quadroon and them. Happy as Clotel was in Horatio's love, and surrounded by an outward environment of beauty, so well adapted to her poetic spirit, she felt these incidents with inexpressible pain. For herself she cared but little; for she had found a sheltered home in Horatio's heart, which the world might ridicule, but had no power to profane. But when she looked at her beloved Mary, and reflected upon the unavoidable and dangerous position which the tyranny of society had awarded her, her soul was filled with anguish. The rare loveliness of the child increased daily, and was evidently ripening into most marvellous beauty. The father seemed to rejoice in it with unmingled pride; but in the deep tenderness of the mother's eye, there was an indwelling sadness that spoke of anxious thoughts and fearful foreboding. Clotel now urged Horatio to remove to France or England, where both her [sic] and her child would be free, and where colour was not a crime. This request excited but little opposition, and was so attractive to his imagination, that he might have overcome all intervening obstacles, had not "a change come over the spirit of his dreams." He still loved Clotel; but he was now becoming engaged in political and other affairs which kept him oftener and longer from the young mother; and ambition to become a statesman was slowly gaining the ascendancy over him. Among those on whom Horatio's political success most depended was a very popular and wealthy man, who had an only daughter. His visits to the house were at first purely of a political nature; but the young lady was pleasing, and he fancied he discovered in her a sort of timid preference for himself. This excited his vanity, and awakened thoughts of the great worldly advantages connected with a union. Reminiscences of his first love kept these vague ideas in check for several months; for with it was associated the idea of restraint. Moreover, Gertrude, though inferior in beauty, was yet a pretty contrast to her rival. Her light hair fell in silken ringlets down her shoulders, her blue eyes were gentle though inexpressive, and her healthy cheeks were like opening rosebuds. He had already become accustomed to the dangerous experiment of resisting his own inward convictions; and this new impulse to ambition, combined with the strong temptation of variety in love, met the ardent young man weakened in moral principle, and unfettered by laws of the land. The change wrought upon him was soon noticed by Clotel. CHAPTER V THE SLAVE MARKET "What! mothers from their children riven! What! God's own image bought and sold! Americans to market driven, And barter'd as the brute for gold."—Whittier. NOT far from Canal-street, in the city of New Orleans, stands a large two story flat building surrounded by a stone wall twelve feet high, the top of which is covered with bits of glass, and so constructed as to prevent even the possibility of any one's passing over it without sustaining great injury. Many of the rooms resemble cells in a prison. In a small room near the "office" are to be seen any number of iron collars, hobbles, handcuffs, thumbscrews, cowhides, whips, chains, gags, and yokes. A back yard inclosed by a high wall looks something like the playground attached to one of our large New England schools, and in which are rows of benches and swings. Attached to the back premises is a good-sized kitchen, where two old Negresses are at work, stewing, boiling, and baking, and occasionally wiping the sweat from their furrowed and swarthy brows. The slave-trader Walker, on his arrival in New Orleans, took up his quarters at this slave pen with his gang of human cattle: and the morning after, at ten o'clock, they were exhibited for sale. There, first of all, was the beautiful Althesa, whose pale countenance and dejected look told how many sad hours she had passed since parting with her mother at Natchez. There was a poor woman who had been separated from her husband and five children. Another woman, whose looks and manner were expressive of deep anguish, sat by her side. There, too, was "Uncle Geemes," with his whiskers off, his face shaved clean, and the grey hair plucked out, and ready to be sold for ten years younger than he was. Toby was also there, with his face shaved and greased, ready for inspection. The examination commenced, and was carried on in a manner calculated to shock the feelings of any one not devoid of the milk of human kindness. "What are you wiping your eyes for?" inquired a fat, red-faced man, with a white hat set on one side of his head, and a cigar in his mouth, of a woman who sat on one of the stools. "I s'pose I have been crying." "Why do you cry?" "Because I have left my man behind." "Oh, if I buy you I will furnish you with a better man than you left. I have lots of young bucks on my farm." "I don't want, and will never have, any other man," replied the woman. "What's your name?" asked a man in a straw hat of a tall Negro man, who stood with his arms folded across his breast, and leaning against the wall. "My name is Aaron, sir." "How old are you?" "Twenty-five." "Where were you raised?" "In old Virginny, sir." "How many men have owned you?" "Four." "Do you enjoy good health?" "Yes, sir." "How long did you live with your first owner?" "Twenty years." "Did you ever run away?" "No, sir." "Did you ever strike your master?" "No, sir." "Were you ever whipped much?" "No, sir, I s'pose I did not deserve it." "How long did you live with your second master?" "Ten years, sir." "Have you a good appetite?" "Yes, sir." "Can you eat your allowance?" "Yes, sir, when I can get it." "What were you employed at in Virginia?" "I worked in de terbacar feel." "In the tobacco field?" "Yes, sir." "How old did you say you were?" "I will be twenty-five if I live to see next sweet potater digging time." "I am a cotton planter, and if I buy you, you will have to work in the cotton field. My men pick one hundred and fifty pounds a day, and the women one hundred and forty, and those who fail to pick their task receive five stripes from the cat for each pound that is wanting. Now, do you think you could keep up with the rest of the bands?" "I don't know, sir, I 'spec I'd have to." "How long did you live with your third master?" "Three years, sir." "Why, this makes you thirty-three, I thought you told me you was only twenty five?" Aaron now looked first at the planter, then at the trader, and seemed perfectly bewildered. He had forgotten the lesson given him by Pompey as to his age, and the planter's circuitous talk (doubtless to find out the slave's real age) had the Negro off his guard. "I must see your back, so as to know how much you have been whipped, before I think of buying," said the planter. Pompey, who had been standing by during the examination, thought that his services were now required, and stepping forward with a degree of officiousness, said to Aaron, "Don't you hear de gentman tell you he want to zamon your limbs. Come, unharness yeself, old boy, an don't be standing dar." Aaron was soon examined and pronounced "sound"; yet the conflicting statement about the age was not satisfactory. Fortunate for Althesa she was spared the pain of undergoing such an examination. Mr. Crawford, a teller in one of the banks, had just been married, and wanted a maid-servant for his wife; and passing through the market in the early part of the day, was pleased with the young slave's appearance and purchased her, and in his dwelling the quadroon found a much better home than often falls to the lot of a slave sold in the New Orleans market. The heartrending and cruel traffic in slaves which has been so often described, is not confined to any particular class of persons. No one forfeits his or her character or standing in society, by buying or selling slaves; or even raising slaves for the market. The precise number of slaves carried from the slave-raising to the slave-consuming states, we have no means of knowing. But it must be very great, as more than forty thousand were sold and taken out of the state of Virginia in one year. Known to God only is the amount of human agony and suffering which sends its cry from the slave markets and Negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man, up to his ear; mothers weeping for their children, breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts. From some you will hear the burst of bitter lamentation, while from others the loud hysteric laugh, denoting still deeper agony. Most of them leave the market for cotton or rice plantations, "Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever demon-strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air." CHAPTER VI THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER "What! preach and enslave men? Give thanks—and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt hard the captive's door."—Whittier. THE Rev. John Peck was a native of the state of Connecticut, where he was educated for the ministry, in the Methodist persuasion. His father was a strict follower of John Wesley, and spared no pains in his son's education, with the hope that he would one day be as renowned as the great leader of his sect. John had scarcely finished his education at New Haven, when he was invited by an uncle, then on a visit to his father, to spend a few months at Natchez in the state of Mississippi. Young Peck accepted his uncle's invitation, and accompanied him to the South. Few young men, and especially clergymen, going fresh from a college to the South, but are looked upon as geniuses in a small way, and who are not invited to all the parties in the neighbourhood. Mr. Peck was not an exception to this rule. The society into which he was thrown on his arrival at Natchez was too brilliant for him not to be captivated by it; and, as might have been expected, he succeeded in captivating a plantation with seventy slaves, if not the heart of the lady to whom it belonged. Added to this, he became a popular preacher, had a large congregation with a snug salary. Like other planters, Mr. Peck confided the care of his farm to Ned Huckelby, an overseer of high reputation in his way. The Poplar Farm, as it was called, was situated in a beautiful valley nine miles from Natchez, and near the river Mississippi. The once unshorn face of nature had given way, and now the farm blossomed with a splendid harvest, the neat cottage stood in a grove where Lombardy poplars lift their tufted tops almost to prop the skies; the willow, locust, and horse-chestnut spread their branches, and flowers never cease to blossom. This was the parson's country house, where the family spent only two months during the year. The town residence was a fine villa, seated upon the brow of a hill at the edge of the city. It was in the kitchen of this house that Currer found her new home. Mr. Peck was, every inch of him, a democrat, and early resolved that his "people," as he called his slaves, should be well fed and not overworked, and therefore laid down the law and gospel to the overseer as well as the slaves. "It is my wish," said he to Mr. Carlton, an old school-fellow, who was spending a few days with him, "it is my wish that a new system be adopted on the plantations in this estate. I believe that the sons of Ham should have the gospel, and I intend that my Negroes shall. The gospel is calculated to make mankind better, and none should be without it." "What say you," replied Carlton, "about the right of man to his liberty?" "Now, Carlton, you have begun again to harp about man's rights; I really wish you could see this matter as I do. I have searched in vain for any authority for man's natural rights; if he had any, they existed before the fall. That is, Adam and Eve may have had some rights which God gave them, and which modern philosophy, in its pretended reverence for the name of God, prefers to call natural rights. I can imagine they had the right to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; they were restricted even in this by the prohibition of one. As far as I know without positive assertion, their liberty of action was confined to the garden. These were not 'inalienable rights,' however, for they forfeited both them and life with the first act of disobedience. Had they, after this, any rights? We cannot imagine them; they were condemned beings; they could have no rights, but by Christ's gift as king. These are the only rights man can have as an independent isolated being, if we choose to consider him in this impossible position, in which so many theorists have placed him. If he had no rights, he could suffer no wrongs. Rights and wrongs are therefore necessarily the creatures of society, such as man would establish himself in his gregarious state. They are, in this state, both artificial and voluntary. Though man has no rights, as thus considered, undoubtedly he has the power, by such arbitrary rules of right and wrong as his necessity enforces." "I regret I cannot see eye to eye with you," said Carlton. "I am a disciple of Rousseau, and have for years made the rights of man my study; and I must confess to you that I can see no difference between white men and black men as it regards liberty." "Now, my dear Carlton, would you really have the Negroes enjoy the same rights with ourselves?" "I would, most certainly. Look at our great Declaration of Independence; look even at the constitution of our own Connecticut, and see what is said in these about liberty." "I regard all this talk about rights as mere humbug. The Bible is older than the Declaration of Independence, and there I take my stand. The Bible furnishes to us the armour of proof, weapons of heavenly temper and mould, whereby we can maintain our ground against all attacks. But this is true only when we obey its directions, as well as employ its sanctions. Our rights are there established, but it is always in connection with our duties. If we neglect the one we cannot make good the other. Our domestic institutions can be maintained against the world, if we but allow Christianity to throw its broad shield over them. But if we so act as to array the Bible against our social economy, they must fall. Nothing ever yet stood long against Christianity. Those who say that religious instruction is inconsistent with our peculiar civil polity, are the worst enemies of that polity. They would drive religious men from its defence. Sooner or later, if these views prevail, they will separate the religious portion of our community from the rest, and thus divided we shall become an easy prey. Why, is it not better that Christian men should hold slaves than unbelievers? We know how to value the bread of life, and will not keep it from our slaves." "Well, every one to his own way of thinking," said Carlton, as he changed his position. "I confess," added he, "that I am no great admirer of either the Bible or slavery. My heart is my guide: my conscience is my Bible. I wish for nothing further to satisfy me of my duty to man. If I act rightly to mankind, I shall fear nothing." Carlton had drunk too deeply of the bitter waters of infidelity, and had spent too many hours over the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine, to place that appreciation upon the Bible and its teachings that it demands. During this conversation there was another person in the room, seated by the window, who, although at work upon a fine piece of lace, paid every attention to what was said. This was Georgiana, the only daughter of the parson. She had just returned from Connecticut, where she had finished her education. She had had the opportunity of contrasting the spirit of Christianity and liberty in New England with that of slavery in her native state, and had learned to feel deeply for the injured Negro. Georgiana was in her nineteenth year, and had been much benefited by a residence of five years at the North. Her form was tall and graceful; her features regular and well defined; and her complexion was illuminated by the freshness of youth, beauty, and health. The daughter differed from both the father and his visitor upon the subject which they had been discussing, and as soon as an opportunity offered, she gave it as her opinion, that the Bible was both the bulwark of Christianity and of liberty. With a smile she said, "Of course, papa will overlook my differing from him, for although I am a native of the South, I am by education and sympathy, a Northerner." Mr. Peck laughed and appeared pleased, rather than otherwise, at the manner in which his daughter had expressed herself. From this Georgiana took courage and said, "We must try the character of slavery, and our duty in regard to it, as we should try any other question of character and duty. To judge justly of the character of anything, we must know what it does. That which is good does good, and that which is evil does evil. And as to duty, God's designs indicate his claims. That which accomplishes the manifest design of God is right; that which counteracts it, wrong. Whatever, in its proper tendency and general effect, produces, secures, or extends human welfare, is according to the will of God, and is good; and our duty is to favour and promote, according to our power, that which God favours and promotes by the general law of his providence. On the other hand, whatever in its proper tendency and general effect destroys, abridges, or renders insecure, human welfare, is opposed to God's will, and is evil. And as whatever accords with the will of God, in any manifestation of it should be done and persisted in, so whatever opposes that will should not be done, and if done, should be abandoned. Can that then be right, be well doing—can that obey God's behest, which makes a man a slave? which dooms him and all his posterity, in limitless Generations, to bondage, to unrequited toil through life? 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' This single passage of Scripture should cause us to have respect to the rights of the slave. True Christian love is of an enlarged, disinterested nature. It loves all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, without regard to colour or condition." "Georgiana, my dear, you are an abolitionist; your talk is fanaticism," said Mr. Peck in rather a sharp tone; but the subdued look of the girl, and the presence of Carlton, caused the father to soften his language. Mr. Peck having lost his wife by consumption, and Georgiana being his only child, he loved her too dearly to say more, even if he felt displeased. A silence followed this exhortation from the young Christian. But her remarks had done a noble work. The father's heart was touched; and the sceptic, for the first time, was viewing Christianity in its true light. "I think I must go out to your farm," said Carlton, as if to break the silence. "I shall be pleased to have you go," returned Mr. Peck. "I am sorry I can't go myself, but Huckelby will show you every attention; and I feel confident that when you return to Connecticut, you will do me the justice to say, that I am one who looks after my people, in a moral, social, and religious point of view." "Well, what do you say to my spending next Sunday there?" "Why, I think that a good move; you will then meet with Snyder, our missionary." "Oh, you have missionaries in these parts, have you?" "Yes," replied Mr. Peck; "Snyder is from New York, and is our missionary to the poor, and preaches to our 'people' on Sunday; you will no doubt like him; he is a capital fellow." "Then I shall go," said Carlton, "but only wish I had company." This last remark was intended for Miss Peck, for whom he had the highest admiration. It was on a warm Sunday morning, in the month of May, that Miles Carlton found himself seated beneath a fine old apple tree, whose thick leaves entirely shaded the ground for some distance round. Under similar trees and near by, were gathered together all the "people" belonging to the plantation. Hontz Snyder was a man of about forty years of age, exceedingly low in stature, but of a large frame. He had been brought up in the Mohawk Valley, in the state of New York, and claimed relationship with the oldest Dutch families in that vicinity. He had once been a sailor, and had all the roughness of character that a sea-faring man might expect to possess; together with the half-Yankee, half-German peculiarities of the people of the Mohawk Valley. It was nearly eleven o'clock when a one-horse waggon drove up in haste, and the low squatty preacher got out and took his place at the foot of one of the trees, where a sort of rough board table was placed, and took his books from his pocket and commenced. "As it is rather late," said he, "we will leave the singing and praying for the last, and take our text, and commence immediately. I shall base my remarks on the following passage of Scripture, and hope to have that attention which is due to the cause of God:—'All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them'; that is, do by all mankind just as you would desire they should do by you, if you were in their place and they in yours. "Now, to suit this rule to your particular circumstances, suppose you were masters and mistresses, and had servants under you, would you not desire that your servants should do their business faithfully and honestly, as well when your back was turned as while you were looking over them? Would you not expect that they should take notice of what you said to them? that they should behave themselves with respect towards you and yours, and be as careful of everything belonging to you as you would be yourselves? You are servants: do, therefore, as you would wish to be done by, and you will be both good servants to your masters and good servants to God, who requires this of you, and will reward you well for it, if you do it for the sake of conscience, in obedience to his commands. "You are not to be eye-servants. Now, eye-servants are such as will work hard, and seem mighty diligent, while they think anybody is taking notice of them; but, when their masters' and mistresses' backs are turned they are idle, and neglect their business. I am afraid there are a great many such eye-servants among you, and that you do not consider how great a sin it is to be so, and how severely God will punish you for it. You may easily deceive your owners, and make them have an opinion of you that you do not deserve, and get the praise of men by it; but remember that you cannot deceive Almighty God, who sees your wickedness and deceit, and will punish you accordingly. For the rule is, that you must obey your masters in all things, and do the work they set you about with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good-will doing service as to the Lord, and not as to men. "Take care that you do not fret or murmur, grumble or repine at your condition; for this will not only make your life uneasy, but will greatly offend Almighty God. Consider that it is not yourselves, it is not the people that you belong to, it is not the men who have brought you to it, but it is the will of God who hath by his providence made you servants, because, no doubt, he knew that condition would be best for you in this world, and help you the better towards heaven, if you would but do your duty in it. So that any discontent at your not being free, or rich, or great, as you see some others, is quarrelling with your heavenly Master, and finding fault with God himself, who hath made you what you are, and hath promised you as large a share in the kingdom of heaven as the greatest man alive, if you will but behave yourself aright, and do the business he hath set you about in this world honestly and cheerfully. Riches and power have proved the ruin of many an unhappy soul, by drawing away the heart and affections from God, and fixing them on mean and sinful enjoyments; so that, when God, who knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves, sees that they would be hurtful to us, and therefore keeps them from us, it is the greatest mercy and kindness he could show us. "You may perhaps fancy that, if you had riches and freedom, you could do your duty to God and man with greater pleasure than you can now. But pray consider that, if you can but save your souls through the mercy of God, you will have spent your time to the best of purposes in this world; and he that at last can get to heaven has performed a noble journey, let the road be ever so rugged and difficult. Besides, you really have a great advantage over most white people, who have not only the care of their daily labour upon their hands, but the care of looking forward and providing necessaries for to-morrow and next day, and of clothing and bringing up their children, and of getting food and raiment for as many of you as belong to their families, which often puts them to great difficulties, and distracts their minds so as to break their rest, and take off their thoughts from the affairs of another world. Whereas you are quite eased from all these cares, and have nothing but your daily labour to look after, and, when that is done, take your needful rest. Neither is it necessary for you to think of laying up anything against old age, as white people are obliged to do; for the laws of the country have provided that you shall not be turned off when you are past labour, but shall be maintained, while you live, by those you belong to, whether you are able to work or not. "There is only one circumstance which may appear grievous, that I shall now take notice of, and that is correction. "Now, when correction is given you, you either deserve it, or you do not deserve it. But whether you really deserve it or not, it is your duty, and Almighty God requires that you bear it patiently. You may perhaps think that this is hard doctrine; but, if you consider it right, you must needs think otherwise of it. Suppose, then, that you deserve correction, you cannot but say that it is just and right you should meet with it. Suppose you do not, or at least you do not deserve so much, or so severe a correction, for the fault you have committed, you perhaps have escaped a great many more, and are at last paid for all. Or suppose you are quite innocent of what is laid to your charge, and suffer wrongfully in that particular thing, is it not possible you may have done some other bad thing which was never discovered, and that Almighty God who saw you doing it would not let you escape without punishment one time or another? And ought you not, in such a case, to give glory to him, and be thankful that he would rather punish you in this life for your wickedness than destroy your souls for it in the next life? But suppose even this was not the case (a case hardly to be imagined), and that you have by no means, known or unknown, deserved the correction you suffered, there is this great comfort in it, that, if you bear it patiently, and leave your cause in the hands of God, he will reward you for it in heaven, and the punishment you suffer unjustly here shall turn to your exceeding great glory hereafter. "Lastly, you should serve your masters faithfully, because of their goodness to you. See to what trouble they have been on your account. Your fathers were poor ignorant and barbarous creatures in Africa, and the whites fitted out ships at great trouble and expense and brought you from that benighted land to Christian America, where you can sit under your own vine and fig tree and no one molest or make you afraid. Oh, my dear black brothers and sisters, you are indeed a fortunate and a blessed people. Your masters have many troubles that you know nothing about. If the banks break, your masters are sure to lose something. If the crops turn out poor, they lose by it. If one of you die, your master loses what he paid for you, while you lose nothing. Now let me exhort you once more to be faithful." Often during the delivery of the sermon did Snyder cast an anxious look in the direction where Carlton was seated; no doubt to see if he had found favour with the stranger. Huckelby, the overseer, was also there, seated near Carlton. With all Snyder's gesticulations, sonorous voice, and occasionally bringing his fist down upon the table with the force of a sledge hammer, he could not succeed in keeping the Negroes all interested: four or five were fast asleep, leaning against the trees; as many more were nodding, while not a few were stealthily cracking, and eating hazelnuts. "Uncle Simon, you may strike up a hymn," said the preacher as he closed his Bible. A moment more, and the whole company (Carlton excepted) had joined in the well known hymn, commencing with "When I can read my title clear To mansions in the sky." After the singing, Sandy closed with prayer, and the following questions and answers read, and the meeting was brought to a close. "Q. What command has God given to servants concerning obedience to their masters?—A. 'Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.' "Q. What does God mean by masters according to the flesh?—A. 'Masters in this world.' "Q. What are servants to count their masters worthy of?— A. 'All honour.' "Q. How are they to do the service of their masters?—A. 'With good will, doing service as unto the Lord, and not unto men.' "Q. How are they to try to please their masters?—A. 'Please him well in all things, not answering again.' "Q. Is a servant who is an eye-servant to his earthly master an eye-servant to his heavenly master?—A. 'Yes.' "Q. Is it right in a servant, when commanded to do any thing, to be sullen and slow, and answer his master again?—A. 'No.' "Q. If the servant professes to be a Christian, ought he not to be as a Christian servant, an example to all other servants of love and obedience to his master?—A. 'Yes.' "Q. And, should his master be a Christian also, ought he not on that account specially to love and obey him?—A. 'Yes.' "Q. But suppose the master is hard to please, and threatens and punishes more than he ought, what is the servant to do?—A. 'Do his best to please him.' "Q. When the servant suffers wrongfully at the hands of his master, and, to please God, takes it patiently, will God reward him for it?—A. 'Yes.' "Q. Is it right for the servant to run away, or is it right to harbour a runaway?—A. 'No.' "Q. If a servant runs away, what should be done with him?—A. 'He should be caught and brought back.' "Q. When he is brought back, what should be done with him?— A. 'Whip him well.' "Q. Why may not the whites be slaves as well as the blacks?— A. 'Because the Lord intended the Negroes for slaves.' "Q. Are they better calculated for servants than the whites?— A. 'Yes, their hands are large, the skin thick and tough, and they can stand the sun better than the whites.' "Q. Why should servants not complain when they are whipped?— A. 'Because the Lord has commanded that they should be whipped.' "Q. Where has He commanded it?—A. 'He says, He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.' "Q. Then is the master to blame for whipping his servant?—A. 'Oh, no! he is only doing his duty as a Christian.'" Snyder left the ground in company with Carlton and Huckelby, and the three dined together in the overseer's dwelling. "Well," said Joe, after the three white men were out of hearing, "Marser Snyder bin try hesef to-day." "Yes," replied Ned; "he want to show de strange gentman how good he can preach." "Dat's a new sermon he gib us to-day," said Sandy. "Dees white fokes is de very dibble," said Dick; "and all dey whole study is to try to fool de black people." "Didn't you like de sermon?" asked Uncle Simon. "No," answered four or five voices. "He rared and pitched enough," continued Uncle Simon. Now Uncle Simon was himself a preacher, or at least he thought so, and was rather pleased than otherwise, when he heard others spoken of in a disparaging manner. "Uncle Simon can beat dat sermon all to pieces," said Ned, as he was filling his mouth with hazelnuts. "I got no notion of dees white fokes, no how," returned Aunt Dafney. "Dey all de time tellin' dat de Lord made us for to work for dem, and I don't believe a word of it." "Marser Peck give dat sermon to Snyder, I know," said Uncle Simon. "He jest de one for dat," replied Sandy. "I think de people dat made de Bible was great fools," said Ned. "Why?" Uncle Simon. "'Cause dey made such a great big book and put nuttin' in it, but servants obey yer masters." "Oh," replied Uncle Simon, "thars more in de Bible den dat, only Snyder never reads any other part to us; I use to hear it read in Maryland, and thar was more den what Snyder lets us hear." In the overseer's house there was another scene going on, and far different from what we have here described. CHAPTER VII THE POOR WHITES, SOUTH "No seeming of logic can ever convince the American people, that thousands of our slave-holding brethren are not excellent, humane, and even Christian men, fearing God, and keeping His commandments."—Rev. Dr. Joel Parker. "You like these parts better than New York," said Carlton to Snyder, as they were sitting down to dinner in the overseer's dwelling. "I can't say that I do," was the reply; "I came here ten years ago as missionary, and Mr. Peck wanted me to stay, and I have remained. I travel among the poor whites during the week and preach for the niggers on Sunday." "Are there many poor whites in this district?" "Not here, but about thirty miles from here, in the Sand Hill district; they are as ignorant as horses. Why it was no longer than last week I was up there, and really you would not believe it, that people were so poor off. In New England, and, I may say, in all the free states, they have free schools, and everybody gets educated. Not so here. In Connecticut there is only one out of every five hundred above twenty-one years that can neither read nor write. Here there is one out of every eight that can neither read nor write. There is not a single newspaper taken in five of the counties in this state. Last week I was at Sand Hill for the first time, and I called at a farmhouse. The man was out. It was a low log-hut, and yet it was the best house in that locality. The woman and nine children were there, and the geese, ducks, chickens, pigs, and children were all running about the floor. The woman seemed scared at me when I entered the house. I inquired if I could get a little dinner, and my horse fed. She said, yes, if I would only be good enough to feed him myself, as her 'gal,' as she called her daughter, would be afraid of the horse. When I returned into the house again from the stable, she kept her eyes upon me all the time. At last she said, 'I s'pose you ain't never bin in these parts afore?' 'No,' said I. 'Is you gwine to stay here long?' 'Not very long,' I replied. 'On business, I s'pose.' 'Yes,' said I, 'I am hunting up the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' 'Oh,' exclaimed she, 'hunting for lost sheep is you? Well, you have a hard time to find 'em here. My husband lost an old ram last week, and he ain't found him yet, and he's hunted every day.' 'I am not looking for four-legged sheep,' said I, 'I am hunting for sinners.' 'Ah'; she said, 'then you are a preacher.' 'Yes,' said I. 'You are the first of that sort that's bin in these diggins for many a day.' Turning to her eldest daughter, she said in an excited tone, 'Clar out the pigs and ducks, and sweep up the floor; this is a preacher.' And it was some time before any of the children would come near me; one remained under the bed (which, by the by, was in the same room), all the while I was there. 'Well,' continued the woman, 'I was a tellin' my man only yesterday that I would like once more to go to meetin' before I died, and he said as he should like to do the same. But as you have come, it will save us the trouble of going out of the district.'" "Then you found some of the lost sheep," said Carlton. "Yes," replied Snyder, "I did not find anything else up there. The state makes no provision for educating the poor: they are unable to do it themselves, and they grow up in a state of ignorance and degradation. The men hunt and the women have to go in the fields and labour." "What is the cause of it?" inquired Carlton. "Slavery," answered Snyder, slavery,—and nothing else. Look at the city of Boston; it pays more taxes for the support of the government than this entire state. The people of Boston do more business than the whole population of Mississippi put together. I was told some very amusing things while at Sand Hill. A farmer there told me a story about an old woman, who was very pious herself. She had a husband and three sons, who were sad characters, and she had often prayed for their conversion but to no effect. At last, one day while working in the corn-field, one of her sons was bitten by a rattlesnake. He had scarce reached home before he felt the poison, and in his agony called loudly on his Maker. "The pious old woman, when she heard this, forgetful of her son's misery, and everything else but the glorious hope of his repentance, fell on her knees, and prayed as follows—'Oh! Lord, I thank thee, that thou hast at last opened Jimmy's eyes to the error of his ways; and I pray that, in thy Divine mercy, thou wilt send a rattlesnake to bite the old man, and another to bite Tom, and another to bite Harry, for I am certain that nothing but a rattlesnake, or something of the kind, will ever turn them from their sinful ways, they are so hard-headed.' When returning home, and before I got out of the Sand Hill district, I saw a funeral, and thought I would fasten my horse to a post and attend. The coffin was carried in a common horse cart, and followed by fifteen or twenty persons very shabbily dressed, and attended by a man whom I took to be the religious man of the place. After the coffin had been placed near the grave, he spoke as follows,— "'Friends and neighbours! you have congregated to see this lump of mortality put into a hole in the ground. You all know the deceased—a worthless, drunken, good-for-nothing vagabond. He lived in disgrace and infamy, and died in wretchedness. You all despised him—you all know his brother Joe, who lives on the hill? He's not a bit better though he has scrap'd together a little property by cheating his neighbours. His end will be like that of this loathsome creature, whom you will please put into the hole as soon as possible. I won't ask you to drop a tear, but brother Bohow will please raise a hymn while we fill up the grave.'" "I am rather surprised to hear that any portion of the whites in this state are in so low a condition." "Yet it is true," returned Snyder. "These are very onpleasant facts to be related to ye, Mr. Carlton," said Huckelby; "but I can bear witness to what Mr. Snyder has told ye." Huckelby was from Maryland, where many of the poor whites are in as sad a condition as the Sand Hillers of Mississippi. He was a tall man, of iron constitution, and could neither read nor write, but was considered one of the best overseers in the country. When about to break a slave in, to do a heavy task, he would make him work by his side all day; and if the new hand kept up with him, he was set down as an able bodied man. Huckelby had neither moral, religious, or political principles, and often boasted that conscience was a matter that never "cost" him a thought. "Mr. Snyder ain't told ye half about the folks in these parts," continued he; "we who comes from more enlightened parts don't know how to put up with 'em down here. I find the people here knows mighty little indeed; in fact, I may say they are univarsaly onedicated. I goes out among none on 'em, 'cause they ain't such as I have been used to 'sociate with. When I gits a little richer, so that I can stop work, I tend to go back to Maryland, and spend the rest of my days." "I wonder the Negroes don't attempt to get their freedom by physical force." "It ain't no use for 'em to try that, for if they do, we puts 'em through by daylight," replied Huckelby. "There are some desperate fellows among the slaves," said Snyder. "Indeed," remarked Carlton. "Oh, yes," replied the preacher. "A case has just taken place near here, where a neighbour of ours, Mr. J. Higgerson, attempted to correct a Negro man in his employ, who resisted, drew a knife, and stabbed him (Mr. H.) in several places. Mr. J. C. Hobbs (a Tennessean) ran to his assistance. Mr. Hobbs stooped to pick up a stick to strike the Negro, and, while in that position, the Negro rushed upon him, and caused his immediate death. The Negro then fled to the woods, but was pursued with dogs, and soon overtaken. He had stopped in a swamp to fight the dogs, when the party who were pursuing him came upon him, and commanded him to give up, which he refused to do. He then made several efforts to stab them. Mr. Roberson, one of the party, gave him several blows on the head with a rifle gun; but this, instead of subduing, only increased his desperate revenge. Mr. R. then discharged his gun at the Negro, and missing him, the ball struck Mr. Boon in the face, and felled him to the ground. The Negro, seeing Mr. Boon prostrated, attempted to rush up and stab him, but was prevented by the timely interference of some one of the party. He was then shot three times with a revolving pistol, and once with a rifle, and after having his throat cut, he still kept the knife firmly grasped in his hand, and tried to cut their legs when they approached to put an end to his life. This chastisement was given because the Negro grumbled, and found fault with his master for flogging his wife." "Well, this is a bad state of affairs indeed, and especially the condition of the poor whites," said Carlton. "You see," replied Snyder, "no white man is respectable in these slave states who works for a living. No community can be prosperous, where honest labour is not honoured. No society can be rightly constituted, where the intellect is not fed. Whatever institution reflects discredit on industry, whatever institution forbids the general culture of the understanding, is palpably hostile to individual rights, and to social well-being. Slavery is the incubus that hangs over the Southern States." "Yes," interrupted Huckelby; "them's just my sentiments now, and no mistake. I think that, for the honour of our country, this slavery business should stop. I don't own any, no how, and I would not be an overseer if I wern't paid for it." CHAPTER VIII THE SEPARATION "In many ways does the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal; But in far more the estranged heart lets know The absence of the love, which yet it fain would show." AT length the news of the approaching marriage of Horatio met the ear of Clotel. Her head grew dizzy, and her heart fainted within her; but, with a strong effort at composure, she inquired all the particulars, and her pure mind at once took its resolution. Horatio came that evening, and though she would fain have met him as usual, her heart was too full not to throw a deep sadness over her looks and tones. She had never complained of his decreasing tenderness, or of her own lonely hours; but he felt that the mute appeal of her heart-broken looks was more terrible than words. He kissed the hand she offered, and with a countenance almost as sad as her own, led her to a window in the recess shadowed by a luxuriant passion flower. It was the same seat where they had spent the first evening in this beautiful cottage, consecrated to their first loves. The same calm, clear moonlight looked in through the trellis. The vine then planted had now a luxuriant growth; and many a time had Horatio fondly twined its sacred blossoms with the glossy ringlets of her raven hair. The rush of memory almost overpowered poor Clotel; and Horatio felt too much oppressed and ashamed to break the long deep silence. At length, in words scarcely audible, Clotel said: "Tell me, dear Horatio, are you to be married next week?" He dropped her hand as if a rifle ball had struck him; and it was not until after long hesitation, that he began to make some reply about the necessity of circumstances. Mildly but earnestly the poor girl begged him to spare apologies. It was enough that he no longer loved her, and that they must bid farewell. Trusting to the yielding tenderness of her character, he ventured, in the most soothing accents, to suggest that as he still loved her better than all the world, she would ever be his real wife, and they might see each other frequently. He was not prepared for the storm of indignant emotion his words excited. True, she was his slave; her bones, and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart of a true woman, and hers was a passion too deep and absorbing to admit of partnership, and her spirit was too pure to form a selfish league with crime. At length this painful interview came to an end. They stood together by the Gothic gate, where they had so often met and parted in the moonlight. Old remembrances melted their souls. "Farewell, dearest Horatio," said Clotel. "Give me a parting kiss." Her voice was choked for utterance, and the tears flowed freely, as she bent her lips toward him. He folded her convulsively in his arms, and imprinted a long impassioned kiss on that mouth, which had never spoken to him but in love and blessing. With efforts like a death-pang she at length raised her head from his heaving bosom, and turning from him with bitter sobs, "It is our last. To meet thus is henceforth crime. God bless you. I would not have you so miserable as I am. Farewell. A last farewell." "The last?" exclaimed he, with a wild shriek. "Oh God, Clotel, do not say that"; and covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child. Recovering from his emotion, he found himself alone. The moon looked down upon him mild, but very sorrowfully; as the Madonna seems to gaze upon her worshipping children, bowed down with consciousness of sin. At that moment he would have given worlds to have disengaged himself from Gertrude, but he had gone so far, that blame, disgrace, and duels with angry relatives would now attend any effort to obtain his freedom. Oh, how the moonlight oppressed him with its friendly sadness! It was like the plaintive eye of his forsaken one, like the music of sorrow echoed from an unseen world. Long and earnestly he gazed at that cottage, where he had so long known earth's purest foretaste of heavenly bliss. Slowly he walked away; then turned again to look on that charmed spot, the nestling-place of his early affections. He caught a glimpse of Clotel, weeping beside a magnolia, which commanded a long view of the path leading to the public road. He would have sprung toward her but she darted from him, and entered the cottage. That graceful figure, weeping in the moonlight, haunted him for years. It stood before his closing eyes, and greeted him with the morning dawn. Poor Gertrude, had she known all, what a dreary lot would hers have been; but fortunately she could not miss the impassioned tenderness she never experienced; and Horatio was the more careful in his kindness, because he was deficient in love. After Clotel had been separated from her mother and sister, she turned her attention to the subject of Christianity, and received that consolation from her Bible that is never denied to the children of God. Although it was against the laws of Virginia, for a slave to be taught to read, Currer had employed an old free Negro, who lived near her, to teach her two daughters to read and write. She felt that the step she had taken in resolving never to meet Horatio again would no doubt expose her to his wrath, and probably cause her to be sold, yet her heart was too guileless for her to commit a crime, and therefore she had ten times rather have been sold as a slave than do wrong. Some months after the marriage of Horatio and Gertrude their barouche rolled along a winding road that skirted the forest near Clotel's cottage, when the attention of Gertrude was suddenly attracted by two figures among the trees by the wayside; and touching Horatio's arm, she exclaimed, "Do look at that beautiful child." He turned and saw Clotel and Mary. His lips quivered, and his face became deadly pale. His young wife looked at him intently, but said nothing. In returning home, he took another road; but his wife seeing this, expressed a wish to go back the way they had come. He objected, and suspicion was awakened in her heart, and she soon after learned that the mother of that lovely child bore the name of Clotel, a name which she had often heard Horatio murmur in uneasy slumbers. From gossiping tongues she soon learned more than she wished to know. She wept, but not as poor Clotel had done; for she never had loved, and been beloved like her, and her nature was more proud: henceforth a change came over her feelings and her manners, and Horatio had no further occasion to assume a tenderness in return for hers. Changed as he was by ambition, he felt the wintry chill of her polite propriety, and sometimes, in agony of heart, compared it with the gushing love of her who was indeed his wife. But these and all his emotions were a sealed book to Clotel, of which she could only guess the contents. With remittances for her and her child's support, there sometimes came earnest pleadings that she would consent to see him again; but these she never answered, though her heart yearned to do so. She pitied his young bride, and would not be tempted to bring sorrow into her household by any fault of hers. Her earnest prayer was, that she might not know of her existence. She had not looked on Horatio since she watched him under the shadow of the magnolia, until his barouche passed her in her rambles some months after. She saw the deadly paleness of his countenance, and had he dared to look back, he would have seen her tottering with faintness. Mary brought water from a rivulet, and sprinkled her face. When she revived, she clasped the beloved child to her heart with a vehemence that made her scream. Soothingly she kissed away her fears, and gazed into her beautiful eyes with a deep, deep sadness of expression, which poor Mary never forgot. Wild were the thoughts that passed round her aching heart, and almost maddened her poor brain; thoughts which had almost driven her to suicide the night of that last farewell. For her child's sake she had conquered the fierce temptation then; and for her sake, she struggled with it now. But the gloomy atmosphere of their once happy home overclouded the morning of Mary's life. Clotel perceived this, and it gave her unutterable pain. "Tis ever thus with woman's love, True till life's storms have passed; And, like the vine around the tree, It braves them to the last." CHAPTER IX THE MAN OF HONOUR "My tongue could never learn sweet soothing words, But now thy beauty is propos'd, my fee, My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak." Shakespeare. JAMES CRAWFORD, the purchaser of Althesa, was from the green mountains of Vermont, and his feelings were opposed to the holding of slaves. But his young wife persuaded him into the idea that it was no worse to own a slave than to hire one and pay the money to another. Hence it was that he had been induced to purchase Althesa. Henry Morton, a young physician from the same state, and who had just commenced the practice of his profession in New Orleans, was boarding with Crawford when Althesa was brought home. The young physician had been in New Orleans but a few weeks, and had seen very little of slavery. In his own mountain home he had been taught that the slaves of the Southern states were Negroes, if not from the coast of Africa, the descendants of those who had been imported. He was unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful young white girl of fifteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave. The blood chilled in his young heart as he heard Crawford tell how, by bartering with the trader, he had bought her for two hundred dollars less than he first asked. His very looks showed that the slave girl had the deepest sympathy of his heart. Althesa had been brought up by her mother to look after the domestic concerns of her cottage in Virginia, and knew well the duties imposed upon her. Mrs. Crawford was much pleased with her new servant, and often made mention of her in the presence of Morton. The young man's sympathy ripened into love, which was reciprocated by the friendless and injured child of sorrow. There was but one course left; that was, to purchase the young girl and make her his wife, which he did six months after her arrival in Crawford's family. The young physician and his wife immediately took lodgings in another part of the city; a private teacher was called in, and the young wife taught some of those accomplishments which are necessary for one's taking a position in society. Dr. Morton soon obtained a large practice in his profession, and with it increased in wealth—but with all his wealth he never would own a slave. Mrs. Morton was now in a position to seek out and redeem her mother, whom she had not heard of since they parted at Natchez. An agent was immediately despatched to hunt out the mother and to see if she could be purchased. The agent had no trouble in finding out Mr. Peck: but all overtures were unavailable; he would not sell Currer. His excuse was, that she was such a good housekeeper that he could not spare her. Poor Althesa felt sad when she found that her mother could not be bought. However, she felt a consciousness of having done her duty in the matter, yet waited with the hope that the day might come when she should have her mother by her side. CHAPTER X THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN "Here we see God dealing in slaves; giving them to his own favourite child [Abraham], a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness."—Rev. Theodore Clapp, of New Orleans. ON Carlton's return the next day from the farm, he was overwhelmed with questions from Mr. Peck, as to what he thought of the plantation, the condition of the Negroes, Huckelby and Snyder; and especially how he liked the sermon of the latter. Mr. Peck was a kind of a patriarch in his own way. To begin with, he was a man of some talent. He not only had a good education, but was a man of great eloquence, and had a wonderful command of language. He too either had, or thought he had, poetical genius; and was often sending contributions to the Natchez Free Trader, and other periodicals. In the way of raising contributions for foreign missions, he took the lead of all others in his neighbourhood. Everything he did, he did for the "glory of God," as he said: he quoted Scripture for almost everything he did. Being in good circumstances, he was able to give to almost all benevolent causes to which he took a fancy. He was a most loving father, and his daughter exercised considerable influence over him, and owing to her piety and judgment, that influence had a beneficial effect. Carlton, though a schoolfellow of the parson's, was nevertheless nearly ten years his junior; and though not an avowed infidel, was, however, a freethinker, and one who took no note of to-morrow. And for this reason Georgiana took peculiar interest in the young man, for Carlton was but little above thirty and unmarried. The young Christian felt that she would not be living up to that faith that she professed and believed in, if she did not exert herself to the utmost to save the thoughtless man from his downward career; and in this she succeeded to her most sanguine expectations. She not only converted him, but in placing the Scriptures before him in their true light, she redeemed those sacred writings from the charge of supporting the system of slavery, which her father had cast upon them in the discussion some days before. Georgiana's first object, however, was to awaken in Carlton's breast a love for the Lord Jesus Christ. The young man had often sat under the sound of the gospel with perfect indifference. He had heard men talk who had grown grey bending over the Scriptures, and their conversation had passed by him unheeded; but when a young girl, much younger than himself, reasoned with him in that innocent and persuasive manner that woman is wont to use when she has entered with her whole soul upon an object, it was too much for his stout heart, and he yielded. Her next aim was to vindicate the Bible from sustaining the monstrous institution of slavery. She said, "God has created of one blood all the nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth. To claim, hold, and treat a human being as property is felony against God and man. The Christian religion is opposed to slaveholding in its spirit and its principles; it classes menstealers among murderers; and it is the duty of all who wish to meet God in peace, to discharge that duty in spreading these principles. Let us not deceive ourselves into the idea that slavery is right, because it is profitable to us. Slaveholding is the highest possible violation of the eighth commandment. To take from a man his earnings, is theft; but to take the earner is a compound, life-long theft; and we who profess to follow in the footsteps of our Redeemer, should do our utmost to extirpate slavery from the land. For my own part, I shall do all I can. When the Redeemer was about to ascend to the bosom of the Father, and resume the glory which he had with him before the world was, he promised his disciples that the power of the Holy Ghost should come upon them, and that they should be witnesses for him to the uttermost parts of the earth. What was the effect upon their minds? 'They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women.' Stimulated by the confident expectation that Jesus would fulfil his gracious promise, they poured out their hearts in fervent supplications, probably for strength to do the work which he had appointed them unto, for they felt that without him they could do nothing, and they consecrated themselves on the altar of God, to the great and glorious enterprise of preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to a lost and perishing world. Have we less precious promises in the Scriptures of truth? May we not claim of our God the blessing promised unto those who consider the poor: the Lord will preserve them and keep them alive, and they shall be blessed upon the earth? Does not the language, 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me,' belong to all who are rightly engaged in endeavouring to unloose the bondman's fetters? Shall we not then do as the apostles did? Shall we not, in view of the two millions of heathen in our very midst, in view of the souls that are going down in an almost unbroken phalanx to utter perdition, continue in prayer and supplication, that God will grant us the supplies of his Spirit to prepare us for that work which he has given us to do? Shall not the wail of the mother as she surrenders her only child to the grasp of the ruthless kidnapper, or the trader in human blood, animate our devotions? Shall not the manifold crimes and horrors of slavery excite more ardent outpourings at the throne of grace to grant repentance to our guilty country, and permit us to aid in preparing the way for the glorious second advent of the Messiah, by preaching deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison doors to those who are bound?" Georgiana had succeeded in riveting the attention of Carlton during her conversation, and as she was finishing her last sentence, she observed the silent tear stealing down the cheek of the newly born child of God. At this juncture her father entered, and Carlton left the room. "Dear papa," said Georgiana, "will you grant me one favour; or, rather, make me a promise?" "I can't tell, my dear, till I know what it is," replied Mr. Peck. "If it is a reasonable request, I will comply with your wish," continued he. "I hope, my dear," answered she, "that papa would not think me capable of making an unreasonable request." "Well, well," returned he; "tell me what it is." "I hope," said she, "that in your future conversation with Mr. Carlton, on the subject of slavery, you will not speak of the Bible as sustaining it." "Why, Georgiana, my dear, you are mad, ain't you?" exclaimed he, in an excited tone. The poor girl remained silent; the father saw in a moment that he had spoken too sharply; and taking her hand in his he said, "Now, my child, why do you make that request?" "Because," returned she, "I think he is on the stool of repentance, if he has not already been received among the elect. He, you know, was bordering upon infidelity, and if the Bible sanctions slavery, then he will naturally enough say that it is not from God; for the argument from internal evidence is not only refuted, but actually turned against the Bible. If the Bible sanctions slavery, then it misrepresents the character of God. Nothing would be more dangerous to the soul of a young convert than to satisfy him that the Scriptures favoured such a system of sin." "Don't you suppose that I understand the Scriptures better than you? I have been in the world longer." "Yes," said she, "you have been in the world longer, and amongst slaveholders so long that you do not regard it in the same light that those do who have not become so familiar with its every-day scenes as you. I once heard you say, that you were opposed to the institution, when you first came to the South." "Yes," answered he, "I did not know so much about it then." "With great deference to you, papa," replied Georgiana, "I don't think that the Bible sanctions slavery. The Old Testament contains this explicit condemnation of it, 'He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his band, he shall surely be put to death'; and 'Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work'; when also the New Testament exhibits such words of rebuke as these, 'Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.' 'The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons.' A more scathing denunciation of the sin in question is surely to be found on record in no other book. I am afraid," continued the daughter, "that the acts of the professed friends of Christianity in the South do more to spread infidelity than the writings of all the atheists which have ever been published. The infidel watches the religious world. He surveys the church, and, lo! thousands and tens of thousands of her accredited members actually hold slaves. Members 'in good and regular standing,' fellowshipped throughout Christendom except by a few anti-slavery churches generally despised as ultra and radical, reduce their fellow men to the condition of chattels, and by force keep them in that state of degradation. Bishops, ministers, elders, and deacons are engaged in this awful business, and do not consider their conduct as at all inconsistent with the precepts of either the Old or New Testaments. Moreover, those ministers and churches who do not themselves hold slaves, very generally defend the conduct of those who do, and accord to them a fair Christian character, and in the way of business frequently take mortgages and levy executions on the bodies of their fellow men, and in some cases of their fellow Christians. "Now is it a wonder that infidels, beholding the practice and listening to the theory of professing Christians, should conclude that the Bible inculcates a morality not inconsistent with chattelising human beings? And must not this conclusion be strengthened, when they hear ministers of talent and learning declare that the Bible does sanction slaveholding, and that it ought not to be made a disciplinable offence in churches? And must not all doubt be dissipated, when one of the most learned professors in our theological seminaries asserts that the Bible recognises that the relation may still exist, salva fide et salva ecclesia' (without injury to the Christian faith or church) and that only 'the abuse of it is the essential and fundamental wrong?' Are not infidels bound to believe that these professors, ministers, and churches understand their own Bible, and that, consequently, notwithstanding solitary passages which appear to condemn slaveholding, the Bible sanctions it? When nothing can be further from the truth. And as for Christ, his whole life was a living testimony against slavery and all that it inculcates. When he designed to do us good, he took upon himself the form of a servant. He took his station at the bottom of society. He voluntarily identified himself with the poor and the despised. The warning voices of Jeremiah and Ezekiel were raised in olden time, against sin. Let us not forget what followed. 'Therefore, thus saith the Lord—ye have not harkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and every one to his neighbour—behold I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine.' Are we not virtually as a nation adopting the same impious language, and are we not exposed to the same tremendous judgments? Shall we not, in view of those things, use every laudable means to awaken our beloved country from the slumbers of death, and baptize all our efforts with tears and with prayers, that God may bless them? Then, should our labour fail to accomplish the end for which we pray, we shall stand acquitted at the bar of Jehovah, and although we may share in the national calamities which await unrepented sins, yet that blessed approval will be ours—'Well done, good and faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord.'" "My dear Georgiana," said Mr. Peck, "I must be permitted to entertain my own views on this subject, and to exercise my own judgment." "Believe me, dear papa," she replied, "I would not be understood as wishing to teach you, or to dictate to you in the least; but only grant my request, not to allude to the Bible as sanctioning slavery, when speaking with Mr. Carlton." "Well," returned he, "I will comply with your wish." The young Christian had indeed accomplished a noble work; and whether it was admitted by the father, or not, she was his superior and his teacher. Georgiana had viewed the right to enjoy perfect liberty as one of those inherent and inalienable rights which pertain to the whole human race, and of which they can never be divested, except by an act of gross injustice. And no one was more able than herself to impress those views upon the hearts of all with whom she came in contact. Modest and self-possessed, with a voice of great sweetness, and a most winning manner, she could, with the greatest ease to herself, engage their attention. CHAPTER XI THE PARSON POET "Unbind, unbind my galling chain, And set, oh! set me free: No longer say that I'll disdain The gift of liberty." THROUGH the persuasion of Mr. Peck, and fascinated with the charms of Georgiana, Carlton had prolonged his stay two months with his old school-fellow. During the latter part of the time he had been almost as one of the family. If Miss Peck was invited out, Mr. Carlton was, as a matter of course. She seldom rode out, unless with him. If Mr. Peck was absent, he took the head of the table; and, to the delight of the young lady, he had on several occasions taken part in the family worship. "I am glad," said Mr. Peck, one evening while at the tea table, "I am glad, Mr. Carlton, that my neighbour Jones has invited you to visit him at his farm. He is a good neighbour, but a very ungodly man; I want that you should see his people, and then, when you return to the North, you can tell how much better a Christian's slaves are situated than one who does nothing for the cause of Christ." "I hope, Mr. Carlton," said Georgiana, "that you will spend the Sabbath with him, and have a religious interview with the Negroes." "Yes," replied the parson, "that's well thought of, Georgy." "Well, I think I will go up on Thursday next, and stay till Monday," said Carlton; "and I shall act upon your suggestion, Miss Peck," continued he; "and try to get a religious interview with the blacks. By-the-by," remarked Carlton, "I saw an advertisement in the Free Trader to-day that rather puzzled me. Ah, here it is now; and, drawing the paper from his pocket, "I will read it, and then you can tell me what it means: 'To PLANTERS AND OTHERS.—Wanted fifty Negroes. Any person having sick Negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, (their owners of course,) and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. Stillman will pay cash for Negroes affected with scrofula or king's evil, confirmed hypochondriacism, apoplexy, or diseases of the brain, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhoea, dysentery, &c. The highest cash price will be paid as above.' When I read this to-day I thought that the advertiser must be a man of eminent skill as a physician, and that he intended to cure the sick Negroes; but on second thought I find that some of the diseases enumerated are certainly incurable. What can he do with these sick Negroes?" "You see," replied Mr. Peck, laughing, "that he is a doctor, and has use for them in his lectures. The doctor is connected with a small college. Look at his prospectus, where he invites students to attend, and that will explain the matter to you." Carlton turned to another column, and read the following: "Some advantages of a peculiar character are connected with this institution, which it may be proper to point out. No place in the United States offers as great opportunities for the acquisition of anatomical knowledge. Subjects being obtained from among the coloured population in sufficient numbers for every purpose, and proper dissections carried on without offending any individuals in the community!" "These are for dissection, then?" inquired Carlton with a trembling voice. "Yes," answered the parson. "Of course they wait till they die before they can use them." "They keep them on hand, and when they need one they bleed him to death," returned Mr. Peck. "Yes, but that's murder." "Oh, the doctors are licensed to commit murder, you know; and what's the difference, whether one dies owing to the loss of blood, or taking too many pills? For my own part, if I had to choose, I would rather submit to the former." "I have often heard what I considered hard stories in abolition meetings in New York about slavery; but now I shall begin to think that many of them are true." "The longer you remain here the more you will be convinced of the iniquity of the institution," remarked Georgiana. "Now, Georgy, my dear, don't give us another abolition lecture, if you please," said Mr. Peck. "Here, Carlton," continued the parson, "I have written a short poem for your sister's album, as you requested me; it is a domestic piece, as you will see." "She will prize it the more for that," remarked Carlton; and taking the sheet of paper, he laughed as his eyes glanced over it. "Read it out, Mr. Carlton," said Georgiana, "and let me hear what it is; I know papa gets off some very droll things at times." Carlton complied with the young lady's request, and read aloud the following rare specimen of poetical genius: "MY LITTLE NIG. "I have a little nigger, the blackest thing alive, He'll be just four years old if he lives till forty-five; His smooth cheek hath a glossy hue, like a new polished boot, And his hair curls o'er his little head as black as any soot. His lips bulge from his countenance—his little ivories shine— His nose is what we call a little pug, but fashioned very fine: Although not quite a fairy, he is comely to behold, And I wouldn't sell him, 'pon my word, for a hundred all in gold. "He gets up early in the morn, like all the other nigs, And runs off to the hog-lot, where he squabbles with the pigs— And when the sun gets out of bed, and mounts up in the sky, The warmest corner of the yard is where my nig doth lie. And there extended lazily, he contemplates and dreams, (I cannot qualify to this, but plain enough it seems;) Until 'tis time to take in grub, when you can't find him there, For, like a politician, he has gone to hunt his share. "I haven't said a single word concerning my plantation, Though a prettier, I guess, cannot be found within the nation; When he gets a little bigger, I'll take and to him show it, And then I'll say, 'My little nig, now just prepare to go it!' I'll put a hoe into his hand—he'll soon know what it means, And every day for dinner, he shall have bacon and greens." CHAPTER XII A NIGHT IN THE PARSON'S KITCHEN "And see the servants met, Their daily labour's o'er; And with the jest and song they set The kitchen in a roar." MR. PECK kept around him four servants besides Currer, of whom we have made mention: of these, Sam was considered the first. If a dinner-party was in contemplation, or any company to be invited to the parson's, after all the arrangements had been talked over by the minister and his daughter, Sam was sure to be consulted upon the subject by "Miss Georgy," as Miss Peck was called by the servants. If furniture, crockery, or anything else was to be purchased, Sam felt that he had been slighted if his opinion had not been asked. As to the marketing, he did it all. At the servants' table in the kitchen, he sat at the head, and was master of ceremonies. A single look from him was enough to silence any conversation or noise in the kitchen, or any other part of the premises. There is, in the Southern States, a great amount of prejudice against colour amongst the Negroes themselves. The nearer the Negro or mulatto approaches to the white, the more he seems to feel his superiority over those of a darker hue. This is, no doubt, the result of the prejudice that exists on the part of the whites towards both mulattoes and blacks. Sam was originally from Kentucky, and through the instrumentality of one of his young masters whom he had to take to school, he had learned to read so as to be well understood; and, owing to that fact, was considered a prodigy among the slaves, not only of his own master's, but those of the town who knew him. Sam had a great wish to follow in the footsteps of his master, and be a poet; and was, therefore, often heard singing doggerels of his own composition. But there was one great drawback to Sam, and that was his colour. He was one of the blackest of his race. This he evidently regarded as a great misfortune. However, he made up for this in his dress. Mr. Peck kept his house servants well dressed; and as for Sam, he was seldom seen except in a ruffled shirt. Indeed, the washerwoman feared him more than all others about the house. Currer, as we have already stated, was chief of the kitchen department, and had a general supervision of the household affairs. Alfred the coachman, Peter, and Hetty made up the remainder of the house servants. Besides these, Mr. Peck owned eight slaves who were masons. These worked in the city. Being mechanics, they were let out to greater advantage than to keep them on the farm. However, every Sunday night, Peck's servants, including the bricklayers, usually assembled in the kitchen, when the events of the week were freely discussed and commented on. It was on a Sunday evening, in the month of June, that there was a party at Mr. Peck's, and, according to custom in the Southern States, the ladies had their maid-servants with them. Tea had been served in "the house," and the servants, including the strangers, had taken their seats at the tea table in the kitchen. Sam, being a "single gentleman," was usually attentive to the "ladies" on this occasion. He seldom or ever let the day pass without spending at least an hour in combing and brushing up his "hair." Sam had an idea that fresh butter was better for his hair than any other kind of grease; and therefore, on churning days, half a pound of butter had always to be taken out before it was salted. When he wished to appear to great advantage, he would grease his face, to make it "shiny." On the evening of the party therefore, when all the servants were at the table, Sam cut a big figure. There he sat with his wool well combed and buttered, face nicely greased, and his ruffles extending five or six inches from his breast. The parson in his own drawing-room did not make a more imposing appearance than did his servant on this occasion. "I jist bin had my fortune told last Sunday night," said Sam, as he helped one of the girls to some sweet hash. "Indeed," cried half-a-dozen voices. "Yes," continued he; "Aunt Winny teld me I is to hab de prettiest yaller gal in town, and dat I is to be free." All eyes were immediately turned toward Sally Johnson, who was seated near Sarn. "I speck I see somebody blush at dat remark," said Alfred. "Pass dem pancakes and molasses up dis way, Mr. Alf, and none of your insinawaysion here," rejoined Sam. "Dat reminds me," said Currer, "dat Doreas Simpson is gwine to git married." "Who to, I want to know?" inquired Peter. "To one of Mr. Darby's field-hands," answered Currer. "I should tink dat dat gal would not trow hersef away in dat manner," said Sally. "She good enough looking to get a house servant, and not to put up wid a fiel' nigger," continued she. "Yes," said Sam, "dat's a wery insensible remark of yours, Miss Sally. I admire your judgment wery much, I assure you. Dah's plenty of suspectible and well-dressed house servants dat a gal of her looks can get, wid out taken up wid dem common darkies." "Is de man black or a mulatto?" inquired one of the company. "He's nearly white," replied Currer. "Well den, dat's some exchuse for her," remarked Sam; "for I don't like to see dis malgemation of blacks and mulattoes." "No mulatto?" inquired one of the corn-how. Continued Sam, "If I had my rights I would be a mulatto too, for my mother was almost as light-coloured as Miss Sally," said he. Although Sam was one of the blackest men living, he nevertheless contended that his mother was a mulatto, and no one was more prejudiced against the blacks than he. A good deal of work, and the free use of fresh butter, had no doubt done wonders for his "hare" in causing it to grow long, and to this he would always appeal when he wished to convince others that he was part of an Anglo-Saxon. "I always thought you was not clear black, Mr. Sam," said Agnes. "You are right dahr, Miss Agnes. My hare tells what company I belong to," answered Sam. Here the whole company joined in the conversation about colour, which lasted for some time, giving unmistakeable evidence that caste is owing to ignorance. The evening's entertainment concluded by Sam's relating a little of his own experience while with his first master in old Kentucky. Sam's former master was a doctor, and had a large practice among his neighbours, doctoring both masters and slaves. When Sam was about fifteen years of age, his old master set him to grinding up the ointment, then to making pills. As the young student grew older and became more practised in his profession, his services were of more importance to the doctor. The physician having a good business, and a large number of his patients being slaves, the most of whom had to call on the doctor when ill, he put Sam to bleeding, pulling teeth, and administering medicine to the slaves. Sam soon acquired the name amongst the slaves of the "Black Doctor." With this appellation he was delighted, and no regular physician could possibly have put on more airs than did the black doctor when his services were required. In bleeding, he must have more bandages, and rub and smack the arm more than the doctor would have thought of. We once saw Sam taking out a tooth for one of his patients, and nothing appeared more amusing. He got the poor fellow down on his back, and he got astraddle of the man's chest, and getting the turnkeys on the wrong tooth, he shut both eyes and pulled for his life. The poor man screamed as loud as he could, but to no purpose. Sam had him fast. After a great effort, out came the sound grinder, and the young doctor saw his mistake; but consoled himself with the idea that as the wrong tooth was out of the way, there was more room to get at the right one. Bleeding and a dose of calomel was always considered indispensable by the "Old Boss"; and, as a matter of course, Sam followed in his footsteps. On one occasion the old doctor was ill himself, so as to be unable to attend to his patients. A slave, with pass in hand, called to receive medical advice, and the master told Sam to examine him and see what he wanted. This delighted him beyond measure, for although he had been acting his part in the way of giving out medicine as the master ordered it, he had never been called upon by the latter to examine a patient, and this seemed to convince him that, after all, he was no sham doctor. As might have been expected, he cut a rare figure in his first examination, placing himself directly opposite his patient, and folding his arms across his breast, and looking very knowingly, he began, "What's de matter wid you?" "I is sick." "Where is you sick?" "Here," replied the man, putting his hand upon his stomach. "Put out your tongue," continued the doctor. The man ran out his tongue at full length. "Let me feel your pulse," at the same time taking his patient's hand in his, placing his fingers on his pulse, he said, "Ah, your case is a bad one; if I don't do something for you, and dat pretty quick, you'll be a gone coon, and dat's sartin." At this the man appeared frightened, and inquired what was the matter with him: in answer, Sam said, "I done told you dat your case is a bad one, and dat's enough." On Sam's returning to his master's bedside, the latter said, "Well, Sam, what do you think is the matter with him?" "His stomach is out of order, sir," he replied. "What do you think had best be done for him?" "I think I better bleed him and give him a dose of calomel," returned Sam. So to the latter's gratification the master let him have his own way. We need not further say, that the recital of Sam's experience as a physician gave him a high position amongst the servants that evening, and made him a decided favourite with the ladies, one of whom feigned illness, when the black doctor, to the delight of all, and certainly to himself, gave medical advice. Thus ended the evening amongst the servants in the parson's kitchen. CHAPTER XIII A SLAVE HUNTING PARSON "'Tis too much prov'd—that with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do sugar o'er the devil himself." —Shakespeare. "You will, no doubt, be well pleased with neighbour Jones," said Mr. Peck, as Carlton stepped into the chaise to pay his promised visit to the "ungodly man." "Don't forget to have a religious interview with the Negroes, remarked Georgiana, as she gave the last nod to her young convert. "I will do my best," returned Carlton, as the vehicle left the door. As might have been expected, Carlton met with a cordial reception at the hands of the proprietor of the Grove Farm. The servants in the "Great House" were well dressed, and appeared as if they did not want for food. Jones knew that Carlton was from the North, and a non-slaveholder, and therefore did everything in his power to make a favourable impression on his mind. "My Negroes are well clothed, well fed, and not over worked," said the slaveholder to his visitor, after the latter had been with him nearly a week. "As far as I can see your slaves appear to good advantage," replied Carlton. "But," continued he, "if it is a fair question, do you have preaching among your slaves on Sunday, Mr. Jones?" "No, no," returned he, "I think that's all nonsense; my Negroes do their own preaching." "So you do permit them to have meetings." "Yes, when they wish. There's some very intelligent and clever chaps among them." "As to-morrow is the Sabbath," said Carlton, "if you have no objection, I will attend meeting with them." "Most certainly you shall, if you will do the preaching," returned the planter. Here the young man was about to decline, but he remembered the parting words of Georgiana, and he took courage and said, "Oh, I have no objection to give the Negroes a short talk." It was then understood that Carlton was to have a religious interview with the blacks the next day, and the young man waited with a degree of impatience for the time. In no part of the South are slaves in a more ignorant and degraded state than in the cotton, sugar, and rice districts. If they are permitted to cease labour on the Sabbath, the time is spent in hunting, fishing, or lying beneath the shade of a tree, resting for the morrow. Religious instruction is unknown in the far South, except among such men as the Rev. C. C. Jones, John Peck, and some others who regard religious instruction, such as they impart to their slaves, as calculated to make them more trustworthy and valuable as property. Jones, aware that his slaves would make rather a bad show of intelligence if questioned by Carlton, resolved to have them ready for him, and therefore gave his driver orders with regard to their preparation. Consequently, after the day's labour was over, Dogget, the driver, assembled the Negroes together and said, "Now, boys and gals, your master is coming down to the quarters to-morrow with his visitor, who is going to give you a preach, and I want you should understand what he says to you. Now many of you who came of Old Virginia and Kentuck, know what preaching is, and others who have been raised in these parts do not. Preaching is to tell you that you are mighty wicked and bad at heart. This, I suppose, you all know. But if the gentleman should ask you who made you, tell him the Lord; if he ask if you wish to go to heaven, tell him yes. Remember that you are all Christians, all love the Lord, all want to go to heaven, all love your masters, and all love me. Now, boys and gals, I want you to show yourselves smart to-morrow: be on your p's and q's, and, Monday morning, I will give you all a glass of whiskey bright and early." Agreeable to arrangement the slaves were assembled together on Sunday morning under the large trees near the great house, and after going through another drilling from the driver, Jones and Carlton made their appearance. "You see," said Jones to the Negroes, as he approached them, you see here's a gentleman that's come to talk to you about your souls, and I hope you 'ill all pay that attention that you ought." Jones then seated himself in one of the two chairs placed there for him and the stranger. Carlton had already selected a chapter in the Bible to read to them, which he did, after first prefacing it with some remarks of his own. Not being accustomed to speak in public, he determined, after reading the Bible, to make it more of a conversational meeting than otherwise. He therefore began asking them questions. "Do you feel that you are a Christian?" asked he of a full-blooded Negro that sat near him. "Yes, sir," was the response. "You feel, then, that you shall go to heaven." "Yes, sir." "Of course you know who made you?" The man put his hand to his head and began to scratch his wool; and, after a little hesitation, answered, "De overseer told us last night who made us, but indeed I forgot the gentmun's name." This reply was almost too much for Carlton, and his gravity was not a little moved. However, he bit his tongue, and turned to another man, who appeared, from his looks, to be more intelligent. "Do you serve the Lord?" asked he. "No, sir, I don't serve anybody but Mr. Jones. I neber belong to anybody else." To hide his feelings at this juncture, Carlton turned and walked to another part of the grounds, to where the women were seated, and said to a mulatto woman who had rather an anxious countenance, "Did you ever hear of John the Baptist?" "Oh yes, marser, John de Baptist; I know dat nigger bery well indeed; he libs in Old Kentuck, where I come from." Carlton's gravity here gave way, and he looked at the planter and laughed right out. The old woman knew a slave near her old master's farm in Kentucky, and was ignorant enough to suppose that he was the John the Baptist inquired about. Carlton occupied the remainder of the time in reading Scripture and talking to them. "My niggers ain't shown off very well to-day," said Jones, as he and his visitor left the grounds. "No," replied Carlton. "You did not get hold of the bright ones," continued the planter. "So it seems," remarked Carlton. The planter evidently felt that his neighbour, Parson Peck, would have a nut to crack over the account that Carlton would give of the ignorance of the slaves, and said and did all in his power to remove the bad impression already made; but to no purpose. The report made by Carlton, on his return, amused the parson very much. It appeared to him the best reason why professed Christians like himself should be slave-holders. Not so with Georgiana. She did not even smile when Carlton was telling his story, but seemed sore at heart that such ignorance should prevail in their midst. The question turned upon the heathen of other lands, and the parson began to expatiate upon his own efforts in foreign missions, when his daughter, with a child-like simplicity, said, "Send Bibles to the heathen; On every distant shore, From light that's beaming o'er us, Let streams increasing pour But keep it from the millions Down-trodden at our door. "Send Bibles to the heathen, Their famished spirits feed; Oh! haste, and join your efforts, The priceless gift to speed; Then flog the trembling Negro If he should learn to read." "I saw a curiosity while at Mr. Jones's that I shall not forget soon," said Carlton. "What was it?" inquired the parson. "A kennel of bloodhounds; and such dogs I never saw before. They were of a species between the bloodhound and the foxhound, and were ferocious, gaunt, and savage-looking animals. They were part of a stock imported from Cuba, he informed me. They were kept in an iron cage, and fed on Indian corn bread. This kind of food, he said, made them eager for their business. Sometimes they would give the dogs meat, but it was always after they had been chasing a Negro." "Were those the dogs you had, papa, to hunt Harry?" asked Georgiana. "No, my dear," was the short reply: and the parson seemed anxious to change the conversation to something else. When Mr. Peck had left the room, Carlton spoke more freely of what he had seen, and spoke more pointedly against slavery; for he well knew that Miss Peck sympathised with him in all he felt and said. "You mentioned about your father hunting a slave," said Carlton, in an undertone. "Yes," replied she: "papa went with some slave-catchers and a parcel of those nasty Negro-dogs, to hunt poor Harry. He belonged to papa and lived on the farm. His wife lives in town, and Harry had been to see her, and did not return quite as early as he should; and Huckelby was flogging him, and he got away and came here. I wanted papa to keep him in town, so that he could see his wife more frequently; but he said they could not spare him from the farm, and flogged him again, and sent him back. The poor fellow knew that the overseer would punish him over again, and instead of going back he went into the woods." "Did they catch him?" asked Carlton. "Yes," replied she. "In chasing him through the woods, he attempted to escape by swimming across a river, and the dogs were sent in after him, and soon caught him. But Harry had great courage and fought the dogs with a big club; and papa seeing the Negro would escape from the dogs, shot at him, as he says, only to wound him, that he might be caught; but the poor fellow was killed." Overcome by relating this incident, Georgiana burst into tears. Although Mr. Peck fed and clothed his house servants well, and treated them with a degree of kindness, he was, nevertheless, a most cruel master. He encouraged his driver to work the field-hands from early dawn till late at night; and the good appearance of the house-servants, and the preaching of Snyder to the field Negroes, was to cause himself to be regarded as a Christian master. Being on a visit one day at the farm, and having with him several persons from the Free States, and wishing to make them believe that his slaves were happy, satisfied, and contented, the parson got out the whiskey and gave each one a dram, who in return had to drink the master's health, or give a toast of some kind. The company were not a little amused at some of the sentiments given, and Peck was delighted at every indication of contentment on the part of the blacks. At last it came to Jack's turn to drink, and the master expected something good from him, because he was considered the cleverest and most witty slave on the farm. "Now," said the master, as he handed Jack the cup of whiskey; "now, Jack, give us something rich. You know," continued he, "we have raised the finest crop of cotton that's been seen in these parts for many a day. Now give us a toast on cotton; come, Jack, give us something to laugh at." The Negro felt not a little elated at being made the hero of the occasion, and taking the whiskey in his right hand, put his left to his head and began to scratch his wool, and said, "The big bee flies high, The little bee make the honey; The black folks makes the cotton, And the white folks gets the money." CHAPTER XIV A FREE WOMAN REDUCED TO SLAVERY ALTHESA found in Henry Morton a kind and affectionate husband; and his efforts to purchase her mother, although unsuccessful, had doubly endeared him to her. Having from the commencement resolved not to hold slaves, or rather not to own any, they were compelled to hire servants for their own use. Five years had passed away, and their happiness was increased by two lovely daughters. Mrs. Morton was seated, one bright afternoon, busily engaged with her needle, and near her sat Salome, a servant that she had just taken into her employ. The woman was perfectly white; so much so, that Mrs. Morton had expressed her apprehensions to her husband, when the woman first came, that she was not born a slave. The mistress watched the servant, as the latter sat sewing upon some coarse work, and saw the large silent tear in her eye. This caused an uneasiness to the mistress, and she said, "Salome, don't you like your situation here?" "Oh yes, madam," answered the woman in a quick tone, and then tried to force a smile. "Why is it that you often look sad, and with tears in your eyes?" The mistress saw that she had touched a tender chord, and continued, "I am your friend; tell me your sorrow, and, if I can, I will help you." As the last sentence was escaping the lips of the mistress, the slave woman put her check apron to her face and wept. Mrs. Morton saw plainly that there was cause for this expression of grief, and pressed the woman more closely. "Hear me, then," said the woman calming herself: "I will tell you why I sometimes weep. I was born in Germany, on the banks of the Rhine. Ten years ago my father came to this country, bringing with him my mother and myself. He was poor, and I, wishing to assist all I could, obtained a situation as nurse to a lady in this city. My father got employment as a labourer on the wharf, among the steamboats; but he was soon taken ill with the yellow fever, and died. My mother then got a situation for herself, while I remained with my first employer. When the hot season came on, my master, with his wife, left New Orleans until the hot season was over, and took me with them. They stopped at a town on the banks of the Mississippi river, and said they should remain there some weeks. One day they went out for a ride, and they had not been one more than half an hour, when two men came into the room and told me that they had bought me, and that I was their slave. I was bound and taken to prison, and that night put on a steamboat and taken up the Yazoo river, and set to work on a farm. I was forced to take up with a Negro, and by him had three children. A year since my master's daughter was married, and I was given to her. She came with her husband to this city, and I have ever since been hired out." "Unhappy woman," whispered Althesa, "why did you not tell me this before?" "I was afraid," replied Salome, "for I was once severely flogged for telling a stranger that I was not born a slave." On Mr. Morton's return home, his wife communicated to him the story which the slave woman had told her an hour before, and begged that something might be done to rescue her from the situation she was then in. In Louisiana as well as many others of the slave states, great obstacles are thrown in the way of persons who have been wrongfully reduced to slavery regaining their freedom. A person claiming to be free must prove his right to his liberty. This, it will be seen, throws the burden of proof upon the slave, who, in all probability, finds it out of his power to procure such evidence. And if any free person shall attempt to aid a freeman in re-gaining his freedom, he is compelled to enter into security in the sum of one thousand dollars, and if the person claiming to be free shall fail to establish such fact, the thousand dollars are forfeited to the state. This cruel and oppressive law has kept many a freeman from espousing the cause of persons unjustly held as slaves. Mr. Morton inquired and found that the woman's story was true, as regarded the time she had lived with her present owner; but the latter not only denied that she was free, but immediately removed her from Morton's. Three months after Salome had been removed from Morton's and let out to another family, she was one morning cleaning the door steps, when a lady passing by, looked at the slave and thought she recognised some one that she had seen before. The lady stopped and asked the woman if she was a slave. "I am," said she. "Were you born a slave?" "No, I was born in Germany." "What's the name of the ship in which you came to this country?" inquired the lady. "I don't know," was the answer. "Was it the am*zon?" At the sound of this name, the slave woman was silent for a moment, and then the tears began to flow freely down her careworn cheeks. "Would you know Mrs. Marshall, who was a passenger in the am*zon, if you should see her?" inquired the lady. At this the woman gazed at the lady with a degree of intensity that can be imagined better than described, and then fell at the lady's feet. The lady was Mrs. Marshall. She had crossed the Atlantic in the same ship with this poor woman. Salome, like many of her countrymen, was a beautiful singer, and had often entertained Mrs. Marshall and the other lady passengers on board the am*zon. The poor woman was raised from the ground by Mrs. Marshall, and placed upon the door step that she had a moment before been cleaning. "I will do my utmost to rescue you from the horrid life of a slave," exclaimed the lady, as she took from her pocket her pencil, and wrote down the number of the house, and the street in which the German woman was working as a slave. After a long and tedious trial of many days, it was decided that Salome Miller was by birth a free woman, and she was set at liberty. The good and generous Althesa had contributed some of the money toward bringing about the trial, and had done much to cheer on Mrs. Marshall in her benevolent object. Salome Miller is free, but where are her three children? They are still slaves, and in all human probability will die as such. This, reader, is no fiction; if you think so, look over the files of the New Orleans newspapers of the years 1845-6, and you will there see reports of the trial. CHAPTER XV TO-DAY A MISTRESS, TO-MORROW A SLAVE "I promised thee a sister tale Of man's perfidious cruelty; Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong Befell the dark ladie."—Coleridge. LET us return for a moment to the home of Clotel. While she was passing lonely and dreary hours with none but her darling child, Horatio Green was trying to find relief in that insidious enemy of man, the intoxicating cup. Defeated in politics, forsaken in love by his wife, he seemed to have lost all principle of honour, and was ready to nerve himself up to any deed, no matter how unprincipled. Clotel's existence was now well known to Horatio's wife, and both her [sic] and her father demanded that the beautiful quadroon and her child should be sold and sent out of the state. To this proposition he at first turned a deaf ear; but when he saw that his wife was about to return to her father's roof, he consented to leave the matter in the hands of his father-in-law. The result was, that Clotel was immediately sold to the slave-trader, Walker, who, a few years previous, had taken her mother and sister to the far South. But, as if to make her husband drink of the cup of humiliation to its very dregs, Mrs. Green resolved to take his child under her own roof for a servant. Mary was, therefore, put to the meanest work that could be found, and although only ten years of age, she was often compelled to perform labour, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been thought too hard for one much older. One condition of the sale of Clotel to Walker was, that she should be taken out of the state, which was accordingly done. Most quadroon women who are taken to the lower countries to be sold are either purchased by gentlemen for their own use, or sold for waiting-maids; and Clotel, like her sister, was fortunate enough to be bought for the latter purpose. The town of Vicksburgh stands on the left bank of the Mississippi, and is noted for the severity with which slaves are treated. It was here that Clotel was sold to Mr. James French, a merchant. Mrs. French was severe in the extreme to her servants. Well dressed, but scantily fed, and overworked were all who found a home with her. The quadroon had been in her new home but a short time ere she found that her situation was far different from what it was in Virginia. What social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is the primary characteristic? in a society which is divided into two classes, masters and slaves? Every married woman in the far South looks upon her husband as unfaithful, and regards every quadroon servant as a rival. Clotel had been with her new mistress but a few days, when she was ordered to cut off her long hair. The Negro, constitutionally, is fond of dress and outward appearance. He that has short, woolly hair, combs it and oils it to death. He that has long hair, would sooner have his teeth drawn than lose it. However painful it was to the quadroon, she was soon seen with her hair cut as short as any of the full-blooded Negroes in the dwelling. Even with her short hair, Clotel was handsome. Her life had been a secluded one, and though now nearly thirty years of age, she was still beautiful. At her short hair, the other servants laughed, "Miss Clo needn't strut round so big, she got short nappy har well as I," said Nell, with a broad grin that showed her teeth. "She tinks she white, when she come here wid dat long har of hers," replied Mill. "Yes," continued Nell; "missus make her take down her wool so she no put it up to-day." The fairness of Clotel's complexion was regarded with envy as well by the other servants as by the mistress herself. This is one of the hard features of slavery. To-day the woman is mistress of her own cottage; to-morrow she is sold to one who aims to make her life as intolerable as possible. And be it remembered, that the house servant has the best situation which a slave can occupy. Some American writers have tried to make the world believe that the condition of the labouring classes of England is as bad as the slaves of the United States. The English labourer may be oppressed, he may be cheated, defrauded, swindled, and even starved; but it is not slavery under which he groans. He cannot be sold; in point of law he is equal to the prime minister. "It is easy to captivate the unthinking and the prejudiced, by eloquent declamation about the oppression of English operatives being worse than that of American slaves, and by exaggerating the wrongs on one side and hiding them on the other. But all informed and reflecting minds, knowing that bad as are the social evils of England, those of Slavery are immeasurably worse." But the degradation and harsh treatment that Clotel experienced in her new home was nothing compared with the grief she underwent at being separated from her dear child. Taken from her without scarcely a moment's warning, she knew not what had become of her. The deep and heartfelt grief of Clotel was soon perceived by her owners, and fearing that her refusal to take food would cause her death, they resolved to sell her. Mr. French found no difficulty in getting a purchaser for the quadroon woman, for such are usually the most marketable kind of property. Clotel was sold at private sale to a young man for a housekeeper; but even he had missed his aim. CHAPTER XVI DEATH OF THE PARSON CARLTON was above thirty years of age, standing on the last legs of a young man, and entering on the first of a bachelor. He had never dabbled in matters of love, and looked upon all women alike. Although he respected woman for her virtues, and often spoke of the goodness of heart of the sex, he had never dreamed of marriage. At first he looked upon Miss Peck as a pretty young woman, but after she became his religious teacher, he regarded her in that light, that every one will those whom they know to be their superiors. It was soon seen, however, that the young man not only respected and reverenced Georgiana for the incalculable service she had done him, in awakening him to a sense of duty to his soul, but he had learned to bow to the shrine of Cupid. He found, weeks after he had been in her company, that when he met her at table, or alone in the drawing room, or on the piazza, he felt a shortness of breath, a palpitating of the heart, a kind of dizziness of the head; but he knew not its cause. This was love in its first stage. Mr. Peck saw, or thought he saw, what would be the result of Carlton's visit, and held out every inducement in his power to prolong his stay. The hot season was just commencing, and the young Northerner was talking of his return home, when the parson was very suddenly taken ill. The disease was the cholera, and the physicians pronounced the case incurable. In less than five hours John Peck was a corpse. His love for Georgiana, and respect for her father, had induced Carlton to remain by the bedside of the dying man, although against the express orders of the physician. This act of kindness caused the young orphan henceforth to regard Carlton as her best friend. He now felt it his duty to remain with the young woman until some of her relations should be summoned from Connecticut. After the funeral, the family physician advised that Miss Peck should go to the farm, and spend the time at the country seat; and also advised Carlton to remain with her, which he did. At the parson's death his Negroes showed little or no signs of grief. This was noticed by both Carlton and Miss Peck, and caused no little pain to the latter. "They are ungrateful," said Carlton, as he and Georgiana were seated on the piazza. "What," asked she, "have they to be grateful for?" "Your father was kind, was he not?" "Yes, as kind as most men who own slaves; but the kindness meted out to blacks would be unkindness if given to whites. We would think so, should we not?" "Yes," replied he. "If we would not consider the best treatment which a slave receives good enough for us, we should not think he ought to be grateful for it. Everybody knows that slavery in its best and mildest form is wrong. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart. Try him! Clank the chains in his ears, and tell him they are for him; give him an hour to prepare his wife and children for a life of slavery; bid him make haste, and get ready their necks for the yoke, and their wrists for the coffle chains; then look at his pale lips and trembling knees, and you have nature's testimony against slavery." "Let's take a walk," said Carlton, as if to turn the conversation. The moon was just appearing through the tops of the trees, and the animals and insects in an adjoining wood kept up a continued din of music. The croaking of bull-frogs, buzzing of insects, cooing of turtle-doves, and the sound from a thousand musical instruments, pitched on as many different keys, made the welkin ring. But even all this noise did not drown the singing of a party of the slaves, who were seated near a spring that was sending up its cooling waters. "How prettily the Negroes sing," remarked Carlton, as they were wending their way towards the place from whence the sound of the voices came. "Yes," replied Georgiana; "master Sam is there, I'll warrant you: he's always on hand when there's any singing or dancing. We must not let them see us, or they will stop singing." "Who makes their songs for them?" inquired the young man. "Oh, they make them up as they sing them; they are all impromptu songs." By this time they were near enough to hear distinctly every word; and, true enough, Sam's voice was heard above all others. At the conclusion of each song they all joined in a hearty laugh, with an expression of "Dats de song for me;" "Dems dems." "Stop," said Carlton, as Georgiana was rising from the log upon which she was seated; "stop, and let's hear this one." The piece was sung by Sam, the others joining in the chorus, and was as follows: Sam. "Come, all my brethren, let us take a rest, While the moon shines so brightly and clear; Old master is dead, and left us at last, And has gone at the Bar to appear. Old master has died, and lying in his grave, And our blood will awhile cease to flow; He will no more trample on the neck of the slave; For he's gone where the slaveholders go. Chorus. "Hang up the shovel and the hoe Take down the fiddle and the bow— Old master has gone to the slaveholder's rest; He has gone where they all ought to go. Sam. "I heard the old doctor say the other night, As he passed by the dining-room door 'Perhaps the old man may live through the night, But I think he will die about four.' Young mistress sent me, at the peril of my life, For the parson to come down and pray, For says she, 'Your old master is now about to die,' And says I, 'God speed him on his way.' "Hang up the shovel, &c. "At four o'clock at morn the family was called Around the old man's dying bed; And oh! but I laughed to myself when I heard That the old man's spirit had fled. Mr. Carlton cried, and so did I pretend; Young mistress very nearly went mad; And the old parson's groans did the heavens fairly rend; But I tell you I felt mighty glad. "Hang up the shovel, &c. "We'll no more be roused by the blowing of his horn, Our backs no longer he will score; He no more will feed us on cotton-seeds and corn; For his reign of oppression now is o'er. He no more will hang our children on the tree, To be ate by the carrion crow; He no more will send our wives to Tennessee; For he's gone where the slaveholders go. "Hang up the shovel and the hoe, Take down the fiddle and the bow, We'll dance and sing, And make the forest ring, With the fiddle and the old banjo." The song was not half finished before Carlton regretted that he had caused the young lady to remain and hear what to her must be anything but pleasant reflections upon her deceased parent. "I think we will walk," said he, at the same time extending his arm to Georgiana. "No," said she; "let's hear them out. It is from these unguarded expressions of the feelings of the Negroes, that we should learn a lesson." At its conclusion they walked towards the house in silence: as they were ascending the steps, the young man said, "They are happy, after all. The Negro, situated as yours are, is not aware that he is deprived of any just rights." "Yes, yes," answered Georgiana: "you may place the slave where you please; you may dry up to your utmost the fountains of his feelings, the springs of his thought; you may yoke him to your labour, as an ox which liveth only to work, and worketh only to live; you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being; you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality; it is the ethereal part of his nature, which oppression cannot reach; it is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be extinguished by the hand of man." On reaching the drawing-room, they found Sam snuffing the candles, and looking as solemn and as dignified as if he had never sung a song or laughed in his life. "Will Miss Georgy have de supper got up now?" asked the Negro. "Yes," she replied. "Well," remarked Carlton, "that beats anything I ever met with. Do you think that was Sam we heard singing?" "I am sure of it," was the answer. "I could not have believed that that fellow was capable of so much deception," continued he. "Our system of slavery is one of deception; and Sam, you see, has only been a good scholar. However, he is as honest a fellow as you will find among the slave population here. If we would have them more honest, we should give them their liberty, and then the inducement to be dishonest would be gone. I have resolved that these creatures shall all be free." "Indeed!" exclaimed Carlton. "Yes, I shall let them all go free, and set an example to those about me." "I honour your judgment," said he. "But will the state permit them to remain?" "If not, they can go where they can live in freedom. I will not be unjust because the state is." CHAPTER XVII RETALIATION "I had a dream, a happy dream; I thought that I was free: That in my own bright land again A home there was for me." WITH the deepest humiliation Horatio Green saw the daughter of Clotel, his own child, brought into his dwelling as a servant. His wife felt that she had been deceived, and determined to punish her deceiver. At first Mary was put to work in the kitchen, where she met with little or no sympathy from the other slaves, owing to the fairness of her complexion. The child was white, what should be done to make her look like other Negroes, was the question Mrs. Green asked herself. At last she hit upon a plan: there was a garden at the back of the house over which Mrs. Green could look from her parlour window. Here the white slave-girl was put to work, without either bonnet or handkerchief upon her head. A hot sun poured its broiling rays on the naked face and neck of the girl, until she sank down in the corner of the garden, and was actually broiled to sleep. "Dat little nigger ain't working a bit, missus," said Dinah to Mrs. Green, as she entered the kitchen. "She's lying in the sun, seasoning; she will work better by and by," replied the mistress. "Dees white niggers always tink dey sef good as white folks," continued the cook. "Yes, but we will teach them better; won't we, Dinah?" "Yes, missus, I don't like dees mularter niggers, no how: dey always want to set dey sef up for something big." The cook was black, and was not without that prejudice which is to be found among the Negroes, as well as among the whites of the Southern States. The sun had the desired effect, for in less than a fortnight Mary's fair complexion had disappeared, and she was but little whiter than any other mulatto children running about the yard. But the close resemblance between the father and child annoyed the mistress more than the mere whiteness of the child's complexion. Horatio made proposition after proposition to have the girl sent away, for every time he beheld her countenance it reminded him of the happy days he had spent with Clotel. But his wife had commenced, and determined to carry out her unfeeling and fiendish designs. This child was not only white, but she was the granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, the man who, when speaking against slavery in the legislature of Virginia, said, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. With what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other! For if the slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep for ever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. "What an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives, whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose! But we must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of blind fatality." The same man, speaking of the probability that the slaves might some day attempt to gain their liberties by a revolution, said, "I tremble for my country, when I recollect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep for ever. The Almighty has no attribute that can take sides with us in such a struggle." But, sad to say, Jefferson is not the only American statesman who has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then left his own children to die slaves. CHAPTER XVIII THE LIBERATOR "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."—Declaration of American Independence. THE death of the parson was the commencement of a new era in the history of his slaves. Only a little more than eighteen years of age, Georgiana could not expect to carry out her own wishes in regard to the slaves, although she was sole heir to her father's estate. There were distant relations whose opinions she had at least to respect. And both law and public opinion in the state were against any measure of emancipation that she might think of adopting; unless, perhaps, she might be permitted to send them to Liberia. Her uncle in Connecticut had already been written to, to come down and aid in settling up the estate. He was a Northern man, but she knew him to be a tight-fisted yankee, whose whole counsel would go against liberating the Negroes. Yet there was one way in which the thing could be done. She loved Carlton, and she well knew that he loved her; she read it in his countenance every time they met, yet the young man did not mention his wishes to her. There were many reasons why he should not. In the first place, her father was just deceased, and it seemed only right that he should wait a reasonable time. Again, Carlton was poor, and Georgiana was possessed of a large fortune; and his high spirit would not, for a moment, allow him to place himself in a position to be regarded as a fortune-hunter. The young girl hinted, as best she could, at the probable future; but all to no purpose. He took nothing to himself. True, she had read much of "woman's rights;" and had even attended a meeting, while at the North, which had been called to discuss the wrongs of woman; but she could not nerve herself up to the point of putting the question to Carlton, although she felt sure that she should not be rejected. She waited, but in vain. At last, one evening, she came out of her room rather late, and was walking on the piazza for fresh air. She passed near Carlton's room, and heard the voice of Sam. The negro had just come in to get the young man's boots, and had stopped, as he usually did, to have some talk. "I wish," said Sam, "dat Marser Carlton an Miss Georgy would get married; den, speck, we'd have good times." "I don't think your mistress would have me," replied the young man. "What make tink dat, Marser Carlton?" "Your mistress would marry no one, Sam, unless she loved them." "Den I wish she would lub you, cause I tink we have good times den. All our folks is de same 'pinion like me," returned the Negro, and then left the room with the boots in his hands. During the conversation between the Anglo-Saxon and the African, one word had been dropped by the former that haunted the young lady the remainder of the night—"Your mistress would marry no one unless she loved them." That word awoke her in the morning, and caused her to decide upon this import subject. Love and duty triumphed over the woman's timid nature, and that day Georgiana informed Carlton that she was ready to become his wife. The young man, with grateful tears, accepted and kissed the hand that was offered to him. The marriage of Carlton and Miss Peck was hailed with delight by both the servants in the house and the Negroes on the farm. New rules were immediately announced for the working and general treatment of the slaves on the plantation. With this, Huckelby, the overseer, saw his reign coming to an end; and Snyder, the Dutch preacher, felt that his services would soon be dispensed with, for nothing was more repugnant to the feelings of Mrs. Carlton than the sermons preached by Snyder to the slaves. She regarded them as something intended to make them better satisfied with their condition, and more valuable as pieces of property, without preparing them for the world to come. Mrs. Carlton found in her husband a congenial spirit, who entered into all her wishes and plans for bettering the condition of their slaves. Mrs. Carlton's views and sympathies were all in favour of immediate emancipation; but then she saw, or thought she saw, a difficulty in that. If the slaves were liberated, they must be sent out of the state. This, of course, would incur additional expense; and if they left the state, where had they better go? "Let's send them to Liberia," said Carlton. "Why should they go to Africa, any more than to the Free States or to Canada?" asked the wife. "They would be in their native land," he answered. "Is not this their native land? What right have we, more than the Negro, to the soil here, or to style ourselves native Americans? Indeed it is as much their home as ours, and I have sometimes thought it was more theirs. The Negro has cleared up the lands, built towns, and enriched the soil with his blood and tears; and in return, he is to be sent to a country of which he knows nothing. Who fought more bravely for American independence than the blacks? A negro, by the name of Attucks, was the first that fell in Boston at the commencement of the revolutionary war; and throughout the whole of the struggles for liberty in this country, the Negroes have contributed their share. In the last war with Great Britain, the country was mainly indebted to the blacks in New Orleans for the achievement of the victory at that place; and even General Jackson, the commander in chief, called the Negroes together at the close of the war, and addressed them in the following terms:— 'Soldiers!—When on the banks of the Mobile I called you to take up arms, inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your white fellow citizens, I expected much from you; for I was not ignorant that you possess qualities most formidable to an invading enemy. I knew with what fortitude you could endure hunger and thirst, and all the fatigues of a campaign. I knew well how you loved your native country, and that you, as well as ourselves, had to defend what man holds most dear—his parents, wife, children, and property. You have done more than I expected. In addition to the previous qualities I before knew you to possess, I found among you a noble enthusiasm, which leads to the performance of great things. 'Soldiers! The President of the United States shall hear how praiseworthy was your conduct in the hour of danger, and the representatives of the American people will give you the praise your exploits entitle you to. Your general anticipates them in appauding your noble ardour.' "And what did these noble men receive in return for their courage, their heroism? Chains and slavery. Their good deeds have been consecrated only in their own memories. Who rallied with more alacrity in response to the summons of danger? If in that hazardous hour, when our homes were menaced with the horrors of war, we did not disdain to call upon the Negro to assist in repelling invasion, why should we, now that the danger is past, deny him a home in his native land?" "I see," said Carlton, "you are right, but I fear you will have difficulty in persuading others to adopt your views." "We will set the example," replied she, "and then hope for the best; for I feel that the people of the Southern States will one day see their error. Liberty has always been our watchword, as far as profession is concerned. Nothing has been held so cheap as our common humanity, on a national average. If every man had his aliquot proportion of the injustice done in this land, by law and violence, the present freemen of the northern section would many of them commit suicide in self-defence, and would court the liberties awarded by Ali Pasha of Egypt to his subjects. Long ere this we should have tested, in behalf of our bleeding and crushed American brothers of every hue and complexion, every new constitution, custom, or practice, by which inhumanity was supposed to be upheld, the injustice and cruelty they contained, emblazoned before the great tribunal of mankind for condemnation; and the good and available power they possessed, for the relief, deliverance and elevation of oppressed men, permitted to shine forth from under the cloud, for the refreshment of the human race." Although Mr. and Mrs. Carlton felt that immediate emancipation was the right of the slave and the duty of the master, they resolved on a system of gradual emancipation, so as to give them time to accomplish their wish, and to prepare the Negro for freedom. Huckelby was one morning told that his services would no longer be required. The Negroes, ninety-eight in number, were called together and told that the whip would no longer be used, and that they would be allowed a certain sum for every bale of cotton produced. Sam, whose long experience in the cotton-field before he had been taken into the house, and whose general intelligence justly gave him the first place amongst the Negroes on the Poplar Farm, was placed at their head. They were also given to understand that the money earned by them would be placed to their credit; and when it amounted to a certain sum, they should all be free. The joy with which this news was received by the slaves, showed their grateful appreciation of the boon their benefactors were bestowing upon them. The house servants were called and told that wages would be allowed them, and what they earned set to their credit, and they too should be free. The next were the bricklayers. There were eight of these, who had paid their master two dollars per day, and boarded and clothed themselves. An arrangement was entered into with them, by which the money they earned should be placed to their credit; and they too should be free, when a certain amount should be accumulated; and great was the change amongst all these people. The bricklayers had been to work but a short time, before their increased industry was noticed by many. They were no longer apparently the same people. A sedateness, a care, an economy, an industry, took possession of them, to which there seemed to be no bounds but in their physical strength. They were never tired of labouring, and seemed as though they could never effect enough. They became temperate, moral, religious, setting an example of innocent, unoffending lives to the world around them, which was seen and admired by all. Mr. Parker, a man who worked nearly forty slaves at the same business, was attracted by the manner in which these Negroes laboured. He called on Mr. Carlton, some weeks after they had been acting on the new system, and offered 2,000 dollars for the head workman, Jim. The offer was, of course, refused. A few days after the same gentleman called again, and made an offer of double the sum that he had on the former occasion. Mr. Parker, finding that no money would purchase either of the Negroes, said, "Now, Mr. Carlton, pray tell me what it is that makes your Negroes work so? What kind of people are they?" "I suppose," observed Carlton, "that they are like other people, flesh and blood." "Why, sir," continued Parker, "I have never seen such people; building as they are next door to my residence, I see and have my eye on them from morning till night. You are never there, for I have never met you, or seen you once at the building. Why, sir, I am an early riser, getting up before day; and do you think that I am not awoke every morning in my life by the noise of their trowels at work, and their singing and noise before day; and do you suppose, sir, that they stop or leave off work at sundown? No, sir, but they work as long as they can see to lay a brick, and then they carry tip brick and mortar for an hour or two afterward, to be ahead of their work the next morning. And again, sir, do you think that they walk at their work? No, sir, they run all day. You see, sir, those immensely long, ladders, five stories in height; do you suppose they walk up them? No, sir, they run up and down them like so many monkeys all day long. I never saw such people as these in my life. I don't know what to make of them. Were a white man with them and over them with a whip, then I should see and understand the cause of the running and incessant labour; but I cannot comprehend it; there is something in it, sir. Great man, sir, that Jim; great man; I should like to own him." Carlton here informed Parker that their liberties depended upon their work; when the latter replied, "If niggers can work so for the promise of freedom, they ought to be made to work without it." This last remark was in the true spirit of the slaveholder, and reminds us of the fact that, some years since, the overseer of General Wade Hampton offered the niggers under him a suit of clothes to the one that picked the most cotton in one day; and after that time that day's work was given as a task to the slaves on that plantation; and, after a while, was adopted by other planters. The Negroes on the farm, under "Marser Sam," were also working in a manner that attracted the attention of the planters round about. They no longer feared Huckelby's whip, and no longer slept under the preaching of Snyder. On the Sabbath, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton read and explained the Scriptures to them; and the very great attention paid by the slaves showed plainly that they appreciated the gospel when given to them in its purity. The death of Currer, from yellow fever, was a great trial to Mrs. Carlton; for she had not only become much attached to her, but had heard with painful interest the story of her wrongs, and would, in all probability, have restored her to her daughter in New Orleans. CHAPTER XIX ESCAPE OF CLOTEL "The fetters galled my weary soul— A soul that seemed but thrown away; I spurned the tyrant's base control, Resolved at least the man to play." No country has produced so much heroism in so short a time, connected with escapes from peril and oppression, as has occurred in the United States among fugitive slaves, many of whom show great shrewdness in their endeavours to escape from this land of bondage. A slave was one day seen passing on the high road from a border town in the interior of the state of Virginia to the Ohio river. The man had neither hat upon his head or coat upon his back. He was driving before him a very nice fat pig, and appeared to all who saw him to be a labourer employed on an adjoining farm. "No Negro is permitted to go at large in the Slave States without a written pass from his or her master, except on business in the neighbourhood." "Where do you live, my boy?" asked a white man of the slave, as he passed a white house with green blinds. "Jist up de road, sir," was the answer. "That's a fine pig." "Yes, sir, marser like dis choat berry much." And the Negro drove on as if he was in great haste. In this way he and the pig travelled more than fifty miles before they reached the Ohio river. Once at the river they crossed over; the pig was sold; and nine days after the runaway slave passed over the Niagara river, and, for the first time in his life, breathed the air of freedom. A few weeks later, and, on the same road, two slaves were seen passing; one was on horseback, the other was walking before him with his arms tightly bound, and a long rope leading from the man on foot to the one on horseback. "Oh, ho, that's a runaway rascal, I suppose," said a farmer, who met them on the road. "Yes, sir, he bin runaway, and I got him fast. Marser will tan his jacket for him nicely when he gets him." "You are a trustworthy fellow, I imagine," continued the farmer. "Oh yes, sir; marser puts a heap of confidence in dis nigger." And the slaves travelled on. When the one on foot was fatigued they would change positions, the other being tied and driven on foot. This they called "ride and tie." After a journey of more than two hundred miles they reached the Ohio river, turned the horse loose, told him to go home, and proceeded on their way to Canada. However they were not to have it all their own way. There are men in the Free States, and especially in the states adjacent to the Slave States, who make their living by catching the runaway slave, and returning him for the reward that may be offered. As the two slaves above mentioned were travelling on towards the land of freedom, led by the North Star, they were set upon by four of these slave-catchers, and one of them unfortunately captured. The other escaped. The captured fugitive was put under the torture, and compelled to reveal the name of his owner and his place of residence. Filled with delight, the kidnappers started back with their victim. Overjoyed with the prospect of receiving a large reward, they gave themselves up on the third night to pleasure. They put up at an inn. The Negro was chained to the bed-post, in the same room with his captors. At dead of night, when all was still, the slave arose from the floor upon which he had been lying, looked around, and saw that the white men were fast asleep. The brandy punch had done its work. With palpitating heart and trembling limbs he viewed his position. The door was fast, but the warm weather had compelled them to leave the window open. If he could but get his chains off, he might escape through the window to the piazza, and reach the ground by one of the posts that supported the piazza. The sleeper's clothes hung upon chairs by the bedside; the slave thought of the padlock key, examined the pockets and found it. The chains were soon off, and the Negro stealthily making his way to the window: he stopped and said to himself, "These men are villains, they are enemies to all who like me are trying to be free. Then why not I teach them a lesson?" He then undressed himself, took the clothes of one of the men, dressed himself in them, and escaped through the window, and, a moment more, he was on the high road to Canada. Fifteen days later, and the writer of this gave him a passage across Lake Erie, and saw him safe in her Britannic Majesty's dominions. We have seen Clotel sold to Mr. French in Vicksburgh, her hair cut short, and everything done to make her realise her position as a servant. Then we have seen her re-sold, because her owners feared she would die through grief. As yet her new purchaser treated her with respectful gentleness, and sought to win her favour by flattery and presents, knowing that whatever he gave her he could take back again. But she dreaded every moment lest the scene should change, and trembled at the sound of every footfall. At every interview with her new master Clotel stoutly maintained that she had left a husband in Virginia, and would never think of taking another. The gold watch and chain, and other glittering presents which he purchased for her, were all laid aside by the quadroon, as if they were of no value to her. In the same house with her was another servant, a man, who had from time to time hired himself from his master. William was his name. He could feel for Clotel, for he, like her, had been separated from near and dear relatives, and often tried to console the poor woman. One day the quadroon observed to him that her hair was growing out again. "Yes," replied William, "you look a good deal like a man with your short hair." "Oh," rejoined she, "I have often been told that I would make a better looking man than a woman. If I had the money," continued she, "I would bid farewell to this place." In a moment more she feared that she had said too much, and smilingly remarked, "I am always talking nonsense." William was a tall, full-bodied Negro, whose very countenance beamed with intelligence. Being a mechanic, he had, by his own industry, made more than what he paid his owner; this he laid aside, with the hope that some day he might get enough to purchase his freedom. He had in his chest one hundred and fifty dollars. His was a heart that felt for others, and he had again and again wiped the tears from his eyes as he heard the story of Clotel as related by herself. "If she can get free with a little money, why not give her what I have?" thought he, and then he resolved to do it. An hour after, he came into the quadroon's room, and laid the money in her lap, and said, "There, Miss Clotel, you said if you had the means you would leave this place; there is money enough to take you to England, where you will be free. You are much fairer than many of the white women of the South, and can easily pass for a free white lady." At first Clotel feared that it was a plan by which the Negro wished to try her fidelity to her owner; but she was soon convinced by his earnest manner, and the deep feeling with which he spoke, that he was honest. "I will take the money only on one condition," said she; "and that is, that I effect your escape as well as my own." "How can that be done?" he inquired. "I will assume the disguise of a gentleman and you that of a servant, and we will take passage on a steamboat and go to Cincinnati, and thence to Canada." Here William put in several objections to the plan. He feared detection, and he well knew that, when a slave is once caught when attempting to escape, if returned is sure to be worse treated than before. However, Clotel satisfied him that the plan could be carried out if he would only play his part. The resolution was taken, the clothes for her disguise procured, and before night everything was in readiness for their departure. That night Mr. Cooper, their master, was to attend a party, and this was their opportunity. William went to the wharf to look out for a boat, and had scarcely reached the landing ere he heard the puffing of a steamer. He returned and reported the fact. Clotel had already packed her trunk, and had only to dress and all was ready. In less than an hour they were on board the boat. Under the assumed name of "Mr. Johnson," Clotel went to the clerk's office and took a private state room for herself, and paid her own and servant's fare. Besides being attired in a neat suit of black, she had a white silk handkerchief tied round her chin, as if she was an invalid. A pair of green glasses covered her eyes; and fearing that she would be talked to too much and thus render her liable to be detected, she assumed to be very ill. On the other hand, William was playing his part well in the servants' hall; he was talking loudly of his master's wealth. Nothing appeared as good on the boat as in his master's fine mansion. "I don't like dees steam-boats no how," said William; "I hope when marser goes on a journey agin he will take de carriage and de hosses." Mr. Johnson (for such was the name by which Clotel now went) remained in his room, to avoid, as far as possible, conversation with others. After a passage of seven days they arrived at Louisville, and put up at Gough's Hotel. Here they had to await the departure of another boat for the North. They were now in their most critical position. They were still in a slave state, and John C. Calhoun, a distinguished slave-owner, was a guest at this hotel. They feared, also, that trouble would attend their attempt to leave this place for the North, as all persons taking Negroes with them have to give bail that such Negroes are not runaway slaves. The law upon this point is very stringent: all steamboats and other public conveyances are liable to a fine for every slave that escapes by them, besides paying the full value for the slave. After a delay of four hours, Mr. Johnson and servant took passage on the steamer Rodolph, for Pittsburgh. It is usual, before the departure of the boats, for an officer to examine every part of the vessel to see that no slave secretes himself on board. "Where are you going?" asked the officer of William, as he was doing his duty on this occasion. "I am going with marser," was the quick reply. "Who is your master?" "Mr. Johnson, sir, a gentleman in the cabin." "You must take him to the office and satisfy the captain that all is right, or you can't go on this boat." William informed his master what the officer had said. The boat was on the eve of going, and no time could be lost, yet they knew not what to do. At last they went to the office, and Mr. Johnson, addressing the captain, said, "I am informed that my boy can't go with me unless I give security that he belongs to me. "Yes," replied the captain, "that is the law." "A very strange law indeed," rejoined Mr. Johnson, "that one can't take his property with him." After a conversation of some minutes, and a plea on the part of Johnson that he did not wish to be delayed owing to his illness, they were permitted to take their passage without farther trouble, and the boat was soon on its way up the river. The fugitives had now passed the Rubicon, and the next place at which they would land would be in a Free State. Clotel called William to her room, and said to him, "We are now free, you can go on your way to Canada, and I shall go to Virginia in search of my daughter." The announcement that she was going to risk her liberty in a Slave State was unwelcome news to William. With all the eloquence he could command, he tried to persuade Clotel that she could not escape detection, and was only throwing her freedom away. But she had counted the cost, and made up her mind for the worst. In return for the money he had furnished, she had secured for him his liberty, and their engagement was at an end. After a quick passage the fugitives arrived at Cincinnati, and there separated. William proceeded on his way to Canada, and Clotel again resumed her own apparel, and prepared to start in search of her child. As might have been expected, the escape of those two valuable slaves created no little sensation in Vicksburgh. Advertisements and messages were sent in every direction in which the fugitives were thought to have gone. It was soon, however, known that they had left the town as master and servant; and many were the communications which appeared in the newspapers, in which the writers thought, or pretended, that they had seen the slaves in their disguise. One was to the effect that they had gone off in a chaise; one as master, and the other as servant. But the most probable was an account given by a correspondent of one of the Southern newspapers, who happened to be a passenger in the same steamer in which the slaves escaped, and which we here give:— "One bright starlight night, in the month of December last, I found myself in the cabin of the steamer Rodolph, then lying in the port of Vicksburgh, and bound to Louisville. I had gone early on board, in order to select a good berth, and having got tired of reading the papers, amused myself with watching the appearance of the passengers as they dropped in, one after another, and I being a believer in physiognomy, formed my own opinion of their characters. "The second bell rang, and as I yawningly returned my watch to my pocket, my attention was attracted by the appearance of a young man who entered the cabin supported by his servant, a strapping Negro. "The man was bundled up in a capacious overcoat; his face was bandaged with a white handkerchief, and its expression entirely hid by a pair of enormous spectacles. "There was something so mysterious and unusual about the young man as he sat restless in the corner, that curiosity led me to observe him more closely. "He appeared anxious to avoid notice, and before the steamer had fairly left the wharf, requested, in a low, womanly voice, to be shown his berth, as he was an invalid, and must retire early: his name he gave as Mr. Johnson. His servant was called, and he was put quietly to bed. I paced the deck until Tyhee light grew dim in the distance, and then went to my berth. "I awoke in the morning with the sun shining in my face; we were then just passing St. Helena. It was a mild beautiful morning, and most of the passengers were on deck, enjoying the freshness of the air, and stimulating their appetites for breakfast. Mr. Johnson soon made his appearance, arrayed as on the night before, and took his seat quietly upon the guard of the boat. "From the better opportunity afforded by daylight, I found that he was a slight build, apparently handsome young man, with black hair and eyes, and of a darkness of complexion that betokened Spanish extraction. Any notice from others seemed painful to him; so to satisfy my curiosity, I questioned his servant, who was standing near, and gained the following information. "His master was an invalid—he had suffered for a long time under a complication of diseases, that had baffled the skill of the best physicians in Mississippi; he was now suffering principally with the 'rheumatism,' and he was scarcely able to walk or help himself in any way. He came from Vicksburgh, and was now on his way to Philadelphia, at which place resided his uncle, a celebrated physician, and through whose means he hoped to be restored to perfect health. "This information, communicated in a bold, off-hand manner, enlisted my sympathies for the sufferer, although it occurred to me that he walked rather too gingerly for a person afflicted with so many ailments." After thanking Clotel for the great service she had done him in bringing him out of slavery, William bade her farewell. The prejudice that exists in the Free States against coloured persons, on account of their colour, is attributable solely to the influence of slavery, and is but another form of slavery itself. And even the slave who escapes from the Southern plantations, is surprised when he reaches the North, at the amount and withering influence of this prejudice. William applied at the railway station for a ticket for the train going to Sandusky, and was told that if he went by that train he would have to ride in the luggage-van. "Why?" asked the astonished Negro. "We don't send a Jim Crow carriage but once a day, and that went this morning." The "Jim Crow" carriage is the one in which the blacks have to ride. Slavery is a school in which its victims learn much shrewdness, and William had been an apt scholar. Without asking any more questions, the Negro took his seat in one of the first-class carriages. He was soon seen and ordered out. Afraid to remain in the town longer, he resolved to go by that train; and consequently seated himself on a goods' box in the luggage van. The train started at its proper time, and all went on well. Just before arriving at the end of the journey, the conductor called on William for his ticket. "I have none," was the reply. "Well, then, you can pay your fare to me," said the officer. "How much is it?" asked the black man. "Two dollars." "What do you charge those in the passenger-carriage?" "Two dollars." "And do you charge me the same as you do those who ride in the best carriages?" asked the Negro. "Yes," was the answer. "I shan't pay it," returned the man. "You black scamp, do you think you can ride on this road without paying your fare?" "No, I don't want to ride for nothing; I only want to pay what's right." "Well, launch out two dollars, and that's right." "No, I shan't; I will pay what I ought, and won't pay any more." "Come, come, nigger, your fare and be done with it," said the conductor, in a manner that is never used except by Americans to blacks. "I won't pay you two dollars, and that enough," said William. "Well, as you have come all the way in the luggage-van, pay me a dollar and a half and you may go." "I shan't do any such thing." "Don't you mean to pay for riding?" "Yes, but I won't pay a dollar and a half for riding up here in the freight-van. If you had let me come in the carriage where others ride, I would have paid you two dollars." "Where were you raised? You seem to think yourself as good as white folks." "I want nothing more than my rights." "Well, give me a dollar, and I will let you off." "No, sir, I shan't do it." "What do you mean to do then, don't you wish to pay anything?" "Yes, sir, I want to pay you the full price." "What do you mean by full price?" "What do you charge per hundred-weight for goods?" inquired the Negro with a degree of gravity that would have astonished Diogenes himself. "A quarter of a dollar per hundred," answered the conductor. "I weigh just one hundred and fifty pounds," returned William, "and will pay you three eighths of a dollar." "Do you expect that you will pay only thirty-seven cents for your ride?" "This, sir, is your own price. I came in a luggage-van, and I'll pay for luggage." After a vain effort to get the Negro to pay more, the conductor took the thirty-seven cents, and noted in his cash-book, "Received for one hundred and fifty pounds of luggage, thirty seven cents." This, reader, is no fiction; it actually occurred in the railway above described. Thomas Corwin, a member of the American Congress, is one of the blackest white men in the United States. He was once on his way to Congress, and took passage in one of the Ohio river steamers. As he came just at the dinner hour, he immediately went into the dining saloon, and took his seat at the table. A gentleman with his whole party of five ladies at once left the table. "Where is the captain?" cried the man in an angry tone. The captain soon appeared, and it was sometime before he could satisfy the old gent, that Governor Corwin was not a nigger. The newspapers often have notices of mistakes made by innkeepers and others who undertake to accommodate the public, one of which we give below. On the 6th inst., the Hon. Daniel Webster and family entered Edgartown, on a visit for health and recreation. Arriving at the hotel, without alighting from the coach, the landlord was sent for to see if suitable accommodation could be had. That dignitary appearing, and surveying Mr. Webster, while the hon. senator addressed him, seemed woefully to mistake the dark features of the traveller as he sat back in the corner of the carriage, and to suppose him a coloured man, particularly as there were two coloured servants of Mr. W. outside. So he promptly declared that there was no room for him and his family, and he could not be accommodated there at the same time suggesting that he might perhaps find accommodation at some of the huts up back, to which he pointed. So deeply did the prejudice of looks possess him, that he appeared not to notice that the stranger introduced himself to him as Daniel Webster, or to be so ignorant as not to have heard of such a personage; and turning away, he expressed to the driver his astonishment that he should bring black people there for him to take in. It was not till he had been repeatedly assured and made to understand that the said Daniel Webster was a real live senator of the United States, that he perceived his awkward mistake and the distinguished honour which he and his house were so near missing. In most of the Free States, the coloured people are disfranchised on account of their colour. The following scene, which we take from a newspaper in the state of Ohio, will give some idea of the extent to which this prejudice is carried. "The whole of Thursday last was occupied by the Court of Common Pleas for this county in trying to find out whether one Thomas West was of the VOTING COLOUR, as some had very constitutional doubts as to whether his colour was orthodox, and whether his hair was of the official crisp! Was it not a dignified business? Four profound judges, four acute lawyers, twelve grave jurors, and I don't know how many venerable witnesses, making in all about thirty men, perhaps, all engaged in the profound, laborious, and illustrious business, of finding out whether a man who pays tax, works on the road, and is an industrious farmer, has been born according to the republican, Christian constitution of Ohio—so that he can vote! And they wisely, gravely, and 'JUDGMATICALLY' decided that he should not vote! What wisdom—what research it must have required to evolve this truth! It was left for the Court of Common Pleas for Columbian county, Ohio, in the United States of North America, to find out what Solomon never dreamed of—the courts of all civilised, heathen, or Jewish countries, never contemplated. Lest the wisdom of our courts should be circumvented by some such men as might be named, who are so near being born constitutionally that they might be taken for white by sight, I would suggest that our court be invested with SMELLING powers, and that if a man don't exhale the constitutional smell, he shall not vote! This would be an additional security to our liberties." William found, after all, that liberty in the so-called Free States was more a name than a reality; that prejudice followed the coloured man into every place that he might enter. The temples erected for the worship of the living God are no exception. The finest Baptist church in the city of Boston has the following paragraph in the deed that conveys its seats to pewholders: "And it is a further condition of these presents, that if the owner or owners of said pew shall determine hereafter to sell the same, it shall first be offered, in writing, to the standing committee of said society for the time being, at such price as might otherwise be obtained for it; and the said committee shall have the right, for ten days after such offer, to purchase said pew for said society, at that price, first deducting therefrom all taxes and assessments on said pew then remaining unpaid. And if the said committee shall not so complete such purchase within said ten days, then the pew may be sold by the owner or owners thereof (after payment of all such arrears) to any one respectable white person, but upon the same conditions as are contained in this instrument; and immediate notice of such sale shall be given in writing, by the vendor, to the treasurer of said society." Such are the conditions upon which the Rowe Street Baptist Church, Boston, disposes of its seats. The writer of this is able to put that whole congregation, minister and all, to flight, by merely putting his coloured face in that church. We once visited a church in New York that had a place set apart for the sons of Ham. It was a dark, dismal looking place in one corner of the gallery, grated in front like a hen-coop, with a black border around it. It had two doors; over one was B. M.—black men; over the other B. W.—black women. CHAPTER XX A TRUE DEMOCRAT "Who can, with patience, for a moment see The medley mass of pride and misery, Of whips and charters, manacles and rights, Of slaving blacks and democratic whites, And all the piebald policy that reigns In free confusion o'er Columbia's plains? To think that man, thou just and gentle God! Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod, O'er creatures like himself, with souls from thee, Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty!"—Thomas Moore. EDUCATED in a free state, and marrying a wife who had been a victim to the institution of slavery, Henry Morton became strongly opposed to the system. His two daughters, at the age of twelve years, were sent to the North to finish their education, and to receive that refinement that young ladies cannot obtain in the Slave States. Although he did not publicly advocate the abolition of slavery, he often made himself obnoxious to private circles, owing to the denunciatory manner in which he condemned the "peculiar institution." Being one evening at a party, and hearing one of the company talking loudly of the glory and freedom of American institutions, he gave it as his opinion that, unless slavery was speedily abolished, it would be the ruin of the Union. "It is not our boast of freedom," said he, "that will cause us to be respected abroad. It is not our loud talk in favour of liberty that will cause us to be regarded as friends of human freedom; but our acts will be scrutinised by the people of other countries. We say much against European despotism; let us look to ourselves. That government is despotic where the rulers govern subjects by their own mere will—by decrees and laws emanating from their uncontrolled will, in the enactment and execution of which the ruled have no voice, and under which they have no right except at the will of the rulers. Despotism does not depend upon the number of the rulers, or the number of the subjects. It may have one ruler or many. Rome was a despotism under Nero; so she was under the triumvirate. Athens was a despotism under Thirty Tyrants; under her Four Hundred Tyrants; under her Three Thousand Tyrants. It has been generally observed that despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims more numerous. The triumvirs each demanded his victims. The smaller the number of subjects in proportion to the tyrants, the more cruel the oppression, because the less danger from rebellion. In this government, the free white citizens are the rulers—the sovereigns, as we delight to be called. All others are subjects. There are, perhaps, some sixteen or seventeen millions of sovereigns, and four millions of subjects. "The rulers and the ruled are of all colours, from the clear white of the Caucasian tribes to the swarthy Ethiopian. The former, by courtesy, are all called white, the latter black. In this government the subject has no rights, social, political, or personal. He has no voice in the laws which govern him. He can hold no property. His very wife and children are not his. His labour is another's. He, and all that appertain to him, are the absolute property of his rulers. He is governed, bought, sold, punished, executed, by laws to which he never gave his assent, and by rulers whom he never chose. He is not a serf merely, with half the rights of men like the subjects of despotic Russia; but a native slave, stripped of every right which God and nature gave him, and which the high spirit of our revolution declared inalienable which he himself could not surrender, and which man could not take from him. Is he not then the subject of despotic sway? "The slaves of Athens and Rome were free in comparison. They had some rights—could acquire some property; could choose their own masters, and purchase their own freedom; and, when free, could rise in social and political life. The slaves of America, then, lie under the most absolute and grinding despotism that the world ever saw. But who are the despots? The rulers of the country—the sovereign people! Not merely the slaveholder who cracks the lash. He is but the instrument in the hands of despotism. That despotism is the government of the Slave States, and the United States, consisting of all its rulers all the free citizens. Do not look upon this as a paradox, because you and I and the sixteen millions of rulers are free. The rulers of every despotism are free. Nicholas of Russia is free. The grand Sultan of Turkey is free. The butcher of Austria is free. Augustus, Anthony, and Lepidus were free, while they drenched Rome in blood. The Thirty Tyrants—the Four Hundred—the Three Thousand, were free while they bound their countrymen in chains. You, and I, and the sixteen millions are free, while we fasten iron chains, and rivet manacles on four millions of our fellowmen—take their wives and children from them—separate them—sell them, and doom them to perpetual, eternal bondage. Are we not then despots—despots such as history will brand and God abhor? "We, as individuals, are fast losing our reputation for honest dealing. Our nation is losing its character. The loss of a firm national character, or the degradation of a nation's honour, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction. Behold the once proud fabric of a Roman empire—an empire carrying its arts and arms into every part of the Eastern continent; the monarchs of mighty kingdoms dragged at the wheels of her triumphal chariots; her eagle waving over the ruins of desolated countries; where is her splendour, her wealth, her power, her glory? Extinguished for ever. Her mouldering temples, the mournful vestiges of her former grandeur, afford a shelter to her muttering monks. Where are her statesmen, her sages, her philosophers, her orators, generals? Go to their solitary tombs and inquire. She lost her national character, and her destruction followed. The ramparts of her national pride were broken down, and Vandalism desolated her classic fields. Then let the people of our country take warning ere it is too late. But most of us say to ourselves, "'Who questions the right of mankind to be free? Yet, what are the rights of the Negro to me? I'm well fed and clothed, I have plenty of pelf— I'll care for the blacks when I turn black myself.' "New Orleans is doubtless the most immoral place in the United States. The theatres are open on the Sabbath. Bull-fights, horse-racing, and other cruel amusements are carried on in this city to an extent unknown in any other part of the Union. The most stringent laws have been passed in that city against Negroes, yet a few years since the State Legislature passed a special act to enable a white man to marry a coloured woman, on account of her being possessed of a large fortune. And, very recently, the following paragraph appeared in the city papers:— "'There has been quite a stir recently in this city, in consequence of a marriage of a white man, named Buddington, a teller in the Canal Bank, to the Negro daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants. Buddington, before he could be married was obliged to swear that he had Negro blood in his veins, and to do this he made an incision in his arm, and put some of her blood in the cut. The ceremony was performed by a Catholic clergyman, and the bridegroom has received with his wife a fortune of fifty or sixty thousand dollars.' "It seems that the fifty or sixty thousand dollars entirely covered the Negro woman's black skin, and the law prohibiting marriage between blacks and whites was laid aside for the occasion." Althesa felt proud, as well she might, at her husband's taking such high ground in a slaveholding city like New Orleans. CHAPTER XXI THE CHRISTIAN'S DEATH "O weep, ye friends of freedom weep! Your harps to mournful measures sweep." ON the last day of November, 1620, on the confines of the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, lo! we behold one little solitary tempest-tost and weather-beaten ship; it is all that can be seen on the length and breadth of the vast intervening solitudes, from the melancholy wilds of Labrador and New England's ironbound shores, to the western coasts of Ireland and the rock defended Hebrides, but one lonely ship greets the eye of angels or of men, on this great throughfare of nations in our age. Next in moral grandeur, was this ship, to the great discoverer's: Columbus found a continent; the May-flower brought the seedwheat of states and empire. That is the May-flower, with its servants of the living God, their wives and little ones, hastening to lay the foundations of nations in the accidental lands of the setting-sun. Hear the voice of prayer to God for his protection, and the glorious music of praise, as it breaks into the wild tempest of the mighty deep, upon the ear of God. Here in this ship are great and good men. Justice, mercy, humanity, respect for the rights of all; each man honoured, as he was useful to himself and others; labour respected, law-abiding men, constitution-making and respecting men; men, whom no tyrant could conquer, or hardship overcome, with the high commission sealed by a Spirit divine, to establish religious and political liberty for all. This ship had the embryo elements of all that is useful, great, and grand in Northern institutions; it was the great type of goodness and wisdom, illustrated in two and a quarter centuries gone by; it was the good genius of America. But look far in the South-east, and you behold on the same day, in 1620, a low rakish ship hastening from the tropics, solitary and alone, to the New World. What is she? She is freighted with the elements of unmixed evil. Hark! hear those rattling chains, hear that cry of despair and wail of anguish, as they die away in the unpitying distance. Listen to those shocking oaths, the crack of that flesh-cutting whip. Ah! it is the first cargo of slaves on their way to Jamestown, Virginia. Behold the May-flower anchored at Plymouth Rock, the slave-ship in James River. Each a parent, one of the prosperous, labour-honouring, law-sustaining institutions of the North; the other the mother of slavery, idleness, lynch-law, ignorance, unpaid labour, poverty, and duelling, despotism, the ceaseless swing of the whip, and the peculiar institutions of the South. These ships are the representation of good and evil in the New World, even to our day. When shall one of those parallel lines come to an end? The origin of American slavery is not lost in the obscurity of by-gone ages. It is a plain historical fact, that it owes its birth to the African slave trade, now pronounced by every civilised community the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. Of all causes intended to benefit mankind, the abolition of chattel slavery must necessarily be placed amongst the first, and the Negro hails with joy every new advocate that appears in his cause. Commiseration for human suffering and human sacrifices awakened the capacious mind, and brought into action the enlarged benevolence, of Georgiana Carlton. With respect to her philosophy—it was of a noble cast. It was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by the Creator with certain rights, which are irrefragable; and that, however human pride and human avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man—and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, her mind was free from the gloom that surrounded theirs; her philosophy was founded in the school of Christianity; though a devoted member of her father's church, she was not a sectarian. We learn from Scripture, and it is a little remarkable that it is the only exact definition of religion found in the sacred volume, that "pure religion and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." "Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them." "Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." This was her view of Christianity, and to this end she laboured with all her energies to convince her slaveholding neighbours that the Negro could not only take care of himself, but that he also appreciated liberty, and was willing to work and redeem himself. Her most sanguine wishes were being realized when she suddenly fell into a decline. Her mother had died of consumption, and her physician pronounced this to be her disease. She was prepared for this sad intelligence, and received it with the utmost composure. Although she had confidence in her husband that he would carry out her wishes in freeing the Negroes after her death, Mrs. Carlton resolved upon their immediate liberation. Consequently the slaves were all summoned before the noble woman, and informed that they were no longer bondsmen. "From this hour," said she, "you are free, and all eyes will be fixed upon you. I dare not predict how far your example may affect the welfare of your brethren yet in bondage. If you are temperate, industrious, peaceable, and pious, you will show to the world that slaves can be emancipated without danger. Remember what a singular relation you sustain to society. The necessities of the case require not only that you should behave as well as the whites, but better than the whites; and for this reason: if you behave no better than they, your example will lose a great portion of its influence. Make the Lord Jesus Christ your refuge and exemplar. His is the only standard around which you can successfully rally. If ever there was a people who needed the consolations of religion to sustain them in their grievous afflictions, you are that people. You had better trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. Happy is that people whose God is the Lord. Get as much education as possible for yourselves and your children. An ignorant people can never occupy any other than a degraded station in society; they can never be truly free until they are intelligent. In a few days you will start for the state of Ohio, where land will be purchased for some of you who have families, and where I hope you will all prosper. We have been urged to send you to Liberia, but we think it wrong to send you from your native land. We did not wish to encourage the Colonization Society, for it originated in hatred of the free coloured people. Its pretences are false, its doctrines odious, its means contemptible. Now, whatever may be your situation in life, 'Remember those in bonds as bound with them.' You must get ready as soon as you can for your journey to the North." Seldom was there ever witnessed a more touching scene than this. There sat the liberator, pale, feeble, emaciated, with death stamped upon her countenance, surrounded by the sons and daughters of Africa; some of whom had in former years been separated from all that they had held near and dear, and the most of whose backs had been torn and gashed by the Negro whip. Some were upon their knees at the feet of their benefactress; others were standing round her weeping. Many begged that they might be permitted to remain on the farm and work for wages, for some had wives and some husbands on other plantations in the neighbourhood, and would rather remain with them. But the laws of the state forbade any emancipated Negroes remaining, under penalty of again being sold into slavery. Hence the necessity of sending them out of the state. Mrs. Carlton was urged by her friends to send the emancipated Negroes to Africa. Extracts from the speeches of Henry Clay, and other distinguished Colonization Society men, were read to her to induce her to adopt this course. Some thought they should he sent away because the blacks are vicious; others because they would be missionaries to their brethren in Africa. "But," said she, "if we send away the Negroes because they are profligate and vicious, what sort of missionaries will they make? Why not send away the vicious among the whites for the same reason, and the same purpose?" Death is a leveller, and neither age, sex, wealth, nor usefulness can avert when he is permitted to strike. The most beautiful flowers soon fade, and droop, and die; this is also the case with man; his days are uncertain as the passing breeze. This hour he glows in the blush of health and vigour, but the next he may be counted with the number no more known on earth. Although in a low state of health, Mrs. Carlton had the pleasure of seeing all her slaves, except Sam and three others, start for a land of freedom. The morning they were to go on board the steamer, bound for Louisville, they all assembled on the large grass plot, in front of the drawing-room window, and wept while they bid their mistress farewell. When they were on the boat, about leaving the wharf, they were heard giving the charge to those on shore—"Sam, take care of Misus, take care of Marser, as you love us, and hope to meet us in de Hio (Ohio), and in heben; be sure and take good care of Misus and Marser." In less than a week after her emancipated people had started for Ohio, Mrs. Carlton was cold in death. Mr. Carlton felt deeply, as all husbands must who love their wives, the loss of her who had been a lamp to his feet, and a light to his path. She had converted him from infidelity to Christianity; from the mere theory of liberty to practical freedom. He had looked upon the Negro as an ill-treated distant link of the human family; he now regarded them as a part of God's children. Oh, what a silence pervaded the house when the Christian had been removed. His indeed was a lonesome position. "'Twas midnight, and he sat alone The husband of the dead, That day the dark dust had been thrown Upon the buried head." In the midst of the buoyancy of youth, this cherished one had drooped and died. Deep were the sounds of grief and mourning heard in that stately dwelling, when the stricken friends, whose office it had been to nurse and soothe the weary sufferer, beheld her pale and motionless in the sleep of death. Oh what a chill creeps through the breaking heart when we look upon the insensible form, and feel that it no longer contains the spirit we so dearly loved! How difficult to realise that the eye which always glowed with affection and intelligence; that the ear which had so often listened to the sounds of sorrow and gladness; that the voice whose accents had been to us like sweet music, and the heart, the habitation of benevolence and truth, are now powerless and insensate as the bier upon which the form rests. Though faith be strong enough to penetrate the cloud of gloom which hovers near, and to behold the freed spirit safe, for ever, safe in its home in heaven, yet the thoughts will linger sadly and cheerlessly upon the grave. Peace to her ashes! she fought the fight, obtained the Christian's victory, and wears the crown. But if it were that departed spirits are permitted to note the occurrences of this world, with what a frown of disapprobation would hers view the effort being made in the United States to retard the work of emancipation for which she laboured and so wished to see brought about. In what light would she consider that hypocritical priesthood who gave their aid and sanction to the infamous "Fugitive Slave Law." If true greatness consists in doing good to mankind, then was Georgiana Carlton an ornament to human nature. Who can think of the broken hearts made whole, of sad and dejected countenances now beaming with contentment and joy, of the mother offering her free-born babe to heaven, and of the father whose cup of joy seems overflowing in the presence of his family, where none can molest or make him afraid. Oh, that God may give more such persons to take the whip-scarred Negro by the hand, and raise him to a level with our common humanity! May the professed lovers of freedom in the new world see that true liberty is freedom for all! and may every American continually hear it sounding in his ear:— "Shall every flap of England's flag Proclaim that all around are free, From 'farthest Ind' to each blue crag That beetles o'er the Western Sea? And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, When Freedom's fire is dim with us, And round our country's altar clings The damning shade of Slavery's curse?" CHAPTER XXII A RIDE IN A STAGE-COACH WE shall now return to Cincinnati, where we left Clotel preparing to go to Richmond in search of her daughter. Tired of the disguise in which she had escaped, she threw it off on her arrival at Cincinnati. But being assured that not a shadow of safety would attend her visit to a city in which she was well known, unless in some disguise, she again resumed men's apparel on leaving Cincinnati. This time she had more the appearance of an Italian or Spanish gentleman. In addition to the fine suit of black cloth, a splendid pair of dark false whiskers covered the sides of her face, while the curling moustache found its place upon the upper lip. From practice she had become accustomed to high-heeled boots, and could walk without creating any suspicion as regarded her sex. It was a cold evening that Clotel arrived at Wheeling, and took a seat in the coach going to Richmond. She was already in the state of Virginia, yet a long distance from the place of her destination. A ride in a stage-coach, over an American road, is unpleasant under the most favourable circumstances. But now that it was winter, and the roads unusually bad, the journey was still more dreary. However, there were eight passengers in the coach, and I need scarcely say that such a number of genuine Americans could not be together without whiling away the time somewhat pleasantly. Besides Clotel, there was an elderly gentleman with his two daughters—one apparently under twenty years, the other a shade above. The pale, spectacled face of another slim, tall man, with a white neckerchief, pointed him out as a minister. The rough featured, dark countenance of a stout looking man, with a white hat on one side of his head, told that he was from the sunny South. There was nothing remarkable about the other two, who might pass for ordinary American gentlemen. It was on the eve of a presidential election, when every man is thought to be a politician. Clay, Van Buren, and Harrison were the men who expected the indorsement of the Baltimore Convention. "Who does this town go for?" asked the old gent with the ladies, as the coach drove up to an inn, where groups of persons were waiting for the latest papers. "We are divided," cried the rough voice of one of the outsiders. "Well, who do you think will get the majority here?" continued the old gent. "Can't tell very well; I go for 'Old Tip,'" was the answer from without. This brought up the subject fairly before the passengers, and when the coach again started a general discussion commenced, in which all took a part except Clotel and the young ladies. Some were for Clay, some for Van Buren, and others for "Old Tip." The coach stopped to take in a real farmer-looking man, who no sooner entered than he was saluted with "Do you go for Clay?" "No," was the answer. "Do you go for Van Buren?" "No." "Well, then, of course you will go for Harrison." "No." "Why, don't you mean to work for any of them at the election?" "No." "Well, who will you work for?" asked one of the company. "I work for Betsy and the children, and I have a hard job of it at that," replied the farmer, without a smile. This answer, as a matter of course, set the new corner down as one upon whom the rest of the passengers could crack their jokes with the utmost impunity. "Are you an Odd Fellow?" asked one. "No, sir, I've been married more than a month." "I mean, do you belong to the order of Odd Fellows?" "No, no; I belong to the order of married men." "Are you a mason?" "No, I am a carpenter by trade." "Are you a Son of Temperance?" "Bother you, no; I am a son of Mr. John Gosling." After a hearty laugh in which all joined, the subject of Temperance became the theme for discussion. In this the spectacled gent was at home. He soon showed that he was a New Englander, and went the whole length of the "Maine Law." The minister was about having it all his own way, when the Southerner, in the white hat, took the opposite side of the question. "I don't bet a red cent on these teetotlars," said he, and at the same time looking round to see if he had the approbation of the rest of the company. "Why?" asked the minister. "Because they are a set who are afraid to spend a cent. They are a bad lot, the whole on 'em." It was evident that the white hat gent was an uneducated man. The minister commenced in full earnest, and gave an interesting account of the progress of temperance in Connecticut, the state from which he came, proving, that a great portion of the prosperity of the state was attributable to the disuse of intoxicating drinks. Every one thought the white hat had got the worst of the argument, and that he was settled for the remainder of the night. But not he; he took fresh courage and began again. "Now," said he, "I have just been on a visit to my uncle's in Vermont, and I guess I knows a little about these here teetotlars. You see, I went up there to make a little stay of a fortnight. I got there at night, and they seemed glad to see me, but they didn't give me a bit of anything to drink. Well, thinks I to myself, the jig's up: I sha'n't get any more liquor till I get out of the state." We all sat up till twelve o'clock that night, and I heard nothing but talk about the 'Juvinal Temperence Army,' the 'Band of Hope,' the 'Rising Generation,' the 'Female Dorcas Temperance Society,' 'The None Such,' and I don't know how many other names they didn't have. As I had taken several pretty large 'Cock Tails' before I entered the state, I thought upon the whole that I would not spite for the want of liquor. The next morning, I commenced writing back to my friends, and telling them what's what. Aunt Polly said, 'Well, Johnny, I s'pose you are given 'em a pretty account of us all here.' 'Yes,' said I; I am tellin' 'em if they want anything to drink when they come up here, they had better bring it with 'em.' 'Oh,' said aunty, 'they would search their boxes; can't bring any spirits in the state.' Well, as I was saying, jist as I got my letters finished, and was going to the post office (for uncle's house was two miles from the town), aunty says, 'Johnny, I s'pose you'll try to get a little somethin' to drink in town won't you?' Says I, 'I s'pose it's no use. 'No,' said she, 'you can't; it ain't to be had no how, for love nor money.' So jist as I was puttin' on my hat, 'Johnny,' cries out aunty, 'What,' says I. 'Now I'll tell you, I don't want you to say nothin' about it, but I keeps a little rum to rub my head with, for I am troubled with the headache; now I don't want you to mention it for the world, but I'll give you a little taste, the old man is such a teetotaller, that I should never hear the last of it, and I would not like for the boys to know it, they are members of the "Cold Water Army."' "Aunty now brought out a black bottle and gave me a cup, and told me to help myself, which I assure you I did. I now felt ready to face the cold. As I was passing the barn I heard uncle thrashing oats, so I went to the door and spoke to him. 'Come in, John,' says he. 'No,' said I; 'I am goin' to post some letters,' for I was afraid that he would smell my breath if I went too near to him. 'Yes, yes, come in.' So I went in, and says he, 'It's now eleven o'clock; that's about the time you take your grog, I s'pose, when you are at home.' 'Yes,' said I. 'I am sorry for you, my lad; you can't get anything up here; you can't even get it at the chemist's, except as medicine, and then you must let them mix it and you take it in their presence.' 'This is indeed hard,' replied I; 'Well, it can't be helped,' continued he: 'and it ought not to be if it could. It's best for society; people's better off without drink. I recollect when your father and I, thirty years ago, used to go out on a spree and spend more than half a dollar in a night. Then here's the rising generation; there's nothing like settin' a good example. Look how healthy your cousins are there's Benjamin, he never tasted spirits in his life. Oh, John, I would you were a teetotaller.' 'I suppose,' said I, 'I'll have to be one till I leave the state.' 'Now,' said he, 'John, I don't want you to mention it, for your aunt would go into hysterics if she thought there was a drop of intoxicating liquor about the place, and I would not have the boys to know it for anything, but I keep a little brandy to rub my joints for the rheumatics, and being it's you, I'll give you a little dust.' So the old man went to one corner of the barn, took out a brown jug and handed it to me, and I must say it was a little the best cognac that I had tasted for many a day. Says I, 'Uncle, you are a good judge of brandy.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I learned when I was young.' So off I started for the post office. In returnin' I thought I'd jist go through the woods where the boys were chopping wood, and wait and go to the house with them when they went to dinner. I found them hard at work, but as merry as crickets. 'Well, cousin John, are you done writing?' 'Yes,' answered I. 'Have you posted them?' 'Yes.' 'Hope you didn't go to any place inquiring for grog.' 'No, I knowed it was no good to do that.' 'I suppose a cock-tail would taste good now.' 'Well, I guess it would,' says I. The three boys then joined in a hearty laugh. 'I suppose you have told 'em that we are a dry set up here?' 'Well, I ain't told em anything else.' 'Now, cousin John,' said Edward, 'if you wont say anything, we will give you a small taste. For mercy's sake don't let father or mother know it; they are such rabid teetotallers, that they would not sleep a wink to-night if they thought there was any spirits about the place.' 'I am mum,' says I. And the boys took a jug out of a hollow stump, and gave me some first-rate peach brandy. And during the fortnight that I was in Vermont, with my teetotal relations, I was kept about as well corned as if I had been among my hot water friends in Tennessee." This narrative, given by the white hat man, was received with unbounded applause by all except the pale gent in spectacles, who showed, by the way in which he was running his fingers between his cravat and throat, that he did not intend to "give it up so." The white hat gent was now the lion of the company. "Oh, you did not get hold of the right kind of teetotallers," said the minister. "I can give you a tale worth a dozen of yours, continued he. "Look at society in the states where temperance views prevail, and you will there see real happiness. The people are taxed less, the poor houses are shut up for want of occupants, and extreme destitution is unknown. Every one who drinks at all is liable to become an habitual drunkard. Yes, I say boldly, that no man living who uses intoxicating drinks, is free from the danger of at least occasional, and if of occasional, ultimately of habitual excess. There seems to be no character, position, or circumstances that free men from the danger. I have known many young men of the finest promise, led by the drinking habit into vice, ruin, and early death. I have known many tradesmen whom it has made bankrupt. I have known Sunday scholars whom it has led to prison-teachers, and even superintendents, whom it has dragged down to profligacy. I have known ministers of high academic honours, of splendid eloquence, nay, of vast usefulness, whom it has fascinated, and hurried over the precipice of public infamy with their eyes open, and gazing with horror on their fate. I have known men of the strongest and clearest intellect and of vigorous resolution, whom it has made weaker than children and fools—gentlemen of refinement and taste whom it has debased into brutes—poets of high genius whom it has bound in a bondage worse than the galleys, and ultimately cut short their days. I have known statesmen, lawyers, and judges whom it has killed—kind husbands and fathers whom it has turned into monsters. I have known honest men whom it has made villains; elegant and Christian ladies whom it has converted into bloated sots." "But you talk too fast," replied the white hat man. "You don't give a feller a chance to say nothin'." "I heard you," continued the minister, "and now you hear me out. It is indeed wonderful how people become lovers of strong drink. Some years since, before I became a teetotaller I kept spirits about the house, and I had a servant who was much addicted to strong drink. He used to say that he could not make my boots shine, without mixing the blacking with whiskey. So to satisfy myself that the whiskey was put in the blacking, one morning I made him bring the dish in which he kept the blacking, and poured in the whiskey myself. And now, sir, what do you think?" "Why, I s'pose your boots shined better than before," replied the white hat. "No," continued the minister. "He took the blacking out, and I watched him, and he drank down the whiskey, blacking, and all." This turned the joke upon the advocate of strong drink, and he began to put his wits to work for arguments. "You are from Connecticut, are you?" asked the Southerner. "Yes, and we are an orderly, pious, peaceable people. Our holy religion is respected, and we do more for the cause of Christ than the whole Southern States put together." "I don't doubt it," said the white hat gent. "You sell wooden nutmegs and other spurious articles enough to do some good. You talk of your 'holy religion'; but your robes' righteousness are woven at Lowell and Manchester; your paradise is high per centum on factory stocks; your palms of victory and crowns of rejoicing are triumphs over a rival party in politics, on the questions of banks and tariffs. If you could, you would turn heaven into Birmingham, make every angel a weaver, and with the eternal din of looms and spindles drown all the anthems of the morning stars. Ah! I know you Connecticut people like a book. No, no, all hoss; you can't come it on me." This last speech of the rough featured man again put him in the ascendant, and the spectacled gent once more ran his fingers between his cravat and throat. "You live in Tennessee, I think," said the minister. "Yes," replied the Southerner, "I used to live in Orleans, but now I claim to be a Tennessean." "Your people of New Orleans are the most ungodly set in the United States," said the minister. Taking a New Orleans newspaper from his pocket he continued, "Just look here, there are not less than three advertisements of bull fights to take place on the Sabbath. You people of the Slave States have no regard for the Sabbath, religion, morality or anything else intended to, make mankind better." Here Clotel could have borne ample testimony, had she dared to have taken sides with the Connecticut man. Her residence in Vicksburgh had given her an opportunity of knowing something of the character of the inhabitants of the far South. "Here is an account of a grand bull fight that took place in New Orleans a week ago last Sunday. I will read it to you." And the minister read aloud the following: "Yesterday, pursuant to public notice, came off at Gretna, opposite the Fourth District, the long heralded fight between the famous grizzly bear, General Jackson (victor in fifty battles), and the Attakapas bull, Santa Anna. "The fame of the coming conflict had gone forth to the four winds, and women and children, old men and boys, from all parts of the city, and from the breezy banks of Lake Pontchartrain and Borgne, brushed up their Sunday suit, and prepared to ace the fun. Long before the published hour, the quiet streets of the rural Gretna were filled with crowds of anxious denizens, flocking to the arena, and before the fight commenced, such a crowd had collected as Gretna had not seen, nor will be likely to see again. "The arena for the sports was a cage, twenty feet square, built upon the ground, and constructed of heavy timbers and iron bars. Around it were seats, circularly placed, and intended to accommodate many thousands. About four or five-thousand persons assembled, covering the seats as with a Cloud, and crowding down around the cage, were within reach of the bars. "The bull selected to sustain the honour and verify the pluck of Attakapas on this trying occasion was a black animal from the Opelousas, lithe and sinewy as a four year old courser, and with eyes like burning coals. His horns bore the appearance of having been filed at the tips, and wanted that keen and slashing appearance so common with others of his kith and kin; otherwise it would have been 'all day' with Bruin—at the first pass, and no mistake. "The bear was an animal of note, and called General Jackson, from the fact of his licking up everything that came in his way, and taking 'the responsibility' on all occasions. He was a wicked looking beast, very lean and unamiable in aspect, with hair all standing the wrong way. He had fought some fifty bulls (so they said), always coming out victorious, but that neither one of the fifty had been an Attakapas bull, the bills of the performances did not say. Had he tackled Attakapas first it is likely his fifty battles would have remained unfought. "About half past four o'clock the performances commenced. "The bull was first seen, standing in the cage alone, with head erect, and looking a very monarch in his capacity. At an appointed signal, a cage containing the bear was placed alongside the arena, and an opening being made, bruin stalked into the battle ground—not, however, without sundry stirrings up with a ten foot pole, he being experienced in such matters, and backwards in raising a row. "Once on the battle-field, both animals stood, like wary champions, eyeing each other, the bear cowering low, with head upturned and fangs exposed, while Attakapas stood wondering, with his eye dilated, lashing his sides with his long and bushy tail, and pawing up the earth in very wrath. "The bear seemed little inclined to begin the attack, and the bull, standing a moment, made steps first backward and then forward, as if measuring his antagonist, and meditating where to plant a blow. Bruin wouldn't come to the scratch no way, till one of the keepers, with an iron rod, tickled his ribs and made him move. Seeing this, Attakapas took it as a hostile demonstration, and, gathering his strength, dashed savagely at the enemy, catching him on the points of his horns, and doubling him up like a sack of bran against the bars. Bruin 'sung out' at this, 'and made a dash for his opponent's nose.' "Missing this, the bull turned to the 'about face,' and the bear caught him by the ham, inflicting a ghastly wound. But Attakapas with a kick shook him off, and renewing the attack, went at him again, head on and with a rush. This time he was not so fortunate, for the bear caught him above the eye, burying his fangs in the tough hide, and holding him as in a vice. It was now the bull's turn to 'sing out,' and he did it, bellowing forth with a voice more hideous than that of all the bulls of Bashan. Some minutes stood matters thus, and the cries of the bull, mingled with the hoarse growls of the bear, made hideous music, fit only for a dance of devils. Then came a pause (the bear having relinquished his hold), and for a few minutes it was doubtful whether the fun was not up. But the magic wand of the keeper (the ten foot pole) again stirred up bruin, and at it they went, and with a rush. "Bruin now tried to fasten on the bull's back, and drove his tusks in him in several places, making the red blood flow like wine from the vats of Luna. But Attakapas was pluck to the back bone, and, catching bruin on the tips of his horns, shuffled him up right merrily, making the fur fly like feathers in a gale of wind. Bruin cried 'Nuff' (in bear language), but the bull followed up his advantage, and, making one furious plunge full at the figure head of the enemy, struck a horn into his eye, burying it there, and dashing the tender organ into darkness and atoms. Blood followed the blow, and poor bruin, blinded, bleeding, and in mortal agony, turned with a howl to leave, but Attakapas caught him in the retreat, and rolled him over like a ball. Over and over again this rolling over was enacted, and finally, after more than an hour, bruin curled himself up on his back, bruised, bloody, and dead beat. The thing was up with California, and Attakapas was declared the victor amidst the applause of the multitude that made the heavens ring." "There," said he, "can you find anything against Connecticut equal to that?" The Southerner had to admit that he was beat by the Yankee. During all this time, it must not be supposed that the old gent with the two daughters, and even the young ladies themselves, had been silent. Clotel and they had not only given their opinions as regarded the merits of the discussion, but that sly glance of the eye, which is ever given where the young of both sexes meet, had been freely at work. The American ladies are rather partial to foreigners, and Clotel had the appearance of a fine Italian. The old gentleman was now near his home, and a whisper from the eldest daughter, who was unmarried but marriageable, induced him to extend to "Mr. Johnson" an invitation to stop and spend a week with the young ladies at their family residence. Clotel excused herself upon various grounds, and at last, to cut short the matter, promised that she would pay them a visit on her return. The arrival of the coach at Lynchburgh separated the young ladies from the Italian gent, and the coach again resumed its journey. CHAPTER XXIII TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION "Is the poor privilege to turn the key Upon the captive, freedom? He's as far From the enjoyment of the earth and air Who watches o'er the chains, as they who wear." DURING certain seasons of the year, all tropical climates are subject to epidemics of a most destructive nature. The inhabitants of New Orleans look with as much certainty for the appearance of the yellow-fever, small-pox, or cholera, in the hot season, as the Londoner does for fog in the month of November. In the summer of 1831, the people of New Orleans were visited with one of these epidemics. It appeared in a form unusually repulsive and deadly. It seized persons who were in health, without any premonition. Sometimes death was the immediate consequence. The disorder began in the brain, by an oppressive pain accompanied or followed by fever. The patient was devoured with burning thirst. The stomach, distracted by pains, in vain sought relief in efforts to disburden itself. Fiery veins streaked the eye; the face was inflamed, and dyed of a dark dull red colour; the ears from time to time rang painfully. Now mucous secretions surcharged the tongue, and took away the power of speech; now the sick one spoke, but in speaking had a foresight of death. When the violence of the disease approached the heart, the gums were blackened. The sleep, broken, troubled by convulsions, or by frightful visions, was worse than the waking hours; and when the reason sank under a delirium which had its seat in the brain, repose utterly forsook the patient's couch. The progress of the heat within was marked by yellowish spots, which spread over the surface of the body. If, then, a happy crisis came not, all hope was gone. Soon the breath infected the air with a fetid odour, the lips were glazed, despair painted itself in the eyes, and sobs, with long intervals of silence, formed the only language. From each side of the mouth spread foam, tinged with black and burnt blood. Blue streaks mingled with the yellow all over the frame. All remedies were useless. This was the Yellow Fever. The disorder spread alarm and confusion throughout the city. On an average, more than 400 died daily. In the midst of disorder and confusion, death heaped victims on victims. Friend followed friend in quick succession. The sick were avoided from the fear of contagion, and for the same reason the dead were left unburied. Nearly 2000 dead bodies lay uncovered in the burial-ground, with only here and there a little lime thrown over them, to prevent the air becoming infected. The Negro, whose home is in a hot climate, was not proof against the disease. Many plantations had to suspend their work for want of slaves to take the places of those carried off by the fever. Henry Morton and wife were among the thirteen thousand swept away by the raging disorder that year. Like too many, Morton had been dealing extensively in lands and stocks; and though apparently in good circumstances was, in reality, deeply involved in debt. Althesa, although as white as most white women in a southern clime, was, as we already know, born a slave. By the laws of all the Southern States the children follow the condition of the mother. If the mother is free the children are free; if a slave, they are slaves. Morton was unacquainted with the laws of the land; and although he had married Althesa, it was a marriage which the law did not recognise; and therefore she whom he thought to be his wife was, in fact, nothing more than his slave. What would have been his feelings had he known this, and also known that his two daughters, Ellen and Jane, were his slaves? Yet such was the fact. After the disappearance of the disease with which Henry Morton had so suddenly been removed, his brother went to New Orleans to give what aid he could in settling up the affairs. James Morton, on his arrival in New Orleans, felt proud of his nieces, and promised them a home with his own family in Vermont; little dreaming that his brother had married a slave woman, and that his nieces were slaves. The girls themselves had never heard that their mother had been a slave, and therefore knew nothing of the danger hanging over their heads. An inventory of the property was made out by James Morton, and placed in the hands of the creditors; and the young ladies, with their uncle, were about leaving the city to reside for a few days on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, where they could enjoy a fresh air that the city could not afford. But just as they were about taking the train, an officer arrested the whole party; the young ladies as slaves, and the uncle upon the charge of attempting to conceal the property of his deceased brother. Morton was overwhelmed with horror at the idea of his nieces being claimed as slaves, and asked for time, that he might save them from such a fate. He even offered to mortgage his little farm in Vermont for the amount which young slave women of their ages would fetch. But the creditors pleaded that they were "an extra article," and would sell for more than common slaves; and must, therefore, be sold at auction. They were given up, but neither ate nor slept, nor separated from each other, till they were taken into the New Orleans slave market, where they were offered to the highest bidder. There they stood, trembling, blushing, and weeping; compelled to listen to the grossest language, and shrinking from the rude hands that examined the graceful proportions of their beautiful frames. After a fierce contest between the bidders, the young ladies were sold, one for 2,300 dollars, and the other for 3,000 dollars. We need not add that had those young girls been sold for mere house servants or field hands, they would not have brought one half the sums they did. The fact that they were the grand-daughters of Thomas Jefferson, no doubt, increased their value in the market. Here were two of the softer sex, accustomed to the fondest indulgence, surrounded by all the refinements of life, and with all the timidity that such a life could produce, bartered away like cattle in Smithfield market. Ellen, the eldest, was sold to an old gentleman, who purchased her, as he said, for a housekeeper. The girl was taken to his residence, nine miles from the city. She soon, however, knew for what purpose she had been bought; and an educated and cultivated mind and taste, which made her see and understand how great was her degradation, now armed her hand with the ready means of death. The morning after her arrival, she was found in her chamber, a corpse. She had taken poison. Jane was purchased by a dashing young man, who had just come into the possession of a large fortune. The very appearance of the young Southerner pointed him out as an unprincipled profligate; and the young girl needed no one to tell her of her impending doom. The young maid of fifteen was immediately removed to his country seat, near the junction of the Mississippi river with the sea. This was a most singular spot, remote, in a dense forest spreading over the summit of a cliff that rose abruptly to a great height above the sea; but so grand in its situation, in the desolate sublimity which reigned around, in the reverential murmur of the waves that washed its base, that, though picturesque, it was a forest prison. Here the young lady saw no one, except an old Negress who acted as her servant. The smiles with which the young man met her were indignantly spurned. But she was the property of another, and could hope for justice and mercy only through him. Jane, though only in her fifteenth year, had become strongly attached to Volney Lapuc, a young Frenchman, a student in her father's office. The poverty of the young man, and the youthful age of the girl, had caused their feelings to be kept from the young lady's parents. At the death of his master, Volney had returned to his widowed mother at Mobile, and knew nothing of the misfortune that had befallen his mistress, until he received a letter from her. But how could he ever obtain a sight of her, even if he wished, locked up as she was in her master's mansion? After several days of what her master termed "obstinacy" on her part, the young girl was placed in an upper chamber, and told that that would be her home, until she should yield to her master's wishes. There she remained more than a fortnight, and with the exception of a daily visit from her master, she saw no one but the old Negress who waited upon her. One bright moonlight evening as she was seated at the window, she perceived the figure of a man beneath her window. At first, she thought it was her master; but the tall figure of the stranger soon convinced her that it was another. Yes, it was Volney! He had no sooner received her letter, than he set out for New Orleans; and finding on his arrival there, that his mistress had been taken away, resolved to follow her. There he was; but how could she communicate with him? She dared not trust the old Negress with her secret, for fear that it might reach her master. Jane wrote a hasty note and threw it out of the window, which was eagerly picked up by the young man, and he soon disappeared in the woods. Night passed away in dreariness to her, and the next morning she viewed the spot beneath her window with the hope of seeing the footsteps of him who had stood there the previous night. Evening returned, and with it the hope of again seeing the man she loved. In this she was not disappointed; for daylight had scarcely disappeared, and the moon once more rising through the tops of the tall trees, when the young man was seen in the same place as on the previous night. He had in his hand a rope ladder. As soon as Jane saw this, she took the sheets from her bed, tore them into strings, tied them together, and let one end down the side of the house. A moment more, and one end of the rope ladder was in her hand, and she fastened it inside the room. Soon the young maiden was seen descending, and the enthusiastic lover, with his arms extended, waiting to receive his mistress. The planter had been out on an hunting excursion, and returning home, saw his victim as her lover was receiving her in his arms. At this moment the sharp sound of a rifle was heard, and the young man fell weltering in his blood, at the feet of his mistress. Jane fell senseless by his side. For many days she had a confused consciousness of some great agony, but knew not where she was, or by whom surrounded. The slow recovery of her reason settled into the most intense melancholy, which gained at length the compassion even of her cruel master. The beautiful bright eyes, always pleading in expression, were now so heart-piercing in their sadness, that he could not endure their gaze. In a few days the poor girl died of a broken heart, and was buried at night at the back of the garden by the Negroes; and no one wept at the grave of her who had been so carefully cherished, and so tenderly beloved. This, reader, is an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave. It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and no hope can cheer. CHAPTER XXIV THE ARREST "The fearful storm—it threatens lowering, Which God in mercy long delays; Slaves yet may see their masters cowering, While whole plantations smoke and blaze!" —Carter. IT was late in the evening when the coach arrived at Richmond, and Clotel once more alighted in her native city. She had intended to seek lodging somewhere in the outskirts of the town, but the lateness of the hour compelled her to stop at one of the principal hotels for the night. She had scarcely entered the inn, when she recognised among the numerous black servants one to whom she was well known; and her only hope was, that her disguise would keep her from being discovered. The imperturbable calm and entire forgetfulness of self which induced Clotel to visit a place from which she could scarcely hope to escape, to attempt the rescue of a beloved child, demonstrate that overwillingness of woman to carry out the promptings of the finer feelings of her heart. True to woman's nature, she had risked her own liberty for another. She remained in the hotel during the night, and the next morning, under the plea of illness, she took her breakfast alone. That day the fugitive slave paid a visit to the suburbs of the town, and once more beheld the cottage in which she had spent so many happy hours. It was winter, and the clematis and passion flower were not there; but there were the same walks she had so often pressed with her feet, and the same trees which had so often shaded her as she passed through the garden at the back of the house. Old remembrances rushed upon her memory, and caused her to shed tears freely. Clotel was now in her native town, and near her daughter; but how could she communicate with her? How could she see her? To have made herself known, would have been a suicidal act; betrayal would have followed, and she arrested. Three days had passed away, and Clotel still remained in the hotel at which she had first put up; and yet she had got no tidings of her child. Unfortunately for Clotel, a disturbance had just broken out amongst the slave population in the state of Virginia, and all strangers were eyed with suspicion. The evils consequent on slavery are not lessened by the incoming of one or two rays of light. If the slave only becomes aware of his condition, and conscious of the injustice under which he suffers, if he obtains but a faint idea of these things, he will seize the first opportunity to possess himself of what he conceives to belong to him. The infusion of Anglo-Saxon with African blood has created an insurrectionary feeling among the slaves of America hitherto unknown. Aware of their blood connection with their owners, these mulattoes labour under the sense of their personal and social injuries; and tolerate, if they do not encourage in themselves, low and vindictive passions. On the other hand, the slave owners are aware of their critical position, and are ever watchful, always fearing an outbreak among the slaves. True, the Free States are equally bound with the Slave States to suppress any insurrectionary movement that may take place among the slaves. The Northern freemen are bound by their constitutional obligations to aid the slaveholder in keeping his slaves in their chains. Yet there are, at the time we write, four millions of bond slaves in the United States. The insurrection to which we now refer was headed by a full-blooded Negro, who had been born and brought up a slave. He had heard the twang of the driver's whip, and saw the warm blood streaming from the Negro's body; he had witnessed the separation of parents and children, and was made aware, by too many proofs, that the slave could expect no justice at the hand of the slave owner. He went by the name of "Nat Turner." He was a preacher amongst the Negroes, and distinguished for his eloquence, respected by the whites, and loved and venerated by the Negroes. On the discovery of the plan for the outbreak, Turner fled to the swamps, followed by those who had joined in the insurrection. Here the revolted Negroes numbered some hundreds, and for a time bade defiance to their oppressors. The Dismal Swamps cover many thousands of acres of wild land, and a dense forest, with wild animals and insects, such as are unknown in any other part of Virginia. Here runaway Negroes usually seek a hiding place, and some have been known to reside here for years. The revolters were joined by one of these. He was a large, tall, full-blooded Negro, with a stern and savage countenance; the marks on his face showed that he was from one of the barbarous tribes in Africa, and claimed that country as his native land; his only covering was a girdle around his loins, made of skins of wild beasts which he had killed; his only token of authority among those that he led, was a pair of epaulettes made from the tail of a fox, and tied to his shoulder by a cord. Brought from the coast of Africa when only fifteen years of age to the island of Cuba, he was smuggled from thence into Virginia. He had been two years in the swamps, and considered it his future home. He had met a Negro woman who was also a runaway; and, after the fashion of his native land, had gone through the process of oiling her as the marriage ceremony. They had built a cave on a rising mound in the swamp; this was their home. His name was Picquilo. His only weapon was a sword, made from the blade of a scythe, which he had stolen from a neighbouring plantation. His dress, his character, his manners, his mode of fighting, were all in keeping with the early training he had received in the land of his birth. He moved about with the activity of a cat, and neither the thickness of the trees, nor the depth of the water could stop him. He was a bold, turbulent spirit; and from revenge imbrued his hands in the blood of all the whites he could meet. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and loss of sleep he seemed made to endure as if by peculiarity of constitution. His air was fierce, his step oblique, his look sanguinary. Such was the character of one of the leaders in the Southampton insurrection. All Negroes were arrested who were found beyond their master's threshhold, and all strange whites watched with a great degree of alacrity. Such was the position in which Clotel found affairs when she returned to Virginia in search of her Mary. Had not the slaveowners been watchful of strangers, owing to the outbreak, the fugitive could not have escaped the vigilance of the police; for advertisements, announcing her escape and offering a large reward for her arrest, had been received in the city previous to her arrival, and the officers were therefore on the look-out for the runaway slave. It was on the third day, as the quadroon was seated in her room at the inn, still in the disguise of a gentleman, that two of the city officers entered the room, and informed her that they were authorised to examine all strangers, to assure the authorities that they were not in league with the revolted Negroes. With trembling heart the fugitive handed the key of her trunk to the officers. To their surprise, they found nothing but woman's apparel in the box, which raised their curiosity, and caused a further investigation that resulted in the arrest of Clotel as a fugitive slave. She was immediately conveyed to prison, there to await the orders of her master. For many days, uncheered by the voice of kindness, alone, hopeless, desolate, she waited for the time to arrive when the chains were to be placed on her limbs, and she returned to her inhuman and unfeeling owner. The arrest of the fugitive was announced in all the newspapers, but created little or no sensation. The inhabitants were too much engaged in putting down the revolt among the slaves; and although all the odds were against the insurgents, the whites found it no easy matter, with all their caution. Every day brought news of fresh outbreaks. Without scruple and without pity, the whites massacred all blacks found beyond their owners' plantations: the Negroes, in return, set fire to houses, and put those to death who attempted to escape from the flames. Thus carnage was added to carnage, and the blood of the whites flowed to avenge the blood of the blacks. These were the ravages of slavery. No graves were dug for the Negroes; their dead bodies became food for dogs and vultures, and their bones, partly calcined by the sun, remained scattered about, as if to mark the mournful fury of servitude and lust of power. When the slaves were subdued, except a few in the swamps, bloodhounds were put in this dismal place to hunt out the remaining revolters. Among the captured Negroes was one of whom we shall hereafter make mention. CHAPTER XXV DEATH IS FREEDOM "I asked but freedom, and ye gave Chains, and the freedom of the grave."—Snelling. THERE are, in the district of Columbia, several slave prisons, or "Negro pens," as they are termed. These prisons are mostly occupied by persons to keep their slaves in, when collecting their gangs together for the New Orleans market. Some of them belong to the government, and one, in particular, is noted for having been the place where a number of free coloured persons have been incarcerated from time to time. In this district is situated the capital of the United States. Any free coloured persons visiting Washington, if not provided with papers asserting and proving their right to be free, may be arrested and placed in one of these dens. If they succeed in showing that they are free, they are set at liberty, provided they are able to pay the expenses of their arrest and imprisonment; if they cannot pay these expenses, they are sold out. Through this unjust and oppressive law, many persons born in the Free States have been consigned to a life of slavery on the cotton, sugar, or rice plantations of the Southern States. By order of her master, Clotel was removed from Richmond and placed in one of these prisons, to await the sailing of a vessel for New Orleans. The prison in which she was put stands midway between the capitol at Washington and the President's house. Here the fugitive saw nothing but slaves brought in and taken out, to be placed in ships and sent away to the same part of the country to which she herself would soon be compelled to go. She had seen or heard nothing of her daughter while in Richmond, and all hope of seeing her now had fled. If she was carried back to New Orleans, she could expect no mercy from her master. At the dusk of the evening previous to the day when she was to be sent off, as the old prison was being closed for the night, she suddenly darted past her keeper, and ran for her life. It is not a great distance from the prison to the Long Bridge, which passes from the lower part of the city across the Potomac, to the extensive forests and woodlands of the celebrated Arlington Place, occupied by that distinguished relative and descendant of the immortal Washington, Mr. George W. Custis. Thither the poor fugitive directed her flight. So unexpected was her escape, that she had quite a number of rods the start before the keeper had secured the other prisoners, and rallied his assistants in pursuit. It was at an hour when, and in a part of the city where, horses could not be readily obtained for the chase; no bloodhounds were at hand to run down the flying woman; and for once it seemed as though there was to be a fair trial of speed and endurance between the slave and the slave-catchers. The keeper and his forces raised the hue and cry on her pathway close behind; but so rapid was the flight along the wide avenue, that the astonished citizens, as they poured forth from their dwellings to learn the cause of alarm, were only able to comprehend the nature of the case in time to fall in with the motley mass in pursuit (as many a one did that night), to raise an anxious prayer to heaven, as they refused to join in the pursuit, that the panting fugitive might escape, and the merciless soul dealer for once be disappointed of his prey. And now with the speed of an arrow—having passed the avenue—with the distance between her and her pursuers constantly increasing, this poor hunted female gained the "Long Bridge," as it is called, where interruption seemed improbable, and already did her heart begin to beat high with the hope of success. She had only to pass three-fourths of a mile across the bridge, and she could bury herself in a vast forest, just at the time when the curtain of night would close around her, and protect her from the pursuit of her enemies. But God by his Providence had otherwise determined. He had determined that an appalling tragedy should be enacted that night, within plain sight of the President's house and the capitol of the Union, which should be an evidence wherever it should be known, of the unconquerable love of liberty the heart may inherit; as well as a fresh admonition to the slave dealer, of the cruelty and enormity of his crimes. Just as the pursuers crossed the high draw for the passage of sloops, soon after entering upon the bridge, they beheld three men slowly approaching from the Virginia side. They immediately called to them to arrest the fugitive, whom they proclaimed a runaway slave. True to their Virginian instincts as she came near, they formed in line across the narrow bridge, and prepared to seize her. Seeing escape impossible in that quarter, she stopped suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. On came the profane and ribald crew, faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. On either hand, far down below, rolled the deep foamy waters of the Potomac, and before and behind the rapidly approaching step and noisy voices of pursuers, showing how vain would be any further effort for freedom. Her resolution was taken. She clasped her hands convulsively, and raised them, as she at the same time raised her eyes towards heaven, and begged for that mercy and compassion there, which had been denied her on earth; and then, with a single bound, she vaulted over the railings of the bridge, and sunk for ever beneath the waves of the river! Thus died Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States; a man distinguished as the author of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the first statesmen of that country. Had Clotel escaped from oppression in any other land, in the disguise in which she fled from the Mississippi to Richmond, and reached the United States, no honour within the gift of the American people would have been too good to have been heaped upon the heroic woman. But she was a slave, and therefore out of the pale of their sympathy. They have tears to shed over Greece and Poland; they have an abundance of sympathy for "poor Ireland"; they can furnish a ship of war to convey the Hungarian refugees from a Turkish prison to the "land of the free and home of the brave." They boast that America is the "cradle of liberty"; if it is, I fear they have rocked the child to death. The body of Clotel was picked up from the bank of the river, where it had been washed by the strong current, a hole dug in the sand, and there deposited, without either inquest being held over it, or religious service being performed. Such was the life and such the death of a woman whose virtues and goodness of heart would have done honour to one in a higher station of life, and who, if she had been born in any other land but that of slavery, would have been honoured and loved. A few days after the death of Clotel, the following poem appeared in one of the newspapers: "Now, rest for the wretched! the long day is past, And night on yon prison descendeth at last. Now lock up and bolt! Ha, jailor, look there! Who flies like a wild bird escaped from the snare? A woman, a slave-up, out in pursuit. While linger some gleams of day! Let thy call ring out!—now a rabble rout Is at thy heels—speed away! "A bold race for freedom!—On, fugitive, on! Heaven help but the right, and thy freedom is won. How eager she drinks the free air of the plains; Every limb, every nerve, every fibre she strains; From Columbia's glorious capitol, Columbia's daughter flees To the sanctuary God has given— The sheltering forest trees. "Now she treads the Long Bridge—joy lighteth her eye— Beyond her the dense wood and darkening sky— Wild hopes thrill her heart as she neareth the shore: O, despair! there are men fast advancing before! Shame, shame on their manhood! they hear, they heed The cry, her flight to stay, And like demon forms with their outstretched arms, They wait to seize their prey! "She pauses, she turns! Ah, will she flee back? Like wolves, her pursuers howl loud on their track; She lifteth to Heaven one look of despair— Her anguish breaks forth in one hurried prayer Hark! her jailor's yell! like a bloodhound's bay On the low night wind it sweeps! Now, death or the chain! to the stream she turns, And she leaps! O God, she leaps! "The dark and the cold, yet merciful wave, Receives to its bosom the form of the slave: She rises—earth's scenes on her dim vision gleam, Yet she struggleth not with the strong rushing stream: And low are the death-cries her woman's heart gives, As she floats adown the river, Faint and more faint grows the drowning voice, And her cries have ceased for ever! "Now back, jailor, back to thy dungeons, again, To swing the red lash and rivet the chain! The form thou would'st fetter—returned to its God; The universe holdeth no realm of night More drear than her slavery— More merciless fiends than here stayed her flight— Joy! the hunted slave is free! "That bond-woman's corpse—let Potomac's proud wave Go bear it along by our Washington's grave, And heave it high up on that hallowed strand, To tell of the freedom he won for our land. A weak woman's corpse, by freemen chased down; Hurrah for our country! hurrah! To freedom she leaped, through drowning and death— Hurrah for our country! hurrah!" CHAPTER XXVI THE ESCAPE "No refuge is found on our unhallowed ground, For the wretched in Slavery's manacles bound; While our star-spangled banner in vain boasts to wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" WE left Mary, the daughter of Clotel, in the capacity of a servant in her own father's house, where she had been taken by her mistress for the ostensible purpose of plunging her husband into the depths of humiliation. At first the young girl was treated with great severity; but after finding that Horatio Green had lost all feeling for his child, Mrs. Green's own heart became touched for the offspring of her husband, and she became its friend. Mary had grown still more beautiful, and, like most of her sex in that country, was fast coming to maturity. The arrest of Clotel, while trying to rescue her daughter, did not reach the ears of the latter till her mother had been removed from Richmond to Washington. The mother had passed from time to eternity before the daughter knew that she had been in the neighbourhood. Horatio Green was not in Richmond at the time of Clotel's arrest; had he been there, it is not probable but he would have made an effort to save her. She was not his slave, and therefore was beyond his power, even had he been there and inclined to aid her. The revolt amongst the slaves had been brought to an end, and most of the insurgents either put to death or sent out of the state. One, however, remained in prison. He was the slave of Horatio Green, and had been a servant in his master's dwelling. He, too, could boast that his father was an American statesman. His name was George. His mother had been employed as a servant in one of the principal hotels in Washington, where members of Congress usually put up. After George's birth his mother was sold to a slave trader, and he to an agent of Mr. Green, the father of Horatio. George was as white as most white persons. No one would suppose that any African blood coursed through his veins. His hair was straight, soft, fine, and light; his eyes blue, nose prominent, lips thin, his head well formed, forehead high and prominent; and he was often taken for a free white person by those who did know him. This made his condition still more intolerable; for one so white seldom ever receives fair treatment at the hands of his fellow slaves; and the whites usually regard such slaves as persons who, if not often flogged, and otherwise ill treated, to remind them of their condition, would soon "forget" that they were slaves, and "think themselves as good as white folks." George's opportunities were far greater than most slaves. Being in his master's house, and waiting on educated white people, he had become very familiar with the English language. He had heard his master and visitors speak of the down-trodden and oppressed Poles; he heard them talk of going to Greece to fight for Grecian liberty, and against the oppressors of that ill-fated people. George, fired with the love of freedom, and zeal for the cause of his enslaved countrymen, joined the insurgents, and with them had been defeated and captured. He was the only one remaining of these unfortunate people, and he would have been put to death with them but for a circumstance that occurred some weeks before the outbreak. The court house had, by accident, taken fire, and was fast consuming. The engines could not be made to work, and all hope of saving the building seemed at an end. In one of the upper chambers there was a small box containing some valuable deeds belonging to the city; a ladder was placed against the house, leading from the street to the window of the room in which the box stood. The wind blew strong, and swept the flames in that direction. Broad sheets of fire were blown again and again over that part of the building, and then the wind would lift the pall of smoke, which showed that the work of destruction was not yet accomplished. While the doomed building was thus exposed, and before the destroying element had made its final visit, as it did soon after, George was standing by, and hearing that much depended on the contents of the box, and seeing no one disposed to venture through the fiery element to save the treasure, mounted the ladder and made his way to the window, entered the room, and was soon seen descending with the much valued box. Three cheers rent the air as the young slave fell from the ladder when near the ground; the white men took him up in their arms, to see if he had sustained any injury. His hair was burnt, eyebrows closely singed, and his clothes smelt strongly of smoke; but the heroic young slave was unhurt. The city authorities, at their next meeting, passed a vote of thanks to George's master for the lasting benefit that the slave had rendered the public, and commanded the poor boy to the special favour of his owner. When George was on trial for participating in the revolt, this "meritorious act," as they were pleased to term it, was brought up in his favour. His trial was put off from session to session, till he had been in prison more than a year. At last, however, he was convicted of high treason, and sentenced to be hanged within ten days of that time. The judge asked the slave if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on him. George stood for a moment in silence, and then said, "As I cannot speak as I should wish, I will say nothing." "You may say what you please," said the judge. "You had a good master," continued he, "and still you were dissatisfied; you left your master and joined the Negroes who were burning our houses and killing our wives." "As you have given me permission to speak," remarked George, "I will tell you why I joined the revolted Negroes. I have heard my master read in the Declaration of Independence 'that all men are created free and equal,' and this caused me to inquire of myself why I was a slave. I also heard him talking with some of his visitors about the war with England, and he said, all wars and fightings for freedom were just and right. If so, in what am I wrong? The grievances of which your fathers complained, and which caused the Revolutionary War, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those who were engaged in the late revolt. Your fathers were never slaves, ours are; your fathers were never bought and sold like cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal task-masters. For the crime of having a dark skin, my people suffer the pangs of hunger, the infliction of stripes, and the ignominy of brutal servitude. We are kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make our instruction a criminal offence. What right has one man to the bones, sinews, blood, and nerves of another? Did not one God make us all? You say your fathers fought for freedom; so did we. You tell me that I am to be put to death for violating the laws of the land. Did not the American revolutionists violate the laws when they struck for liberty? They were revolters, but their success made them patriots—We were revolters, and our failure makes us rebels. Had we succeeded, we would have been patriots too. Success makes all the difference. You make merry on the 4th of July; the thunder of cannon and ringing of bells announce it as the birthday of American independence. Yet while these cannons are roaring and bells ringing, one-sixth of the people of this land are in chains and slavery. You boast that this is the 'Land of the Free'; but a traditionary freedom will not save you. It will not do to praise your fathers and build their sepulchres. Worse for you that you have such an inheritance, if you spend it foolishly and are unable to appreciate its worth. Sad if the genius of a true humanity, beholding you with tearful eyes from the mount of vision, shall fold his wings in sorrowing pity, and repeat the strain, 'O land of Washington, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not; behold your house is left unto you desolate.' This is all I have to say; I have done." Nearly every one present was melted to tears; even the judge seemed taken by surprise at the intelligence of the young slave. But George was a slave, and an example must be made of him, and therefore he was sentenced. Being employed in the same house with Mary, the daughter of Clotel, George had become attached to her, and the young lovers fondly looked forward to the time when they should be husband and wife. After George had been sentenced to death, Mary was still more attentive to him, and begged and obtained leave of her mistress to visit him in his cell. The poor girl paid a daily visit to him to whom she had pledged her heart and hand. At one of these meetings, and only four days from the time fixed for the execution, while Mary was seated in George's cell, it occurred to her that she might yet save him from a felon's doom. She revealed to him the secret that was then occupying her thoughts, viz. that George should exchange clothes with her, and thus attempt his escape in disguise. But he would not for a single moment listen to the proposition. Not that he feared detection; but he would not consent to place an innocent and affectionate girl in a position where she might have to suffer for him. Mary pleaded, but in vain. George was inflexible. The poor girl left her lover with a heavy heart, regretting that her scheme had proved unsuccessful. Towards the close of the next day, Mary again appeared at the prison door for admission, and was soon by the side of him whom she so ardently loved. While there the clouds which had overhung the city for some hours broke, and the rain fell in torrents amid the most terrific thunder and lightning. In the most persuasive manner possible, Mary again importuned George to avail himself of her assistance to escape from an ignominious death. After assuring him that she, not being the person condemned, would not receive any injury, he at last consented, and they began to exchange apparel. As George was of small stature, and both were white, there was no difficulty in his passing out without detection; and as she usually left the cell weeping, with handkerchief in hand, and sometimes at her face, he had only to adopt this mode and his escape was safe. They had kissed each other, and Mary had told George where he would find a small parcel of provisions which she had placed in a secluded spot, when the prison-keeper opened the door and said, "Come, girl, it is time for you to go." George again embraced Mary, and passed out of the jail. It was already dark, and the street lamps were lighted, so that our hero in his new dress had no dread of detection. The provisions were sought out and found, and poor George was soon on the road towards Canada. But neither of them had once thought of a change of dress for George when he should have escaped, and he had walked but a short distance before he felt that a change of his apparel would facilitate his progress. But he dared not go amongst even his coloured associates for fear of being betrayed. However, he made the best of his way on towards Canada, hiding in the woods during the day, and travelling by the guidance of the North Star at night. With the poet he could truly say, "Star of the North! while blazing day Pours round me its full tide of light, And hides thy pale but faithful ray, I, too, lie hid, and long for night." One morning, George arrived on the banks of the Ohio river, and found his journey had terminated, unless he could get some one to take him across the river in a secret manner, for he would not be permitted to cross in any of the ferry boats, it being a penalty for crossing a slave, besides the value of the slave. He concealed himself in the tall grass and weeds near the river, to see if he could embrace an opportunity to cross. He had been in his hiding place but a short time, when he observed a man in a small boat, floating near the shore, evidently fishing. His first impulse was to call out to the man and ask him to take him over to the Ohio side, but the fear that the man was a slaveholder, or one who might possibly arrest him, deterred him from it. The man after rowing and floating about for some time fastened the boat to the root of a tree, and started to a neighbouring farmhouse. This was George's moment, and he seized it. Running down the bank, he unfastened the boat, jumped in, and with all the expertness of one accustomed to a boat, rowed across the river and landed on the Ohio side. Being now in a Free State, he thought he might with perfect safety travel on towards Canada. He had, however, gone but a very few miles when he discovered two men on horseback coming behind him. He felt sure that they could not be in pursuit of him, yet he did not wish to be seen by them, so he turned into another road leading to a house near by. The men followed, and were but a short distance from George, when he ran up to a farmhouse, before which was standing a farmer-looking man, in a broad-brimmed hat and straight-collared coat, whom he implored to save him from the "slave-catchers." The farmer told him to go into the barn near by; he entered by the front door, the farmer following, and closing the door behind George, but remaining outside, and gave directions to his hired man as to what should be done with George. The slaveholders by this time had dismounted, and were in front of the barn demanding admittance, and charging the farmer with secreting their slave woman, for George was still in the dress of a woman. The Friend, for the farmer proved to be a member of the Society of Friends, told the slave-owners that if they wished to search his barn, they must first get an officer and a search warrant. While the parties were disputing, the farmer began nailing up the front door, and the hired man served the back door in the same way. The slaveholders, finding that they could not prevail on the Friend to allow them to get the slave, determined to go in search of an officer. One was left to see that the slave did not escape from the barn, while the other went off at full speed to Mount Pleasant, the nearest town. George was not the slave of either of these men, nor were they in pursuit of him, but they had lost a woman who had been seen in that vicinity, and when they saw poor George in the disguise of a female, and attempting to elude pursuit, they felt sure they were close upon their victim. However, if they had caught him, although he was not their slave, they would have taken him back and placed him in jail, and there he would have remained until his owner arrived. After an absence of nearly two hours, the slave-owner returned with an officer and found the Friend still driving large nails into the door. In a triumphant tone and with a corresponding gesture, he handed the search-warrant to the Friend, and said, "There, sir, now I will see if I can't get my nigger." "Well," said the Friend, "thou hast gone to work according to law, and thou canst now go into my barn." "Lend me your hammer that I may get the door open," said the slaveholder. "Let me see the warrant again." And after reading it over once more, he said, "I see nothing in this paper which says I must supply thee with tools to open my door; if thou wishest to go in, thou must get a hammer elsewhere." The sheriff said, "I will go to a neighbouring farm and borrow something which will introduce us to Miss Dinah;" and he immediately went in search of tools. In a short time the officer returned, and they commenced an assault and battery upon the barn door, which soon yielded; and in went the slaveholder and officer, and began turning up the hay and using all other means to find the lost property; but, to their astonishment, the slave was not there. After all hope of getting Dinah was gone, the slave-owner in a rage said to the Friend, "My nigger is not here." "I did not tell thee there was any one here." "Yes, but I saw her go in, and you shut the door behind her, and if she was not in the barn, what did you nail the door for?" "Can't I do what I please with my own barn door? Now I will tell thee; thou need trouble thyself no more, for the person thou art after entered the front door and went out at the back door, and is a long way from here by this time. Thou and thy friend must be somewhat fatigued by this time; won't thou go in and take a little dinner with me?" We need not say that this cool invitation of the good Quaker was not accepted by the slaveholders. George in the meantime had been taken to a friend's dwelling some miles away, where, after laying aside his female attire, and being snugly dressed up in a straight collared coat, and pantaloons to match, was again put on the right road towards Canada. The fugitive now travelled by day, and laid by during night. After a fatiguing and dreary journey of two weeks, the fugitive arrived in Canada, and took up his abode in the little town of St. Catherine's, and obtained work on the farm of Colonel Street. Here he attended a night-school, and laboured for his employer during the day. The climate was cold, and wages small, yet he was in a land where he was free, and this the young slave prized more than all the gold that could be given to him. Besides doing his best to obtain education for himself, he imparted what he could to those of his fellow-fugitives about him, of whom there were many. CHAPTER XXVII THE MYSTERY GEORGE, however, did not forget his promise to use all the means in his power to get Mary out of slavery. He, therefore, laboured with all his might to obtain money with which to employ some one to go back to Virginia for Mary. After nearly six months' labour at St. Catherine's, he employed an English missionary to go and see if the girl could be purchased, and at what price. The missionary went accordingly, but returned with the sad intelligence that, on account of Mary's aiding George to escape, the court had compelled Mr. Green to sell her out of the state, and she had been sold to a Negro trader, and taken to the New Orleans market. As all hope of getting the girl was now gone, George resolved to quit the American continent for ever. He immediately took passage in a vessel laden with timber, bound for Liverpool, and in five weeks from that time he was standing on the quay of the great English seaport. With little or no education, he found many difficulties in the way of getting a respectable living. However he obtained a situation as porter in a large house in Manchester, where he worked during the day, and took private lessons at night. In this way he laboured for three years, and was then raised to the situation of clerk. George was so white as easily to pass for a white man, and being somewhat ashamed of his African descent, he never once mentioned the fact of his having been a slave. He soon became a partner in the firm that employed him, and was now on the road to wealth. In the year 1842, just ten years after George Green (for he adopted his master's name) arrived in England, he visited France, and spent some days at Dunkirk. It was towards sunset, on a warm day in the month of October, that Mr. Green, after strolling some distance from the Hotel de Leon, entered a burial ground, and wandered along, alone among the silent dead, gazing upon the many green graves and marble tombstones of those who once moved on the theatre of busy life, and whose sounds of gaiety once fell upon the ear of man. All nature around was hushed in silence, and seemed to partake of the general melancholy which hung over the quiet resting-place of departed mortals. After tracing the varied inscriptions which told the characters or conditions of the departed, and viewing the mounds beneath which the dust of mortality slumbered, he had now reached a secluded spot, near to where an aged weeping willow bowed its thick foliage to the ground, as though anxious to hide from the scrutinising gaze of curiosity the grave beneath it. Mr. Green seated himself upon a marble tomb, and began to read Roscoe's Leo X., a copy of which he had under his arm. It was then about twilight, and he had scarcely gone through half a page, when he observed a lady in black, leading a boy, some five years old, up one of the paths; and as the lady's black veil was over her face, he felt somewhat at liberty to eye her more closely. While looking at her, the lady gave a scream, and appeared to be in a fainting position, when Mr. Green sprang from his seat in time to save her from falling to the ground. At this moment, an elderly gentleman was seen approaching with a rapid step, who, from his appearance, was evidently the lady's father, or one intimately connected with her. He came up, and, in a confused manner, asked what was the matter. Mr. Green explained as well as he could. After taking up the smelling bottle which had fallen from her hand, and holding it a short time to her face, she soon began to revive. During all this time the lady's veil had so covered her face, that Mr. Green had not seen it. When she had so far recovered as to be able to raise her head, she again screamed, and fell back into the arms of the old man. It now appeared quite certain, that either the countenance of George Green, or some other object, was the cause of these fits of fainting; and the old gentleman, thinking it was the former, in rather a petulant tone said, "I will thank you, sir, if you will leave us alone." The child whom the lady was leading, had now set up a squall; and amid the death-like appearance of the lady, the harsh look of the old man, and the cries of the boy, Mr. Green left the grounds, and returned to his hotel. Whilst seated by the window, and looking out upon the crowded street, with every now and then the strange scene in the grave-yard vividly before him, Mr. Green thought of the book he had been reading, and, remembering that he had left it on the tomb, where he had suddenly dropped it when called to the assistance of the lady, he immediately determined to return in search of it. After a walk of some twenty minutes, he was again over the spot where he had been an hour before, and from which he had been so unceremoniously expelled by the old man. He looked in vain for the book; it was nowhere to be found: nothing save the bouquet which the lady had dropped, and which lay half-buried in the grass from having been trodden upon, indicated that any one had been there that evening. Mr. Green took up the bunch of flowers, and again returned to the hotel. After passing a sleepless night, and hearing the clock strike six, he dropped into a sweet sleep, from which he did not awaken until roused by the rap of a servant, who, entering his room, handed him a note which ran as follows:—"Sir,—I owe you an apology for the inconvenience to which you were subjected last evening, and if you will honour us with your presence to dinner to-day at four o'clock, I shall be most happy to give you due satisfaction. My servant will be in waiting for you at half-past three. I am, sir, your obedient servant, J. Devenant. October 23. To George Green, Esq." The servant who handed this note to Mr. Green, informed him that the bearer was waiting for a reply. He immediately resolved to accept the invitation, and replied accordingly. Who this person was, and how his name and the hotel where he was stopping had been found out, was indeed a mystery. However, he waited impatiently for the hour when he was to see this new acquaintance, and get the mysterious meeting in the grave-yard solved. CHAPTER XXVIII THE HAPPY MEETING "Man's love is of man's life, a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence."—Byron. THE clock on a neighbouring church had scarcely ceased striking three, when the servant announced that a carriage had called for Mr. Green. In less than half an hour he was seated in a most sumptuous barouche, drawn by two beautiful iron greys, and rolling along over a splendid gravel road completely shaded by large trees, which appeared to have been the accumulating growth of many centuries. The carriage soon stopped in front of a low villa, and this too was embedded in magnificent trees covered with moss. Mr. Green alighted and was shown into a superb drawing room, the walls of which were hung with fine specimens from the hands of the great Italian painters, and one by a German artist representing a beautiful monkish legend connected with "The Holy Catherine," an illustrious lady of Alexandria. The furniture had an antique and dignified appearance. High backed chairs stood around the room; a venerable mirror stood on the mantle shelf; rich curtains of crimson damask hung in folds at either side of the large windows; and a rich Turkey carpet covered the floor. In the centre stood a table covered with books, in the midst of which was an old-fashioned vase filled with fresh flowers, whose fragrance was exceedingly pleasant. A faint light, together with the quietness of the hour, gave beauty beyond description to the whole scene. Mr. Green had scarcely seated himself upon the sofa, when the elderly gentleman whom he had met the previous evening made his appearance, followed by the little boy, and introduced himself as Mr. Devenant. A moment more, and a lady—a beautiful brunette—dressed in black, with long curls of a chestnut colour hanging down her cheeks, entered the room. Her eyes were of a dark hazel, and her whole appearance indicated that she was a native of a southern clime. The door at which she entered was opposite to where the two gentlemen were seated. They immediately rose; and Mr. Devenant was in the act of introducing her to Mr. Green, when he observed that the latter had sunk back upon the sofa, and the last word that he remembered to have heard was, "It is her." After this, all was dark and dreamy: how long he remained in this condition it was for another to tell. When he awoke, he found himself stretched upon the sofa, with his boots off, his neckerchief removed, shirt collar unbuttoned, and his head resting upon a pillow. By his side sat the old man, with the smelling bottle in the one hand, and a glass of water in the other, and the little boy standing at the foot of the sofa. As soon as Mr. Green had so far recovered as to be able to speak, he said, "Where am I, and what does this mean?" "Wait a while," replied the old man, "and I will tell you all." After a lapse of some ten minutes he rose from the sofa, adjusted his apparel, and said, "I am now ready to hear anything you have to say." "You were born in America?" said the old man. "Yes," he replied. "And you were acquainted with a girl named Mary?" continued the old man. "Yes, and I loved her as I can love none other." "The lady whom you met so mysteriously last evening is Mary," replied Mr. Devenant. George Green was silent, but the fountains of mingled grief and joy stole out from beneath his eyelashes, and glistened like pearls upon his pale and marble-like cheeks. At this juncture the lady again entered the room. Mr. Green sprang from the sofa, and they fell into each other's arms, to the surprise of the old man and little George, and to the amusement of the servants who had crept up one by one, and were hid behind the doors, or loitering in the hall. When they had given vent to their feelings, they resumed their seats, and each in turn related the adventures through which they had passed. "How did you find out my name and address?" asked Mr. Green. "After you had left us in the grave-yard, our little George said, 'O, mamma, if there aint a book!' and picked it up and brought it to us. Papa opened it, and said, 'The gentleman's name is written in it, and here is a card of the Hotel de Leon, where I suppose he is stopping.' Papa wished to leave the book, and said it was all a fancy of mine that I had ever seen you before, but I was perfectly convinced that you were my own George Green. Are you married?" "No, I am not." "Then, thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Devenant. "And are you single now?" inquired Mr. Green. "Yes," she replied. "This is indeed the Lord's doings," said Mr. Green, at the same time bursting into a flood of tears. Mr. Devenant was past the age when men should think upon matrimonial subjects, yet the scene brought vividly before his eyes the days when he was a young man, and had a wife living. After a short interview, the old man called their attention to the dinner, which was then waiting. We need scarcely add, that Mr. Green and Mrs. Devenant did very little towards diminishing the dinner that day. After dinner the lovers (for such we have to call them) gave their experience from the time that George left the jail dressed in Mary's clothes. Up to that time Mr. Green's was substantially as we have related it. Mrs. Devenant's was as follows:—"The night after you left the prison," said she, "I did not shut my eyes in sleep. The next morning, about eight o'clock, Peter the gardener came to the jail to see if I had been there the night before, and was informed that I had, and that I had left a little after dark. About an hour after, Mr. Green came himself, and I need not say that he was much surprised on finding me there, dressed in your clothes. This was the first tidings they had of your escape." "What did Mr. Green say when he found that I had fled?" "Oh!" continued Mrs. Devenant, "he said to me when no one was near, I hope George will get off, but I fear you will have to suffer in his stead. I told him that if it must be so I was willing to die if you could live." At this moment George Green burst into tears, threw his arms around her neck, and exclaimed, "I am glad I have waited so long, with the hope of meeting you again." Mrs. Devenant again resumed her story:—"I was kept in jail three days, during which time I was visited by the magistrates, and two of the judges. On the third day I was taken out, and master told me that I was liberated, upon condition that I should be immediately sent out of the state. There happened to be just at the time in the neighbourhood a Negro-trader, and he purchased me, and I was taken to New Orleans. On the steamboat we were kept in a close room, where slaves are usually confined, so that I saw nothing of the passengers on board, or the towns we passed. We arrived at New Orleans, and were all put into the slave-market for sale. I was examined by many persons, but none seemed willing to purchase me, as all thought me too white, and said I would run away and pass as a free white woman. On the second day, while in the slave-market, and while planters and others were examining slaves and making their purchases, I observed a tall young man, with long black hair, eyeing me very closely, and then talking to the trader. I felt sure that my time had now come, but the day closed without my being sold. I did not regret this, for I had heard that foreigners made the worst of masters, and I felt confident that the man who eyed me so closely was not an American. "The next day was the Sabbath. The bells called the people to the different places of worship. Methodists sang, and Baptists immersed, and Presbyterians sprinkled, and Episcopalians read their prayers, while the ministers of the various sects preached that Christ died for all; yet there were some twenty-five or thirty of us poor creatures confined in the 'Negro Pen,' awaiting the close of the holy Sabbath, and the dawn of another day, to be again taken into the market, there to be examined like so many beasts of burden. I need not tell you with what anxiety we waited for the advent of another day. On Monday we were again brought out and placed in rows to be inspected; and, fortunately for me, I was sold before we had been on the stand an hour. I was purchased by a gentleman residing in the city, for a waiting-maid for his wife, who was just on the eve of starting for Mobile, to pay a visit to a near relation. I was then dressed to suit the situation of a maid-servant; and upon the whole, I thought that, in my new dress, I looked as much the lady as my mistress. "On the passage to Mobile, who should I see among the passengers but the tall, long-haired man that had eyed me so closely in the slave-market a few days before. His eyes were again on me, and he appeared anxious to speak to me, and I as reluctant to be spoken to. The first evening after leaving New Orleans, soon after twilight had let her curtain down, and pinned it with a star, and while I was seated on the deck of the boat near the ladies' cabin, looking upon the rippled waves, and the reflection of the moon upon the sea, all at once I saw the tall young man standing by my side. I immediately rose from my seat, and was in the act of returning to the cabin, when he in a broken accent said, 'Stop a moment; I wish to have a word with you. I am your friend.' I stopped and looked him full in the face, and he said, 'I saw you some days since in the slavemarket, and I intended to have purchased you to save you from the condition of a slave. I called on Monday, but you had been sold and had left the market. I inquired and learned who the purchaser was, and that you had to go to Mobile, so I resolved to follow you. If you are willing I will try and buy you from your present owner, and you shall be free.' Although this was said in an honest and off-hand manner, I could not believe the man to be sincere in what he said. 'Why should you wish to set me free?' I asked. 'I had an only sister,' he replied, 'who died three years ago in France, and you are so much like her that had I not known of her death, I would most certainly have taken you for her.' 'However much I may resemble your sister, you are aware that I am not her, and why take so much interest in one whom you never saw before?' 'The love,' said he, 'which I had for my sister is transferred to you.' I had all along suspected that the man was a knave, and this profession of love confirmed me in my former belief, and I turned away and left him. "The next day, while standing in the cabin and looking through the window, the French gentleman (for such he was) came to the window while walking on the guards, and again commenced as on the previous evening. He took from his pocket a bit of paper and put it into my hand, at the same time saying, 'Take this, it may some day be of service to you; remember it is from a friend,' and left me instantly. I unfolded the paper, and found it to be a 100 dollars bank note, on the United States Branch Bank, at Philadelphia. My first impulse was to give it to my mistress, but, upon a second thought, I resolved to seek an opportunity, and to return the hundred dollars to the stranger. "Therefore I looked for him, but in vain; and had almost given up the idea of seeing him again, when he passed me on the guards of the boat and walked towards the stem of the vessel. It being now dark, I approached him and offered the money to him. He declined, saying at the same time, 'I gave it to you keep it.' 'I do not want it,' I said. 'Now,' said he, 'you had better give your consent for me to purchase you, and you shall go with me to France.' 'But you cannot buy me now,' I replied, 'for my master is in New Orleans, and he purchased me not to sell, but to retain in his own family.' 'Would you rather remain with your present mistress than be free?' 'No,' said I. 'Then fly with me tonight; we shall be in Mobile in two hours from this, and when the passengers are going on shore, you can take my arm, and you can escape unobserved. The trader who brought you to New Orleans exhibited to me a certificate of your good character, and one from the minister of the church to which you were attached in Virginia; and upon the faith of these assurances, and the love I bear you, I promise before high heaven that I will marry you as soon as it can be done.' This solemn promise, coupled with what had already transpired, gave me confidence in the man; and rash as the act may seem, I determined in an instant to go with him. My mistress had been put under the charge of the captain; and as it would be past ten o'clock when the steamer would land, she accepted an invitation of the captain to remain on board with several other ladies till morning. I dressed myself in my best clothes, and put a veil over my face, and was ready on the landing of the boat. Surrounded by a number of passengers, we descended the stage leading to the wharf, and were soon lost in the crowd that thronged the quay. As we went on shore we encountered several persons announcing the names of hotels, the starting of boats for the interior, and vessels bound for Europe. Among these was the ship Utica, Captain Pell, bound for Havre. 'Now,' said Mr. Devenant, 'this is our chance.' The ship was to sail at twelve o'clock that night, at high tide; and following the men who were seeking passengers, we went immediately on board. Devenant told the captain of the ship that I was his sister, and for such we passed during the voyage. At the hour of twelve the Utica set sail, and we were soon out at sea. "The morning after we left Mobile, Devenant met me as I came from my state-room, and embraced me for the first time. I loved him, but it was only that affection which we have for one who has done us a lasting favour: it was the love of gratitude rather than that of the heart. We were five weeks on the sea, and yet the passage did not seem long, for Devenant was so kind. On our arrival at Havre we were married and came to Dunkirk, and I have resided here ever since." At the close of this narrative, the clock struck ten, when the old man, who was accustomed to retire at an early hour, rose to take leave, saying at the same time, "I hope you will remain with us to-night." Mr. Green would fain have excused himself, on the ground that they would expect him and wait at the hotel, but a look from the lady told him to accept the invitation. The old man was the father of Mrs. Devenant's deceased husband, as you will no doubt long since have supposed. A fortnight from the day on which they met in the grave-yard, Mr. Green and Mrs. Devenant were joined in holy wedlock; so that George and Mary, who had loved each other so ardently in their younger days, were now husband and wife. A celebrated writer has justly said of woman, "A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart." Mary had every reason to believe that she would never see George again; and although she confesses that the love she bore him was never transferred to her first husband, we can scarcely find fault with her for marrying Mr. Devenant. But the adherence of George Green to the resolution never to marry, unless to his Mary, is, indeed, a rare instance of the fidelity of man in the matter of love. We can but blush for our country's shame when we recall to mind the fact, that while George and Mary Green, and numbers of other fugitives from American slavery, can receive protection from any of the governments of Europe, they cannot return to their native land without becoming slaves. CHAPTER XXIX CONCLUSION MY narrative has now come to a close. I may be asked, and no doubt shall, Are the various incidents and scenes related founded in truth? I answer, Yes. I have personally participated in many of those scenes. Some of the narratives I have derived from other sources; many from the lips of those who, like myself, have run away from the land of bondage. Having been for nearly nine years employed on Lake Erie, I had many opportunities for helping the escape of fugitives, who, in return for the assistance they received, made me the depositary of their sufferings and wrongs. Of their relations I have made free use. To Mrs. Child, of New York, I am indebted for part of a short story. American Abolitionist journals are another source from whence some of the characters appearing in my narrative are taken. All these combined have made up my story. Having thus acknowledged my resources, I invite the attention of my readers to the following statement, from which I leave them to draw their own conclusions:—"It is estimated that in the United States, members of the Methodist church own 219,363 slaves; members of the Baptist church own 226,000 slaves; members of the Episcopalian church own 88,000 slaves; members of the Presbyterian church own 77,000 slaves; members of all other churches own 50,000 slaves; in all, 660,563 slaves owned by members of the Christian church in this pious democratic republic!" May these facts be pondered over by British Christians, and at the next anniversaries of the various religious denominations in London may their influence be seen and felt! The religious bodies of American Christians will send their delegates to these meetings. Let British feeling be publicly manifested. Let British sympathy express itself in tender sorrow for the condition of my unhappy race. Let it be understood, unequivocally understood, that no fellowship can be held with slaveholders professing the same common Christianity as yourselves. And until this stain from America's otherwise fair escutcheon be wiped away, let no Christian association be maintained with those who traffic in the blood and bones of those whom God has made of one flesh as yourselves. Finally, let the voice of the whole British nation be heard across the Atlantic, and throughout the length and breadth of the land of the Pilgrim Fathers, beseeching their descendants, as they value the common salvation, which knows no distinction between the bond and the free, to proclaim the Year of Jubilee. Then shall the "earth indeed yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. 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Le Mulâtre from Victor Séjour "Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") is a short story by Victor Séjour, a free person of color and Creole of color born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was written in French, Séjour's first language, and published in the Paris abolitionist journal Revue des Colonies in 1837. It is the earliest extant work of fiction by an African-American author. It was noted as such when it was first translated in English, appearing in the first edition of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature in 1997 full text https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/347-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour/ Le Mulâtre Victor Séjour Revue des Colonies, mars 1837, pp. 376-392. Les premiers rayons de l’aurore blanchissaient à peine la cime noire des montagnes, quand je partis du Cap pour me rendre à Saint Marc, petite ville de St-Domingue, aujourd’hui la république d’Haïti. J’avais tant vu de belles campagnes, de forêts hautes et profondes, qu’en vérité je me croyais blasé de ces beautés mâles de la création. Mais, à l’aspect de cette dernière ville, avec sa végétation pittoresque, sa nature neuve et bizarre, je fus étonné et confondu devant la diversité sublime de l’ œuvre de Dieu. Aussitôt mon arrivée, je fus accosté par un vieillard nègre, déjà septuagénaire ; ses pas étaient fermes, sa tête haute, sa taille imposante et vigoureuse ; rien ne trahissait son grand âge, sinon la blancheur remarquable de ses cheveux crépus. Selon la coutume du pays, il était coiffé d’un grand chapeau de paille, et vêtu d’un large pantalon en toile grise et d’une espèce de camisole en batiste écrue — Bonjour maître, me dit-il en se découvrant. — Ah ! vous voilà…, et je lui tendis la main, qu’il pressa avec reconnaissance. — Maître, dit-il, c’est d’un noble cœur ce que vous faites là… ; mais ne savez-vous pas qu’un nègre est aussi vil qu’un chien… ; la société le repousse ; les hommes le détestent ; les lois le maudissent… Ah ! c’est un être bien malheureux, qui n’a pas même la consolation d’ être toujours vertueux… Qu’il naisse bon, noble, généreux ; que Dieu lui donne une âme loyale et grande ; malgré cela, bien souvent il descend dans la tombe les mains teintes de sang, et le cœur avide encore de vengeance ; car plus d’une fois il a vu détruire ses rêves de jeune homme ; car l’expérience lui a appris que ses bonnes actions n’étaient pas comptées, et qu’il ne devait aimer ni sa femme, ni ses fils ; car un jour la première sera séduite par le maître, et son sang vendu au loin malgré son désespoir. Alors, que voulez-vous qu’il devienne ?… Se brisera-t-il le crâne contre le pavé de la rue ?… Tuera-t-il son bourreau ?… Ou croyez-vous que le cœur humain puisse se façonner à de telles infortunes ?… Le vieux nègre se tut un instant comme pour attendre ma réponse. Insensé qui le pense, reprit-il avec chaleur. S’il vit, c’est pour la vengeance ; car bientôt il se lève… et, du jour où il secoue sa servilité , il vaudrait mieux au maître entendre le tigre affamé hurler à ses côtés, que de le rencontrer face à face… Pendant que le vieillard parlait, son front s’illuminait, ses yeux étincelaient, et son cœur battait avec force. Je ne croyais pas trouver autant d’ énergie sous une aussi vieille enveloppe. Profitant de cette espèce d’exaltation : — Antoine, lui dis-je, vous m’aviez promis l’histoire de votre ami Georges. — Voulez-vous m’ écouter à cette heure ? — Volontiers… Nous nous assîmes, lui sur ma malle de voyage, et moi sur ma valise. Voici ce qu’il me raconta : « Voyez-vous cet édifice qui s’ élève si gracieusement vers le ciel, et qui semble se mirer dans la mer ; cet édifice qui ressemble, par son originalité , à un temple, et par sa coquetterie, à quelque palais, c’est la maison St-M*** . Dans une des pièces de ce bâtiment, se réunissent chaque jour les flâneurs, les rentiers et les grands planteurs. Les deux premiers jouent au billard, ou fument le délicieux cigare de la Havane ; tandis que les derniers achètent des nègres ; c’est-à -dire des hommes libres, arrachés par la ruse ou par la force de leur patrie, et devenus, par la violence, le bien, la propriété de leurs semblables… Ici, on livre le mari sans la femme ; là , la sœur sans le frère ; plus loin, la mère sans les enfans. Vous frémissez ? cependant ces ventes infâmes se renouvellent à toute heure. Mais bientôt on y propose une jeune sénégalaise, si belle qu’une même exclamation s’ échappe de toutes les bouches… « Qu’elle est jolie ! » Chacun la voudrait pour en faire sa maîtresse ; mais nul n’ose lutter contre le jeune Alfred, un des plus riches planteurs de ce pays, âgé alors de vingt-deux ans. — Combien demandez-vous de cette femme ? — Quinze cents piastres, répondit le vendeur. — Quinze cents piastres, répéta machinalement Alfred. — Oui, Monsieur. — Au juste ? — Au juste. — C’est horriblement cher. — Cher… répartit le vendeur avec un signe d’ étonnement ; mais vous ne voyez donc pas comme elle est jolie, comme sa peau est luisante, comme sa chair est ferme. Elle a dix-huit ans au plus… Tout en parlant, il promenait ses mains impudiques sur les formes puissantes et demi-nues de la belle Africaine. — Elle est garantie, dit Alfred, après un moment de réflexion ? — Aussi pure que la rosée du ciel, répondit le vendeur ; mais, au reste, vous pouvez la faire... — Non, non… c’est inutile, reprit Alfred en l’interrompant, j’ai confiance en vous. — Je n’ai jamais vendu de mauvaises marchandises, répartit le vendeur, en relevant ses favoris d’un air triomphant. Quand l’acte de vente fut signé et toutes les formalités remplis, le vendeur s’approcha de la jeune esclave : — Cet homme est maintenant ton maître, lui dit-il, en désignant Alfred. — Je le sais, répondit froidement la négresse. — En es-tu contente ? — Que m’importe… lui ou un autre… — Mais cependant — balbutia le vendeur, en cherchant une réponse. — Mais cependant quoi ? reprit l’Africaine avec humeur, et s’il ne me convenait pas ? — Ma foi, ce serait un malheur ; car tout est terminé… — Alors, je garde ma pensée pour moi. Dix minutes après, la nouvelle esclave d’Alfred monta dans un tombereau qui prit le chemin des guêpes, route assez commode qui mène à ces délicieuses campagnes, groupées autour de Saint-Marc comme de jeunes vierges au pied de l’autel. Une sombre mélancolie enveloppait son âme ; elle pleurait. Le conducteur comprenait trop bien ce qui se passait en elle, pour essayer de la distraire ; mais quand il vit la blanche habitation d’Alfred se dessiner dans le lointain, il se pencha involontairement vers la pauvre infortunée, et d’une voix pleine de larmes, il lui dit : — Sœur, quel est ton nom ? — Laïsa, répondit-elle, sans lever la tête. — À ce nom, le conducteur frissonna, mais maîtrisant son émotion, il reprit : — Ta mère ? — Elle est morte… — Ton père ? — Il est mort… — Pauvre enfant, murmura-t-il… — De quel pays es-tu, Laïsa ? — Du Sénégal… Les larmes lui vinrent aux yeux ; il venait de rencontrer une compatriote. — Sœur, reprit-il, en s’essuyant les yeux, tu connais sans doute le vieux Chambo et sa fille… — Pourquoi, répondit la jeune fille en relevant vivement la tête ? — Pourquoi, continua le conducteur avec angoisse ; mais le vieux Chambo est mon père, et… — Mon Dieu, s’ écria l’orpheline, sans lui laisser le temps d’achever ; tu es ?… — Jacques Chambo. — Mon frère ! — Laïsa !… Ils se jetèrent dans les bras l’un de l’autre. Ils étaient encore entrelacés, quand le tombereau entra dans la partie principale de l’habitation d’Alfred. Le gérant y était… Qu’est-ce que je vois, s’ écria-t-il, en déroulant un fouet immense, qu’il portait toujours pendu à sa ceinture, Jacques qui embrasse à mes yeux la nouvelle venue… quelle impertinence !… Sur ce, des coups de fouet tombèrent sur le malheureux, et des flots de sang jaillirent de son visage. II. Alfred était peut-être bon, humain, loyal avec ses égaux ; mais, à coup sûr, c’ était un homme dur, méchant, envers ses esclaves. Je ne vous dirai pas tout ce qu’il fit pour posséder Laïsa ; car celle-ci fut presque violée. Pendant près d’une année, elle partagea la couche de son maître ; mais déjà Alfred commençait à s’en lasser ; il la trouvait laide, froide, insolente. Vers ce temps, la pauvre femme accoucha d’un fils qu’elle nomma Georges. Alfred le méconnut, chassa la mère de sa présence, et la fit reléguer dans la plus mauvaise cabane de son habitation, quoique convaincu, autant qu’on peut l’ être, qu’il était le père de cet enfant. Georges avait grandi sans jamais entendre nommer le nom de son père ; et s’il essayait parfois de percer le mystère qui enveloppait sa naissance, il trouvait sa mère inflexible et muette à ses questions. Une fois seulement elle lui dit : — Mon fils, tu ne sauras son nom qu’ à ta vingt-cinquième année ; car alors tu seras un homme ; tu seras plus capable de garder un pareil secret. Tu ne sais donc pas qu’il m’a défendu de te parler de lui, sous peine de te haïr… et vois-tu, Georges… la haine de cet homme, c’est la mort. — Qu’importe, s’ écriait impétueusement Georges ; je pourrais du moins lui reprocher sa conduite infâme… — Tais-toi… tais-toi, Georges… les murs ont des oreilles, et les broussailles savent parler, murmurait la pauvre mère en tremblant… Quelques années après, cette malheureuse mourut, laissant pour tout héritage à Georges, son fils unique, un petit sac en peau de daim, dans lequel se trouvait le portrait de son père ; mais à la seule promesse de ne l’ouvrir qu’ à sa vingt-cinquième année. Puis elle l’embrassa, et sa tête retomba sur l’oreiller… elle était morte… Le cri de douleur que jeta l’orphelin attira les autres esclaves… Ils se mirent à pleurer, à frapper leur poitrine, à arracher leurs cheveux de désespoir. Après ces premières marques de douleur, ils lavèrent le corps de la défunte, et l’exposèrent sur une espèce de table longue, soutenue par les tréteaux. La morte est couchée sur le dos, le visage tourné vers l’Orient, vêtue de ses meilleurs habits, et les mains croisées sur sa poitrine. À ses pieds se trouve une petite coupe pleine d’eau bénite, sur laquelle surnage une branche de jasmin ; enfin, aux quatre coins de la couche mortuaire, s’ élèvent des flambeaux… Chacun, après avoir béni les restes de la défunte, s’agenouille et prie car la plupart des races nègres, malgré leur fétichisme, croient profondément à l’existence de Dieu. Cette première cérémonie terminée, une autre non moins singulière commence… ce sont des cris, des pleurs, des chants ; puis des danses funèbres !… III. Georges avait toutes les dispositions nécessaires à devenir un très honnête homme ; mais c’ était une de ces volontés hautaines et tenaces, une de ces organisations orientales qui, poussées loin du chemin de la vertu, marchent sans s’effrayer dans la route du crime. Il aurait donné dix ans de sa vie pour connaître le nom de son père ; mais il n’osait violer la promesse solennelle faite à sa mère mourante. Comme si la nature le poussait vers Alfred ; il l’aimait, autant que l’on puisse aimer un homme : tandis que celui-ci l’estimait, mais de cette estime que l’ écuyer porte au plus beau et au plus vigoureux de ses coursiers. À cette époque, une horde de brigands portaient la désolation dans ces lieux ; déjà plus d’un colon avait été leur victime. Une nuit, je ne sais par quel hasard, Georges fut instruit de leur projet. Ils avaient juré d’assassiner Alfred. Aussitôt l’esclave court chez son maître. — Maître, maître, s’ écria-t-il… au nom du ciel, suivez-moi. Alfred fronça les sourcils. — Oh ! venez, venez, maître, continua le mulâtre avec intérêt. — Par le ciel, répondit Alfred ; je crois que tu me commandes. — Pardon, maître… pardon… je suis si troublé… je ne sais ce que je dis… mais, au nom du ciel, venez, suivez-moi… car… — T’expliqueras-tu, dit Alfred, d’un ton colère… Le mulâtre hésita. — Je le veux ; je l’ordonne, reprit Alfred, en se levant d’un air menaçant. — Maître, on doit vous assassiner cette nuit. — Sainte Vierge, tu mens… — Maître, ils en veulent à votre vie. — Qui ? — Les bandits. — Qui te l’a dit ? — Maître, c’est mon secret… dit le mulâtre d’une voix soumise. — Es-tu armé , reprit Alfred, après un moment de silence ? Le mulâtre repoussa quelques haillons qui le couvraient, et laissa voir une hache et une paire de pistolets. — C’est bien, dit Alfred en s’armant précipitamment. — Maître, êtes-vous prêt ? — Partons… — Partons, répéta le mulâtre en faisant un pas vers la porte… Alfred le retint par le bras. — Mais, où allons-nous ? — Chez le plus près de vos amis, M. Arthur. Ils allaient sortir, lorsque la porte cria sur ses gonds. — Enfer, murmura le mulâtre, il est trop tard… — Que dis-tu ? Ils sont là , répondit Georges en montrant la porte… — Ah !… — Maître, qu’avez-vous ? — Rien… un malaise… — Ne craignez rien, maître, avant d’arriver à vous, ils me marcheront sur le corps, dit l’esclave d’un air calme et résigné . Cet air calme, ce noble dévouement étaient susceptibles de rassurer le mortel le plus lâche. Cependant, à ces dernières paroles, Alfred trembla davantage ; car une horrible idée l’accablait : il se figurait que le généreux Georges était le complice de ses assassins. Tels sont les tyrans ; ils croient le reste des hommes incapables d’un sentiment élevé , d’un dévouement sans bornes ; car leurs âmes sont étroites et perfides… C’est une terre inculte, où ne croissent que la ronce et le lierre. La porte trembla violemment… Cette fois, Alfred ne put maîtriser sa lâcheté , il venait de voir sourire le mulâtre ; était-ce de joie ou de colère ? Il ne se fit pas cette question. — Misérable ! s’ écria-t-il, en s’ élançant dans une pièce voisine ; tu voulais me faire assassiner ; mais ton attente sera trompée, et il disparut... Georges se mordait les lèvres de rage ; mais il ne put faire aucune réflexion, car la porte s’ouvrit tout à coup, et quatre hommes se dressèrent sur le seuil. Aussi prompt que l’ éclair, le mulâtre arma ses pistolets, et s’accola contre le mur, en criant d’une voix de stentor : — Infâmes ! que voulez-vous ? — Nous voulons te parler en face, répondit l’un d’eux, en tirant Georges à bout portant. — Bien tiré , murmura convulsivement celui-ci. La balle lui avait fracassé le bras gauche. Il lâcha son coup. Le brigand tourna trois fois sur lui-même et tomba raide mort. Un second le suivit de près. Alors, comme un lion furieux harcelé par des chasseurs, Georges, la hache au poing et le poignard entre les dents, se précipite sur ses adversaires… Une lutte affreuse s’engage… Les combattants se pressent… se heurtent… s’entrelacent… La hache brille… le sang coule… le poignard, fidèle à la main qui le pousse, laboure la poitrine de l’ennemi… Mais pas un cri… pas un mot… pas un souffle ne s’ échappe de ces trois bouches d’hommes qui se ruent entre des cadavres comme au sein d’une enivrante orgie… À les voir ainsi, pâles et sanglants, muets et désespérés, on se figure trois fantômes qui se heurtent et s’entre-déchirent au fond d’un tombeau… Cependant Georges est couvert de blessures ; il se soutient à peine… Oh ! c’en est fait de l’intrépide mulâtre ; la hache tranchante se lève sur sa tête… Tout à coup deux détonations se font entendre, et les deux brigands tombent en blasphémant Dieu. Au même moment, Alfred rentre, suivi d’un jeune nègre. Il fait transporter le blessé dans sa cabane, et ordonne de lui amener son médecin. Pendant ce temps, apprenez comment Georges fut sauvé par le même homme qui l’accusait de trahison. À peine éloigné, Alfred entend le bruit d’une arme à feu, et le cliquetis du fer ; rougissant de sa lâcheté , il réveille son valet de chambre, et vole au secours de son libérateur. — J’avais oublié de vous dire que Georges avait une femme, nommée Zélie, qu’il aimait de toute la puissance de son âme ; c’ était une mulâtresse de dix-huit à vingt ans, à la taille cambrée, aux cheveux noirs, au regard plein d’amour et de volupté . Georges resta douze jours entre la vie et la mort. Alfred l’allait voir souvent ; poussé par je ne sais quelle fatalité , il s’ éprit de Zélie ; mais, malheureusement pour lui, ce n’ était pas une de ces femmes qui vendent leur amour, ou qui en font hommage à leur maître. Elle repoussa avec une humble dignité les propositions d’Alfred ; car elle n’oubliait pas que c’ était le maître qui parlait à l’esclave. — Au lieu d’en être touché de cette vertu si rare parmi les femmes, surtout parmi celles qui, comme Zélie, sont esclaves, et qui voient chaque jour leurs impudiques compagnes se prostituer aux colons, et alimenter leur libertinage ; au lieu d’en être; touché, dis-je, Alfred s’irrita… Quoi ! lui, le despote, le bey, le sultan des Antilles, se voir méprisé par une esclave… quelle ironie !… Aussi a-t-il fait le serment de la posséder… Quelques jours avant la convalescence de Georges, Alfred fit demander Zélie dans sa chambre. Alors, n’écoutant que ses désirs criminels, il l’enlace de ses bras, et dépose sur sa joue un brûlant baiser ; la jeune esclave prie, supplie, résiste ; mais en vain… Déjà il l’entraîne vers la couche adultère ; déjà… Alors, la vertueuse esclave, pleine d’une noble indignation, le repousse par un dernier effort, mais si brusque, mais si puissant, qu’Alfred perdit l’ équilibre et se fracassa la tête en tombant. À cette vue, Zélie s’arracha les cheveux de désespoir, et pleura de rage, car elle avait compris, la malheureuse, que la mort l’attendait pour avoir fait couler le sang d’un être aussi vil. Quand elle eut bien pleuré , elle se rendit près de son mari. — Celui-ci rêvait sans doute d’elle ; car il avait le sourire sur les lèvres. — Georges… Georges… s’ écria-t-elle avec angoisse. Le mulâtre ouvrit les yeux ; le premier besoin qu’il sentit fut de sourire à sa bien aimée. Zélie lui conta ce qui vient de se passer. Il ne voulut rien y croire ; mais bientôt il fut convaincu de son malheur ; car des hommes entrèrent dans sa cabane et garrottèrent sa femme qui pleurait… Georges fit un effort pour se lever ; mais trop faible encore, il retomba sur la couche, les yeux hagards, les mains crispées, la bouche haletante. IV. Dix jours après deux petits créoles blancs jouaient au milieu de la rue. — Charles, disait l’un d’eux : on dit que cette mulâtresse qui voulait tuer son maître sera pendue demain ? — À huit heures, répondit l’autre. — Iras-tu ? — Sans doute. — Ce sera gentil de la voir pirouetter entre ciel et terre reprit le premier, et ils s’ éloignèrent en riant. Cela vous étonne d’entendre deux enfants de dix ans s’entretenir si gaiement de la mort d’autrui ; c’est une conséquence peut-être fatale de leur éducation. Dès leur bas-âge on leur répète que nous sommes nés pour les servir, cré és pour leurs caprices, et qu’ils ne doivent nous considérer ni plus ni moins qu’un chien… Or que leur importent notre agonie, et nos souffrances ? ne voient-ils pas souvent mourir leurs meilleurs chevaux ? Ils ne les pleurent pas, car ils sont riches, demain ils en achèteront d’autres… Pendant que ces deux enfants parlaient, Georges était aux genoux de son maître. — Maître, grâce… grâce… s’ écria-t-il en pleurant… ayez pitié d’elle… maître, sauvez-la… Oh ! oui sauvez-la, car vous le pouvez… oh ! parlez… vous n’avez qu’un mot à dire… un seul… et elle vivra. Alfred ne répondit pas. — Oh ! par pitié… maître… par pitié dites-moi que vous lui pardonnez… oh ! parlez… répondez-moi, maître… n’est-ce pas que vous lui pardonnez… et le malheureux se tordait de douleur… Alfred, toujours impassible, détourna la tête… — Oh ! reprit Georges en suppliant, répondez-moi… un seul mot… mais répondez donc ; vous ne voyez pas que votre silence me torture le cœur… me tue… — Je ne puis rien y faire, répondit enfin Alfred d’un ton glacé . Le mulâtre essuya ses pleurs, et se releva de toute sa hauteur. — Maître, continua-t-il d’une voix creuse, vous souvenez-vous de ce que vous me disiez, quand je me tordais sur mon lit d’agonie. — Non… — Eh bien ! moi je m’en souviens… le maître dit à l’esclave : tu m’as sauvé la vie, que veux-tu pour récompense ? veux-tu ta liberté… ? maître, répondit l’esclave, je ne puis être libre, quand mon fils et ma femme sont esclaves. Alors le maître reprit : si jamais tu me pries, je jure que tes vœux seront exaucés ; et l’esclave ne pria point, car il était heureux d’avoir sauvé la vie à son maître… mais aujourd’hui qu’il sait que dans dix-huit heures sa femme ne vivra plus, il court se jeter à vos pieds, et vous crier : maître, au nom de Dieu, sauvez ma femme. Et le mulâtre, les mains jointes, le regard suppliant, se remit à genoux et pleura des flots de larmes… Alfred détourna la tête… — Maître… maître… par pitié répondez-moi… oh ! dites que vous voulez qu’elle vive… au nom de Dieu… de votre mère… grâce… miséricorde… et le mulâtre baisait la poussière de ses pieds. Alfred garda le silence. — Mais parlez au moins à ce pauvre homme qui vous supplie, reprit-il en sanglotant. Alfred ne répondit rien. — Mon Dieu… mon Dieu ! que je suis malheureux… et il se roulait sur le plancher, et s’arrachait les cheveux de désespoir. Enfin Alfred se décida à parler : — Je vous ai déjà dit que ce n’ était plus à moi à pardonner. — Maître, murmura Georges toujours en pleurant, elle sera probablement condamnée ; car vous et moi, seuls, savons qu’elle est innocente. À cette dernière parole du mulâtre, le rouge monta à la figure d’Alfred et la colère à son cœur… Georges comprit qu’il n’ était plus temps de prier, car il avait soulevé le voile qui cachait le crime de son maître ; or, il se leva d’un air résolu. — Sortez… va-t-en, lui cria Alfred. Au lieu de sortir le mulâtre se croisa les bras sur la poitrine, et d’un regard farouche, il toisa son maître du pied à la tête. — Va-t-en… va-t-en, te dis-je, reprit Alfred dont la colère croissait. — Je ne sortirai pas, répondit Georges : — Tu me braves, misérable. Il fit un mouvement pour le frapper, mais sa main resta collée à sa cuisse, tant il y avait de fierté et de haine dans le regard de Georges. — Quoi ! vous pourrez la laisser tuer, égorger, assassiner, dit le mulâtre, quand vous la savez innocente… quand vous avez voulu lâchement la séduire. — Insolent, que dis-tu ? — Je dis que ce serait une infamie de la laisser mourir… — Georges… Georges… — Je dis que tu es un scélérat, hurla Georges en laissant cours à sa colère, et en saisissant Alfred par le bras… ah ! elle mourra… elle mourra parce qu’elle ne s’est pas prostituée à toi… à toi parce que tu es blanc… à toi parce que tu es son maître… infâme suborneur… — Georges, prends garde, répondit Alfred en essayant de prendre un ton assuré . Prends garde qu’au lieu d’une victime demain le bourreau en trouve deux. — Tu parles de victime et de bourreau, misérable, hurla Georges… cela veut donc dire qu’elle mourra… elle… ma Zélie… mais tu ne sais pas que ta vie est attachée à la sienne. — Georges ! — Mais tu ne sais pas que ta tête ne tiendra sur tes épaules qu’autant qu’elle vivra. — Georges… Georges ! — Mais tu ne sais pas que je te tuerai… que je boirai ton sang si jamais on arrache un cheveux de sa tête. Et pendant tout ce temps le mulâtre secouait Alfred de toute la force de son bras. — Lâchez-moi, criait Alfred. — Ah ! elle mourra… elle mourra, hurla le mulâtre en délire. — Georges, lâchez-moi ! — Tais-toi… tais-toi, misérable… ah ! elle mourra… eh bien, que le bourreau touche aux jours de ma femme… continua-t-il avec un sourire affreux. Alfred était si troublé , qu’il ne vit point sortir Georges. Celui-ci se rendit aussitôt à sa cabane, où , dans un léger berceau en liane dormait un jeune enfant de deux ans, il le prit et disparut. Pour bien comprendre ce qui va suivre, sachez que de l’habitation d’Alfred on n’avait qu’une petite rivière à traverser pour se trouver au milieu de ces forêts épaisses, qui semblent étreindre le nouveau-monde. Depuis six bonnes heures Georges marchait sans relâche ; enfin il s’arrêta à quelques pas d’une cabane, bâtie au plus épais de la forêt ; vous comprendrez cette espèce de joie qui brille dans ses yeux quand vous saurez que cette cabane toute petite, tout isolée, qu’elle est, est le camp des nègres marrons, c’est-à -dire des esclaves qui fuient la tyrannie de leurs maîtres. En ce moment toute la cabane était en rumeur, on venait d’entendre la forêt tressaillir, et le chef avait juré que ce bruit n’ était causé par aucun animal, or il arma son fusil et sortit… Tout à coup les broussailles se courbent devant lui, et il se trouve face à face avec un étranger. — Par ma liberté , s’ écria-t-il, en ajustant l’inconnu, tu connaissais trop bien notre niche. — Afrique et liberté , répondit Georges sans s’ émouvoir, mais en repoussant de côté le canon du fusil… je suis des vôtres. — Ton nom. — Georges, esclave d’Alfred. Ils se tendirent la main, et s’embrassèrent. Le lendemain la foule se pressait autour d’une potence, à laquelle était suspendu le corps d’une jeune mulâtresse… Lorsqu’elle fut bien morte, le bourreau descendit son cadavre dans un cercueil en sapin et dix minutes après on jeta corps et cercueil dans une fosse creusée à l’entrée de la forêt. Ainsi cette femme pour avoir été trop vertueuse est morte du supplice des infâmes ; croyez-vous que ce seul fait ne suffit pas à rendre l’homme le plus doux, méchant et sanguinaire ? V. Trois ans s’ étaient écoulés depuis la mort de la vertueuse Zélie. Alfred dans les premiers temps fut très tourmenté ; le jour, il croyait voir à toute heure une main vengeresse s’abaisser sur son front, il tremblait la nuit, car elle lui apportait des songes affreux et terribles ; mais bientôt chassant de son âme, et le souvenir pénible de la martyre, et la terrible menace de Georges, il se maria, devint père… Oh ! qu’il fut heureux, quand on vint lui dire que ses vœux étaient exaucés, lui qui chaque soir baisait humblement le pavé du temple, en priant la Sainte Vierge de douleur de lui accorder un fils. Georges eut aussi sa part de bonheur de la venue au monde de cet enfant ; car s’il avait espéré trois ans sans savoir frapper le bourreau de sa femme ; s’il avait passé tant de nuits sans sommeil, la fureur dans le cœur, et la main sur son poignard, c’est qu’il attendait qu’Alfred eût, comme lui, une femme et un fils ; c’est qu’il ne voulait le tuer qu’au moment où des liens chers et précieux le retiendraient en ce monde… Georges avait toujours entretenu des relations intimes avec un des esclaves d’Alfred, il l’allait même voir toutes les semaines ; or cet esclave n’eut rien de plus pressé que de lui annoncer l’existence du nouveau-né… Aussitôt il vole vers la demeure de son ennemi, rencontre sur son chemin une négresse qui portait une tasse de bouillon à madame Alfred ; il l’arrête, lui dit quelques paroles insignifiantes, et s’ éloigne… Après bien des difficultés, il parvient à se glisser comme une couleuvre dans la chambre à coucher d’Alfred… là , caché derrière la ruelle du lit, il attendit son maître… Alfred rentra un instant après en chantant ; il ouvrit son secrétaire, y prit un superbe écrin en diamant qu’il avait promis à sa femme, si celle-ci lui donnait un fils ; mais pénétré de joie et de bonheur, il s’assit la tête entre les deux mains, comme un homme qui ne peut croire à un bonheur inattendu ; mais quand il releva la tête, il vit devant lui une espèce d’ombre immobile, les bras croisés sur la poitrine, et deux yeux ardents qui avaient toute la férocité du tigre qui s’apprête à déchirer sa proie. Alfred fit un mouvement pour se lever, mais une main puissante le retint sur la chaise. — Que me voulez-vous, accentua Alfred d’une voix tremblante. — Te complimenter de la naissance de ton fils, répondit une voix qui semblait sortir de la tombe. Alfred frissonna du pied à la tête, ses cheveux se hérissèrent, et une sueur froide inonda ses membres. — Je ne vous connais pas, murmura faiblement Alfred… — Je m’appelle Georges. — Vous… — Tu me croyais mort n’est-ce pas, dit le mulâtre avec un rire convulsif. — Au secours…au secours, cria Alfred… — Qui te secourra, reprit le mulâtre… n’as-tu pas renvoyé tes domestiques, fermé toutes tes portes, pour être plus seul avec ta femme… tu vois donc que tes cris sont inutiles… ainsi recommande ton âme à Dieu. Alfred s’ était peu à peu relevé de sa chaise, mais à cette dernière parole, il y retomba pâle et tremblant. — Oh ! pitié , Georges… ne me tuez pas aujourd’hui. Georges haussa les épaules. — Maître, n’est-ce pas que c’est horrible de mourir quand on est heureux ; de se coucher dans la tombe au moment où l’on voit ses rêves les plus chers se réaliser… oh ! n’est-ce pas que c’est affreux, dit le mulâtre avec un rire infernal… — Grâce, Georges… — Cependant, reprit-il, telle est ta destinée… tu mourras aujourd’hui, à cette heure, dans une minute, sans dire à ta femme un dernier adieu… — Pitié…pitié… — Sans embrasser une seconde fois ton fils qui vient de naître… — Oh ! grâce… grâce. — Je crois ma vengeance digne de la tienne… j’aurais vendu mon âme à Satan, s’il m’avait promis cet instant. — Oh ! grâce… miséricorde, dit Alfred en se jetant aux genoux du mulâtre. Georges haussa les épaules, et leva sa hache. — Oh !… une heure encore de vie ! — Pour embrasser ta femme n’est-ce pas ? — Une minute… — Pour revoir ton fils, n’est-ce pas ? — Oh ! par pitié… — Il vaudrait mieux prier le tigre affamé de lâcher sa proie. — Au nom de Dieu, Georges. — Je n’y crois plus. — Au nom de votre père… À ce mot la colère de Georges tomba. — Mon père…mon père, dit le mulâtre la larme à l’ œil, vous le connaissez… oh ! dites-moi son nom… comment s’appelle-t-il… oh ! dites, dites-moi son nom… je vous bénirai… je vous pardonnerai. Et le mulâtre était prêt à se mettre à genoux devant son maître. Mais tout à coup des cris aigus se font entendre… — Juste ciel… c’est la voix de ma femme, s’ écria Alfred en s’ élançant du côté d’où partaient les cris… Comme rappelé à lui-même, le mulâtre se souvint qu’il était venu chez son maître, non pour savoir le nom de son père, mais pour lui demander compte du sang de sa femme. Retenant aussitôt Alfred, il lui dit avec un ricanement horrible : — Arrête, maître, ce n’est rien. — Jésus-Maria, tu n’entends pas qu’elle demande du secours. — Ce n’est rien, te dis-je. — Lâchez-moi… lâchez-moi… c’est la voix de ma femme. — Non… c’est le râle d’une mourante. — Misérable, tu mens. — Je l’ai empoisonnée. — Oh !… — Entends-tu ces plaintes… ce sont les siennes. — Enfer… — Entends-tu ces cris… ce sont les siens… — Malédiction… Et pendant tout ce temps, Alfred s’efforçait d’ échapper des mains du mulâtre ; mais celui-ci l’ étreignait de plus en plus ; car lui aussi sa tête s’exaltait, son cœur bondissait ; il se faisait à son terrible rôle. — Alfred… au secours… de l’eau… je m’ étouffe… cria une femme en s’ élançant au milieu de la chambre. Elle était pâle et défaite, ses yeux sortaient de sa tête, ses cheveux étaient en désordre. — Alfred, Alfred… au nom du ciel, secourez-moi… un peu d’eau… un peu d’eau… mon sang me brûle… mon cœur se crispe, oh ! de l’eau, de l’eau… Alfred faisait des efforts inouïs pour la secourir ; mais Georges le retenait de son poignet de fer, et ricanant comme un damné , il lui criait : non pas, maître…non pas…je veux que cette femme meure… là… à tes yeux… devant toi… comprends-tu, maître, devant toi, te disant de l’eau, de l’air, sans que tu puisses la secourir. — O malheur… malheur à toi, hurlait Alfred en se débattant comme un forcené . — Tu auras beau maudire, blasphémer, répondit le mulâtre, il faut que cela soit ainsi. — Alfred, murmura de nouveau la mourante, adieu… adieu… je meurs… — Regarde, reprit le mulâtre toujours en ricanant… regarde… elle râle… eh bien ! une seule goutte de cette eau la ramènerait à la vie. Il lui montrait un petit flacon. — Toute ma fortune pour cette goutte d’eau… cria Alfred. — Es-tu fou, maître… — Ah ! cette eau… cette eau… ne vois-tu pas qu’elle se meurt… Donnez… donnez donc… — Tiens… et le mulâtre brisa le flacon contre le mur. — Soyez maudit, hurla Alfred, en saisissant Georges par le cou… oh ! ma vie entière, mon âme pour un poignard… Georges se débarrassa des mains d’Alfred. — Maintenant qu’elle est morte, à ton tour, maître, dit-il en levant sa hache. Frappe, bourreau… frappe… après l’avoir empoisonnée, tu peux bien tuer ton pè… La hache s’abaissa, et la tête d’Alfred roula sur le plancher, mais la tête en roulant murmura distinctement la dernière syllabe re… Georges croyait avoir mal entendu, mais le mot père. comme le glas funèbre, tintait à son oreille ; or pour s’en assurer, il ouvrit le sac fatal…ah ! s’écria-t-il, je suis maudit… une détonation se fit entendre ; le lendemain on trouva près du cadavre d’Alfred celui du malheureux Georges. Retour à la bibliothèque Tintamarre ESSAY ON THE BOOK Seeds of Rebellion in Plantation Fiction: Victor Séjour's "The Mulatto" Ed Piacentino High Point University Article Published August 28, 2007 Overview This essay examines Victor Séjour's "The Mulatto" (1837), a short story acknowledged as the first fictional work by an African American. Through its representation of physical and psychological effects, Séjour's story, a narrative of slavery in Saint-Domingue, also inaugurated the literary delineation of slavery's submission-rebellion binary. The enslaved raconteur in "The Mulatto" voices protest and appeals to social consciousness and sympathy, anticipating the embedded narrators in works of later writers throughout the Plantation Americas. Introduction A little-known story first translated into English in 1995 by Philip Barnard for The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, "Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") by Victor Séjour (1817–1874), a New Orleans free man of color, was initially published in the March 1837 issue of Cyrille Bisette's Parisian abolitionist journal La Revue des Colonies. La Revue was a monthly periodical of "Colonial Politics, Administration, Justice, Education and Customs" owned and sponsored by a "society of men of color." A recent immigrant to Paris, Séjour was in an amenable environment among kindred spirits who shared his sentiments about slavery. La Revue's cover, according to Charles E. O'Neill, Séjour's biographer, features a "black slave in chains, with palms and waterfall in the background; kneeling on one knee, hands clasped in petition [and] ask[ing] 'Am I not a man and your brother?'" This illustration accentuates the journal's anti-slavery intent: to expose the "dissatisfaction with the slow, evasive parliamentary handling of poverty and oppression in the colonies" (O'Neill 14). In this iconic image, the slave expresses his humanity although secured by chains and kneeling in supplication.1 The slave proffers a plea for personhood and liberation that evokes the plight of the enslaved throughout the Plantation Americas, a zone, as George Handley notes, "of perplexing but compelling commonality among Caribbean nations, the Caribbean coasts of Central and South America and Brazil, and the US South...." (Handley 25). "Am I not a man and your brother?" Illustration on the cover of La Revue des Colonies 3 (1837): 376–392. The story was originally published in this volume by Victor Séjour as "Le Mulâtre." As a native of New Orleans and resident of the French Quarter, Séjour spoke French, attended private school, and was free but not white. When Séjour resided in New Orleans, free persons of color (gens de couleur) were numerous and did not enjoy political rights equal to those of whites (O'Neill 1). At nineteen, Séjour became an expatriate by choice, moving to Paris to continue his education and find work, and eventually joining forces with Cyrille Bisette, publisher of La Revue, and other members of the Parisian literary elite who helped him to start a formal writing career. In Paris, Séjour, a colonial mulatto, found a more open-minded milieu with less racial prejudice where he could exercise liberties not allowed in antebellum New Orleans. In 1837, a black man living in the United States could not have published as stark and haunting an antislavery revenge narrative as "The Mulatto." With this publication, the first African-American fictional narrative and the first of Séjour's works to appear in print, he launched a popular and successful literary career, with twenty of his plays produced on the Paris stage between the 1840s and 1860s. "The Mulatto" is not set in the continental United States, but its location, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) in the West Indies, is an important site of slavery and revolution in the African diaspora where plantation slaves experienced barbarous conditions eliciting comparison to Louisiana sugar plantations.2 Designating Louisiana as an "appendage of the French and Spanish West Indies," Thomas Marc Fiehrer perceives significant links between the two, including "shar[ing] the socio-economic expreience of the larger circum-Caribbean culture, (3–4), and Louisiana's becoming a major sugar producer as Saint-Domingue had formerly been. Louisiana, like Cuba, also experienced the "same cycle of expansion and intensification of slavery after 1800 which had occurred in Saint-Domingue between 1750 and 1794," and many planters, refugees, and free persons of color (many of who had migrated to Cuba first) found Louisiana a "politically desirable point of relocation . . . , afford[ing] . . . an ecosystem comparable to that of the [Caribbean] islands" (4). With the expansion of sugar-plantation slavery came familiar atrocities (10). Title pages to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl, William Wells Brown's Clotel or; The President's Daughter, and Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative. Images are in public domain. Although little known in its era, "The Mulatto" presents the binary of submission and rebellion that became a motif in US based slave narratives and novelized autobiographies treating racialized sexual harassment and/or exploitation of mulattas such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl, antislavery novels such as William Wells Brown's Clotel or; The President's Daughter and Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative, and even late nineteenth-century southern local color stories with embedded former slave storytellers, such as Charles Waddell Chesnutt's Uncle Julius. In exposing the brutality of the slave system, such as the impact of miscegenation on persons of mixed race; the sexual violation of enslaved persons; and the physical and psychological brutalities of slavery — particularly the devastating effects on family life of whites as well as on blacks — "The Mulatto" deploys strategies for antislavery protest writing that will appear in antebellum slave narratives and anti-slavery novels and in postbellum fiction about slavery. Liberated Narrative Voice "The Mulatto" features a frame narrator, a white man who functions as a sympathetic and tolerant sounding board to whom Antoine, an old man still presumably a slave and the story's embedded narrator, freely recounts a harrowing narrative of his friend Georges, a mulatto slave whose master is also his biological father.3 It is Georges's master-father, Alfred, against whom Georges directs retributive justice, killing him for allowing Georges's wife to be put to death for spurning Alfred's sexual advances. After poisoning Alfred's wife, Georges beheads his master with an ax and then takes his own life upon discovering that he has murdered his own father. Séjour's tragic narrative reveals that the slave, like his master, has succumbed to evil as his depravity stems from the corrupting effects of slavery. "The Mulatto" family tree and frame narrative structure. Illustration courtesy of the author. Séjour's character, Antoine, a proud, imposing, elderly slave raconteur, creates a narrative that exposes the psychological tensions and physical violence brought about by the violation of the humanity of black slaves and which affects slave owners as well as their bondpersons. Antoine comfortably and confidently addresses a nameless white listener, an individual about whom he feels no rigid class or race barriers. Moreover, this man, who serves as the frame narrator, gives us Antoine's story of Georges apparently as it was told to him, an uncensored, melodramatic tale of the tragedy spawned by slavery, with his primary focus being on the victims of its inhumanities. Antoine's story of Georges, which evokes sympathy for the innocent black slave characters suffering under white oppression, exemplifies racial melodrama, anticipating the form that Linda Williams examines in Playing the Race Card: Melodramas in Black and White, From Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Williams, who views melodrama as typifying "popular American narrative . . . when it seeks to engage with moral questions," notes that the "moral legibility" of actions within racial melodramas depends upon the representation of victimized innocents who acquire virtue through suffering, a script intended to evoke the social consciences and emotions of readers (12, 17). Title page to William Gilmore Simms's The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina, New York, 1844. Published by Harper & Brothers. Image is in public domain. In Antoine's embedded narrative, the master Alfred is depicted as a vain, hideous and merciless villain and the slaves whom he exploits physically and emotionally—Laïsa, Georges's mother; Georges, his unacknowledged son; and Zelia, Georges's wife—all become lost innocents, unnecessary victims of the white man. As Antoine begins to talk, prefacing the story, it becomes clear that he can vent his discontent/ and outrage blatantly and speak honestly to the authorial narrator, even to the extent of adopting a cynically editorializing voice and using ideological discourse. In his encounter with this white man, Antoine's effectiveness as a functional mouthpiece and as a credible and reliable character is not diminished by such annoyances as dialect and and humiliatingly submissive behavior in his encounter with this white man, especially for today's readers who are knowledgeable of black portraiture in nineteenth-century American white-authored texts such as John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn (1832), William Gilmore Simms's The Yemassee (1835), and Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales. Antoine preserves his dignity, consequently escaping reduction to a stereotype. After shaking hands with the white man, who treats him with dignity, Antoine receives a reaffirmation, an invitation to voice his stark, bitter recollections of the dehumanizing effects of slavery. Antoine's monologue begins with an undiluted tirade precipitated by his thoughts of the story he is about to tell of the ill-fated Georges and his master-father: "But you know, do you not, that a negro's as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him; the laws curse him. . . . Yes, he's a most unhappy being, who hasn't even the consolation of always being virtuous. . . . He may be born good, noble, and generous; God may grant him a great and loyal soul; but despite all that, he often goes to his grave with bloodstained hands, and a heart hungering after yet more vengeance. For how many times has seen the dreams of his youth destroyed? How many times has experience taught him that his good deeds count for nothing, and that he should love neither his wife nor his son; for one day the former will be seduced by the master, and his own flesh and blood will be sold and transported away despite his despair. What, then, can you expect him to become? Shall he smash his skull against the paving stones? Shall he kill his torturer? Or do you believe the human heart can find a way to bear such misfortune?" "You'd have to be mad to believe that," he continued, heatedly. "If he continues to live it can only be for vengeance; for soon he shall rise. . . and, from the day he shakes off his servility, the master would do better to have a starving tiger raging beside him than to meet that man face to face." (354) Antoine's sobering revelation foreshadows the story of Georges, his mother, his wife, his master Alfred, and his master's wife, establishing a credible basis for the traumas both of slaves who have experienced the victimization and abuses of bondage, and of white masters depraved by unchecked power. Restricted Space American slave narratives, largely published after Séjour's story, appealed to readers by emphasizing enslaved humanity. These illustrations, from Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1847), construct a portrait of slave emotion expressed within and constrained by a system of power and family separation similar to the system depicted by Séjour earlier in "The Mulatto" (described above). Through Antoine, Séjour interjects commentary that accentuates that his narrative's hortatory intent. In this way, Séjour controls how he wants his dour tale to affect his readers. Georges is the product of a rape. His father is his white master Alfred, and his mother Laïsa is a young Senegalese woman whom Alfred purchases at a slave auction for his personal sexual gratification. Antoine emphasizes Laïsa's humanity, a humanity often violated or repressed because of her own helplessness in the institution of slavery. As his property, Alfred exploits Laïsa sexually. She retains no control over her body or her life's course. For example, just after she has been purchased, a tearful and frightened Laïsa unexpectedly encounters her brother Jacques Chambo from whom she had been separated and excitedly embraces him. The reunion of brother and sister, both orphans, and the sentiments connected with it are short lived when a cruel overseer lashes Jacques, forcefully separating him from Laïsa. Slaves evinced their humanity when they exhibited genuine emotions before their white oppressors, but white slaveholders who regarded their slaves as commodities, viewed such displays of feeling as subversive—a form of rebellion. These emotional outbursts had to be suppressed in order to force slaves to recognize their white-imposed, non-human status. Dysfunctional family relationships are representative of the place of fathers and mothers in slave societies. Both black slave women and men such as Séjour's Laïsa and Jacques become constructs of the white slave-holding patriarchy, which, in enslaving them, Hortense J. Spillers notes, "sever[s] . . . the captive body from its motive will, its active desire" (67). In further addressing the effects on the slave's identity, Spiller points out: 1) the captive body becomes the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality; 2) at the same time—; in stunning contradiction —the captive body reduces to a thing, becoming being for the captor; 3) in this absence from a subject position, the captured sexualities provide a physical and biological expression of "otherness" ; 4) as a category of "otherness," the captive body translates into a potential for pornotroping and embodies sheer physical powerlessness that slides into a more general "powerlessness," resonating through various centers of human and social meaning. (67) Blank Family Record: Before the War and Since the War, ca. 1880. Chromolithograph by Krebs Lithographing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, loc.gov/pictures/item/91721220. This lack of human acknowledgement is also seen in Georges, Laïsa's son, a mulatto who does not know who his father is and who consequently feels a sense of emptiness. While Georges likes his master "as much as one can like a man," and his master "esteem[s] him, but with that esteem that the horseman bears for the most handsome and vigorous of his chargers" (357), their dynamic is a consequence of the black-white binary dictated by the systemic structure of slavery. As a result, Georges experiences intense remorse, the result of being denied the identity of his own father, an identity his dying mother Laïsa refuses to disclose to him. After Laïsa's death, Georges, like his mother and her brother Jacques, is, in a figurative sense, an orphan. Although Georges is seriously wounded saving his master's life from would-be murderers, Alfred tries to seduce Georges's wife, Zelia, during his convalescence. She resists Alfred's overtures, refusing to compromise her virtue for her master. As Antoine explains, Alfred, "instead of being moved by this display of a virtue that is so rare among women, above all among those who, like Zelia, are slaves, and who, every day, see their shameless companions prostitute themselves to the colonists, thereby only feeding more licentiousness" (359), allows his lustful desires to govern his actions. Zelia repeatedly resists him—a testament of the strength of Zelia's humanity and of her love for her husband— and causes Alfred, in his last desperate effort to seduce her, to lose his balance, striking his head as he falls. Tragically for Zelia, colonial laws dictated that the slave must be blamed and executed for her master's injury.4 Zelia's action, deemed rebellious within the dictates of the system of slavery, proves for the slave doubly devastating, resulting in her death as well as the destruction of her family. Georges pleads persistently and passionately to Alfred to spare his wife. When that fails, Georges angrily condemns his master as a "scoundrel," even threatening his life if Zelia is executed. Alfred, however, remains adamant. He shows no mercy. Alfred's recalcitrance precipitates his own murder and the murder of his wife at the hand of the vengeful Georges three years later. Only in the interval, after securing his two-year-old son and running away from his master, to a free space, "those thick forests that seem to hold the new world in their arms" and living among the Maroons, slaves, who, like Georges, "have fled the tyranny of their masters" (361), does Georges savor a semblance of what freedom means. In Séjour's bleak story, there are no winners, for Georges also kills himself, since he apparently cannot live with the guilt and remorse. In avenging Zelia's death, Georges has also killed his own father, completing the destruction of his family. The story's concluding scene is strikingly symbolic. Georges severs his father's head with an ax just as Alfred tries to tell him that he is his father (364). The word "father" is severed, broken in two, a reminder that in a slave society normal paternal connections could not exist with slave children. Georges's action results in two children, one mulatto (his son) and the other white (Alfred and his wife's son), being orphaned. For both the slave boy and the free white boy of "The Mulatto," family is destroyed. Yet Alfred's child, by token of his race and class, will likely reap the benefits from his dissolved family. As Hortense Spillers comments, "the vertical transfer of bloodline, of a patronymic, of titles and entitlements, of real estate and the prerogatives of 'cold cash,' from fathers to sons and in the supposedly free exchange of affectional ties between a male and female of his choice—becomes the mythically revered privilege of a free and freed community" (74), of which the white child is beneficiary. Yet for the slave this takes on a different, constricted meaning: Georges and Zelia's orphan son will, as long as he remains in bondage, enjoy no privileges. Séjour conflates magistricide and patricide, so that in killing his master and father, Georges has killed part of himself. In terms of the rebellion-submission binary, Georges's act of ultimate rebellion is equated to his ultimate self-submission as an enslaved man. In other words, Georges's submission is the result of the oppressive and destructive effect of his enslavement on his mind and his spirit. For Georges, submission and rebellion as possibilities for manhood are inextricably linked, if irreconcilable. While this situation, perpetuated by the systemic structure of slavery, is dismal for Georges, there exists a third alternative in Antoine, the narrator. Having lived for seventy-plus years, Antoine has succumbed to neither magistricide nor suicide as a response to slavery; instead, he tells stories about slavery. These stories provide an outlet for voicing commentary as a counterpoint to the tragic outcome of Georges's master-slave story. The narrator's stories also alert his white listener, and Séjour's readers, to the destructive consequences of slavery. Clotel's Rebellion William Wells Brown, ca. 1852. Illustration by unknown artist. Originally published in William Wells Brown's Three Years in Europe (Charles Gilpin, 1852). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Image is in public domain. The submission-rebellion binary that Séjour employed in "The Mulatto" illuminates one consequence of the racial double standard as exercised in the sexual violation of enslaved persons and its corrosive effect on family life. This binary also appears, with some modifications, in subsequent African-American slave narratives and anti-slavery novels of the antebellum period. Examples abound in literature of mixed-race women as victims of racialized sexual exploitation, typically stemming from the systemic structure of slavery. One example is found in William Wells Brown's novel Clotel; or, the President's Daughter (1853). In Clotel, the authorial narrator bitterly protests the separation of members of a slave family. Clotel, who is a quadroon and can pass for white, is separated from her family, her mother Currer and her sister Althesa, and is sold at auction to a white man desiring her for his mistress. The notion of family unity and cohesiveness is violated as each of these three female slaves is sent to different places under different sets of circumstances. As in Laïsa's case, the auctioneer promotes Clotel as a highly desirable object, emphasizing her beauty, purity, and nobility of character as her principal selling points, traits making her marketable as a sexual commodity. As a slave, Clotel, like Laïsa and Georges's wife, Zelia, has no rights, no choice regarding how she is treated, where she will live, or what will happen to her. Although her white master Horatio Green seems fond of Clotel, making her his mistress, and moving her to an apparently idyllic space in Virginia, and although the couple has a daughter during their relationship, Green, who marries a wealthy white woman from a prominent family, succumbs to his wife's jealousy and his father-in-law's demands that he sell Clotel. In placing his social and political aspirations above the love he may feel for Clotel, Green acts expediently, allowing his father-in-law to sell his slave mistress. Her sale forces her from her former refuge and separates her from her beloved daughter. Clotel's tenuous security continues to be threatened, as she is sold two additional times. Her second new master attempts to seduce her with "glittering presents" and the likelihood of ensuing rape should she resist. Like Zelia in "The Mulatto," Clotel rebels against the space in which her humanity remains in jeopardy. Facing sexual exploitation, Clotel flees. In Chapter XIX, Clotel's rebellion becomes a successful, albeit momentary, escape in which, although ably impersonating a white invalid gentleman, she gives in to her maternal instincts. She forgoes her autonomy by returning to Virginia, intending to reunite with her daughter. Clotel has returned to a space where she is regarded as property, without control over how she will be used. While Clotel's escape—her rebellion against her master— has been skillfully executed, she feels that she cannot live a life of freedom in a place removed from her dear daughter. Her rebellion, if she continued to pursue her freedom, then, would become the equivalent of her family's destruction. "The Death of Clotel." Illustration by unknown artist. Originally published in William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, the President's Daughter (Partridge & Oakey, 1853). Image is in public domain. Zelia succumbs to the systemic structure of slavery that makes rebellion against the master the equivalent of self-immolation. In contrast, Clotel temporarily escapes this fate by rejecting her freedom and returning to Virginia in hopes of a mother and child reunion. Clotel risks re-enslavement, a return to oppressive conditions in place where, if recaptured, she will be forced back into bondage. Yet Clotel's actions do not bring about reunion. Recaptured and incarcerated in the District of Columbia — the seat of national government symbolizing the liberties that slaves are denied — Clotel confronts her imminent sale in the New Orleans market. There, she will likely be sexually exploited and never see her daughter again. Her rebellion suppressed, Clotel escapes once more, but when faced with recapture, chooses to jump to her death off a Potomac bridge. Local Color Top, Joel Chandler Harris, ca. 1895. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Image is in public domain. Middle, Charles Chesnutt, 1898. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Image is in public domain. Bottom, Cover of Charles W. Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman, containing his collected Uncle Julius stories, "The Goophered Grapevine," "Po' Sandy," "The Conjurer's Revenge," and "Mars Jeems's Nightmare," 1899. Image is in public domain. Another variation in fictional depictions of the effects of oppression on slaves emerged during the postbellum period, the heyday of the local color story. Often, local color set in the Mid and Deep South employed a frame and an embedded narrative, the latter recounted by an elderly African-American male and former slave. In this raconteur, we find a more restrictive binary pattern than Séjour used in "The Mulatto." Local color stories generally follow two patterns. Derived from stories slaves told, they can be allegorical beast fables, treating power struggles and survival under an oppressive system comparable to slavery. These stories are predicated on an inequitable double standard, with the power structure under the control of predacious animals. Examples are the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris. A second type presents a more direct rendering of slavery's brutalities and exploitation, such as Charles Chesnutt's conjure stories as told by the loquacious Uncle Julius. Chesnutt's "The Goophered Grapevine" (1887) features a multi-dimensional and affable storyteller in Uncle Julius, who still resides in the same place where he had been a slave. Uncle Julius speaks in quaint and comical dialect, creating an impression quite different from Séjour's straightforward, serious, and outspoken Antoine. In the conciliatory, non-controversial conventions of local color, Chesnutt portrays Uncle Julius as polyvocal, assuming competing poses and agendas. Julius is an entertainingly imaginative raconteur whose story involves the supernatural, folkloric, amusing, and outlandish descriptions. He is a cunning con artist and economic opportunist, a simple primitive, and a subdued social critic—contradictory postures reflecting amiability and rebelliousness. Like Séjour's Antoine, Julius, in telling his story of imagined spaces, works within the binaries of rebellion and submission, white and black, domination and abjection. Through him, Chesnutt dilutes and mellows the underlying serious social implications of Julius's embedded tale, establishing a comfort zone distancing the story's enslaved characters from implied readers. While Julius's story of Henry, the victimized slave, does focus on a dehumanizing aspect of slavery (Henry is economically exploited by his greedy master who commodifies him in his restricted space as a slave), the manner in which Julius tells the story is divertingly entertaining. Julius's narrative focuses principally on Henry's predicament rather than on the slave's interior self. It neither engages the sensibility nor arouses the moral consciousness of the frame narrator, a man from Ohio seeking to purchase the former plantation to whom Julius relates his story, or that of the implied reader. Chesnutt used the rebellion-submission binary in several other conjure tales. In "Po' Sandy," Julius's story gains him temporary use of the old schoolhouse, a space for religious services. In "The Conjurer's Revenge," Julius gains power within his present space, shrewdly employing a tale to circumvent his white employer's buying a mule, and to set up a scam where he purchases a defective horse instead. In "Mars Jeems's Nightmare," Julius again makes a small gain, winning his white female listener's sympathy so that she gives his unreliable grandson a second chance to continue to work for her family. The outcomes of these tales exemplify Chesnutt's manipulation of frame plots, creating opportunities within imagined spaces. Julius, although gaining some material advantage, remains oppressed. Moreover, the subtexts of his embedded narratives prove ineffectual in inciting understanding and empathy. Conclusion Victor Séjour, the earliest known author of fiction by an African-American, ca. 1850. Illustration by Étienne Carjat. Originally published in weekly journal Le Diogène. Image is in public domain. With its early publication date and its tragic portrait of slavery's atrocities and effects in the plantation space of the French West Indies, Victor Séjour's "The Mulatto," is an important literary text. Séjour depicts African bondage in Saint-Domingue, a subject that would become a major concern in nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing. At nineteen, Séjour's parents sent him to Paris to further his education, pursue broader opportunities, and cultivate his talents. Assimilated into French society and the Parisian literary culture and living without the race-based constraints of his native New Orleans, Séjour passed the rest of his life in France, distinguishing himself as a dramatist. In "The Mulatto," his only short story, Séjour tapped into the subject of African bondage, possibly inspired by his father, Juan Francois Louis Séjour Marcou's Haitian experience and that of other free men of color and former slaves from the French West Indies. In "The Mulatto," Séjour wrote of submission and rebellion in Saint-Domingue. He wrote in the language of his newly-adopted country, employed an embedded black slave narrator to recount the grim story-within-the-story, and published his fictional account in a Parisian anti-slavery journal sponsored by free men of color like himself. "The Mulatto" anticipated renditions of grisly and melodramatic scripts featured in abolitionist narratives (autobiographical, fictional, or some combination of the two), but Séjour's story was all but unknown in the US before Philip Barnard's English translation appeared in 1995 in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. The new publication of "The Mulatto" places it amid African Diasporic, post-colonial, US southern, and New World Studies. These fields of scholarship have encouraged the discovery and reappraisal of writers with origins in various locales, but who, like Séjour, adopted new nationalities and loyalties even as they were forgotten in their native countries. This analysis of "The Mulatto" suggests the connections among African bondage texts that cross cultures and societies, texts that expose the effects of slavery, of submission and rebellion, as they narrate this history. Map of Saint Domingue (present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), 1772. Map by Jean Lattre. Courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. Image is in public domain. About the Author: Ed Piacentino, a professor of English at High Point University in North Carolina, has published widely on the literature and culture of the American South. His numerous essays and reviews appear in such journals as the Southern Literary Journal, Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, American Literature, Southern Studies, Studies in American Humor, American Quarterly, and Studies in Short Fiction. Professor Piacentino has authored or edited three books—T. S. Stribling: Pioneer Realist in Modern Southern Literature (1988); The Humor of the Old South, which he co-edited with M. Thomas Inge; and The Enduring Legacy of Old Southwest Humor (2006). He also serves as associate editor of Studies in American Humor. His current projects include an edition of the dialect letters of C. M. Haile, antebellum journalist and humorist and an anthology of antebellum southern humor, which he is co-editing with M. Thomas Inge. Note: The date of Philip Barnard's translation referenced in the conclusion of this essay was corrected from 1997 to 1995 and three resources were added to this essay's "Recommended Resources" on November 26, 2013. Media updated and two resources added to this essay's "Recommended Resources" on December 13, 2016. THE BOOK VARIANT "The Mulatto" by Victor Séjour Courtesy of Philip Barnard, translated 1995. Section I The first rays of dawn were just beginning to light the black mountaintops when I left the Cape for Saint-Marc, a small town in St. Domingue, now known as Haiti. I had seen so many exquisite landscapes and thick, tall forests that, truth to tell, I had begun to believe myself indifferent to these virile beauties of creation. But at the sight of this town, with its picturesque vegetation, its bizarre and novel nature, I was stunned; I stood dumb-struck before the sublime diversity of God's works. The moment I arrived, I was accosted by an old negro, at least seventy years of age; his step was firm, his head held high, his form imposing and vigorous; save the remarkable whiteness of his curly hair, nothing betrayed his age. As is common in that country, he wore a large straw hat and was dressed in trousers of coarse gray linen, with a kind of jacket made from plain batiste. "Good day, Master," he said, tipping his hat when he saw me. "Ah! There you are . . .," and I offered him my hand, which he shook in return. "Master," he said, "that's quite noble-hearted of you . . . . But you know, do you not, that a negro's as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him; the laws curse him. . . . Yes, he's a most unhappy being, who hasn't even the consolation of always being virtuous. . . . He may be born good, noble, and generous; God may grant him a great and loyal soul; but despite all that, he often goes to his grave with bloodstained hands, and a heart hungering after yet more vengeance. For how many times has he seen the dreams of his youth destroyed? How many times has experience taught him that his good deeds count for nothing, and that he should love neither his wife nor his son; for one day the former will be seduced by the master, and his own flesh and blood will be sold and transported away despite his despair. What, then, can you expect him to become? Shall he smash his skull against the paving stones? Shall he kill his torturer? Or do you believe the human heart can find a way to bear such misfortune?" The old negro fell silent a moment, as if awaiting my response. "You'd have to be mad to believe that," he continued, heatedly. "If he continues to live, it can only be for vengeance; for soon he shall rise . . . and, from the day he shakes off his servility, the master would do better to have a starving tiger raging beside him than to meet that man face to face." While the old man spoke, his face lit up, his eyes sparkled, and his heart pounded forcefully. I would not have believed one could discover that much life and power beneath such an aged exterior. Taking advantage of this moment of excitement, I said to him: "Antoine, you promised you'd tell me the story of your friend Georges." "Do you want to hear it now?" "Certainly . . ." We sat down, he on my trunk, myself on my valise. Here is what he told me: "Do you see this edifice that rises so graciously toward the sky and whose reflection seems to rise from the sea; this edifice that in its peculiarity resembles a temple and in its pretense a palace? This is the house of Saint-M*** . Each day, in one of this building's rooms, one finds an assemblage of hangers-on, men of independent means, and the great plantation owners. The first two groups play billiards or smoke the delicious cigars of Havana, while the third purchases negroes; that is, free men who have been torn from their country by ruse or by force, and who have become, by violence, the goods, the property of their fellow men. . . . Over here we have the husband without the wife; there, the sister without the brother; farther on, the mother without the children. This makes you shudder? Yet this loathsome commerce goes on continuously. Soon, in any case, the offering is a young Senegalese woman, so beautiful that from every mouth leaps the exclamation: 'How pretty!' Everyone there wants her for his mistress, but not one of them dares dispute the prize with the young Alfred, now twenty-one years old and one of the richest planters in the country. "'How much do you want for this woman?' "'Fifteen hundred piasters,' replied the auctioneer. "'Fifteen hundred piasters,' Alfred rejoined dryly. "'Yes indeed, Sir.' "'That's your price?' "'That's my price.' "'That's awfully expensive.' "'Expensive?' replied the auctioneer, with an air of surprise. 'But surely you see how pretty she is; how clear her skin is, how firm her flesh is. She's eighteen years old at the most. . . .' Even as he spoke, he ran his shameless hands all over the ample and half-naked form of the beautiful African. "'Is she guaranteed?' asked Alfred, after a moment of reflection. "'As pure as the morning dew,' the auctioneer responded. But, for that matter, you yourself can. . . .' "'No no, there's no need,' said Alfred, interrupting him. 'I trust you.' "'I've never sold a single piece of bad merchandise,' replied the vendor, twirling his whiskers with a triumphant air. When the bill of sale had been signed and all formalities resolved, the auctioneer approached the young slave. This man is now your master,' he said, pointing toward Alfred. "'I know it,' the negress answered coldly. "'Are you content?' "'What does it matter to me…him or some other . . .' "'But surely.. ..' stammered the auctioneer, searching for some answer. " 'But surely what?' said the African, with some humor. 'And if he doesn't suit me?' "'My word, that would be unfortunate, for everything is finished. . . .' "'Well then, I'll keep my thoughts to myself.' "Ten minutes later, Alfred's new slave stepped into a carriage that set off along the chemin des quepes, a well-made road that leads out into those delicious fields that surround Saint-Marc like young virgins at the foot of the altar. A somber melancholy enveloped her soul, and she began to weep. The driver understood only too well what was going on inside her, and thus made no attempt to distract her. But when he saw Alfred's white house appear in the distance, he involuntarily leaned down toward the unfortunate girl and, with a voice full of tears, said to her: 'Sister, what's your name?' "'Laïsa, ' she answered, without raising her head. "At the sound of this name, the driver shivered. Then, gaining control of his emotions, he asked: 'Your mother?' "'She's dead. . . .' "'Your father?' "'He's dead. . . .' "'Poor child,' he murmured. 'What country are you from, Laïsa?' "'From Senegal. . . .' "Tears rose in his eyes; she was a fellow countrywoman. "'Sister,' he said, wiping his eyes, 'perhaps you know old Chambo and his daughter. . . .' "'Why?' answered the girl, raising her head quickly. "'Why?' continued the driver, in obvious discomfort, 'well, old Chambo is my father, and . . . ' "'My God,' cried out the orphan, cutting off the driver before he could finish. 'You are?' "'Jacques Chambo.' "'You're my brother!' "Laïsa!' "They threw themselves into each other's arms. They were still embracing when the carriage passed through the main entrance to Alfred's property. The overseer was waiting. . . . 'What's this I see,' he shouted, uncoiling an immense whip that he always carried on his belt; 'Jacques kissing the new arrival before my very eyes. . What impertinence!' With this, lashes began to fall on the unhappy man, and spurts of blood leaped from his face. " Section II "Alfred may have been a decent man, humane and loyal with his equals; but you can be certain he was a hard, cruel man toward his slaves. I won't tell you everything he did in order to possess Laïsa; for in the end she was virtually raped. For almost a year, she shared her master's bed. But Alfred was already beginning to tire of her; he found her ugly, cold, and insolent. About this time the poor woman gave birth to a boy and gave him the name Georges. Alfred refused to recognize him, drove the mother from his presence, and relegated her to the most miserable hut on his lands, despite the fact that he knew very well, as well as one can, that he was the child's father. "'Georges grew up without ever hearing the name of his father; and when, at times, he attempted to penetrate the mystery surrounding his birth, his mother remained inflexible, never yielding to his entreaties. On one occasion only, she said to him: 'My son, you shall learn your name only when you reach twenty-five, for then you will be a man; you will be better able to guard its secret. You don't realize that he has forbidden me to speak to you about him and threatens you if I do. . . . And Georges, don't you see, this man's hatred would be your death.' "'What does that matter,' Georges shouted impetuously. 'At least I could reproach him for his unspeakable conduct.' "'Hush. . . . Hush, Georges. The walls have ears and someone will talk,' moaned the poor mother as she trembled." A few years later this unhappy woman died, leaving to Georges, her only son, as his entire inheritance, a small leather pouch containing a portrait of the boy's father. But she exacted a promise that the pouch not be opened until his twenty-fifth year; then she kissed him, and her head fell back onto the pillow. . . . She was dead. The painful cries that escaped the orphan drew the other slaves around him. . . . They all set to crying, they beat their chests, they tore their hair in agony. Following these gestures of suffering, they bathed the dead woman's body and laid it out on a kind of long table, raised on wooden supports. The dead woman is placed on her back, her face turned to the East, dressed in her finest clothing, with her hands folded on her chest. At her feet is a bowl filled with holy water, in which a sprig of jasmine is floating; arid, finally, at the four corners of this funereal bed, the flames of torches rise up. . . . Each of them, having blessed the remains of the deceased, kneels and prays; for most of the negro races, despite their fetishism, have profound faith in the existence of God. When this first ceremony is finished, another one, no less singular, commences. . . . There are shouts, tears, songs, and then funeral dances!" Section III "Georges had all the talents necessary for becoming a well-regarded gentleman; yet he was possessed of a haughty, tenacious, willful nature; he had one of those oriental sorts of dispositions, the kind that, once pushed far enough from the path of virtue, will stride boldly down the path of crime. He would have given ten years of his life to know the name of his father, but he dared not violate the solemn oath he had made to his dying mother. It was as if nature pushed him toward Alfred; he liked him, as much as one can like a man; and Alfred esteemed him, but with that esteem that the horseman bears for the most handsome and vigorous of his chargers. In those days, a band of thieves was spreading desolation through the region; already several of the settlers had fallen victim to them. One night, by what chance I know not, Georges learned of their plans. They had sworn to murder Alfred. The slave ran immediately to his master's side. "'Master, master,' he shouted. . . . 'In heaven's name, follow me.' "Alfred raised his eyebrows. "'Please! come, come, master,' the mulatto insisted passionately. " 'Good God,' Alfred replied, 'I believe you're commanding me.' "'Forgive me, master . . . forgive me . . . I'm beside myself . . . I don't know what I'm saying . . . but in heaven's name, come, follow me, because. . . .' "'Explain yourself,' said Alfred, in an angry tone. . . . "The mulatto hesitated. "'At once; I order you,' continued Alfred, as he rose menacingly. "'Master, you're to be murdered tonight.' "'By the Virgin, you're lying. . . .' "'Master, they mean to take your life.' "'Who?' "'The bandits.' "'Who told you this?' "'Master, that's my secret. . . .' said the mulatto in a submissive voice. "'Do you have weapons?' rejoined Alfred, after a moment of silence. "The mulatto pulled back a few of the rags that covered him, revealing an axe and a pair of pistols. "'Good,' said Alfred, hastily arming himself. "'Master, are you ready?' "'Let's go. . . .' "'Let's go,' repeated the mulatto as he stepped toward the door. "Alfred held him back by the arm. "'But where to?' "'To your closest friend, Monsieur Arthur.' "As they were about to leave the room, there was a ferocious pounding at the door. "'The devil,' exclaimed the mulatto, 'it's too late. . . .' "'What say you?' "'They're here,' replied Georges, pointing at the door. . . . "'Master, what's wrong?' "'Nothing . .. a sudden pain. . . .' "'Don't worry, master, they'll have to walk over my body before they get to you,' said the slave with a calm and resigned air. "This calm, this noble devotion, were calculated to reassure the most cowardly of men. Yet at these last words, Alfred trembled even more, overwhelmed by a horrible thought. He reckoned that Georges, despite his generosity, was an accomplice of the murderers. Such is the tyrant: he believes all other men incapable of elevated sentiments or selfless dedication, for they must be small-minded, perfidious souls . . . . Their souls are but uncultivated ground, where nothing grows but thorns and weeds. The door shook violently. At this point, Alfred could no longer control his fears; he had just seen the mulatto smiling, whether from joy or anger he knew not. "'Scoundrel!' he shouted, dashing into the next room; 'you're trying to have me murdered, but your plot will fail'—upon which he disappeared. Georges bit his lips in rage, but had no time to think, for the door flew open and four men stood in the threshold. Like a flash of lightning, the mulatto drew his pistols and pressed his back to the wall, crying out in a deep voice: "'Wretches! What do you want?' "'We want to have a talk with you,' rejoined one of them, firing a bullet at Georges from point-blank range. "'A fine shot,' muttered Georges, shaking. "The bullet had broken his left arm. Georges let off a shot. The brigand whirled three times about and fell stone dead. A second followed instantly. At this point, like a furious lion tormented by hunters, Georges, with his axe in his fist and his dagger in his teeth, threw himself upon his adversaries. . . . A hideous struggle ensues. . . . The combatants grapple . . . collide again. . . . they seem bound together. . . . The axe blade glistens. . . . The dagger, faithful to the hand that guides it, works its way into the enemy's breast. . . . But never a shout, not a word . . . not a whisper escapes the mouths of these three men, wallowing among the cadavers as if at the heart of some intoxicating orgy. . . . To see them thus, pale and blood-spattered, silent and full of desperation, one must imagine three phantoms throwing themselves against each other, tearing themselves to pieces, in the depths of a grave. . . . Meanwhile, Georges is covered with wounds; he can barely hold himself up. . . . Oh! the intrepid mulatto has reached his end; the severing axe is lifted above his head... . Suddenly two explosions are heard, and the two brigands slump to the floor, blaspheming God as they drop. At the same moment, Alfred returns, followed by a young negro. He has the wounded man carried to his hut, and instructs his doctor to attend to him. Now, how is it that Georges was saved by the same man who had just accused him of treachery? As he ran off, Alfred heard the sound of a gun, and the clash of steel; blushing at his own cowardice, he awoke his valet de chambre and flew to the aid of his liberator. Ah, I've forgotten to tell you that Georges had a wife, by the name Zelia, whom he loved with every fiber of his being; she was a mulatto about eighteen or twenty years old, standing very straight and tall, with black hair and a gaze full of tenderness and love. Georges lay for twelve days somewhere between life and death. Alfred visited him often; and, driven on by some fateful chance, he became enamored of Zelia. But, unfortunately for him, she was not one of these women who sell their favors or use them to pay tribute to their master. She repelled Alfred's propositions with humble dignity; for she never forgot that this was a master speaking to a slave. Instead of being moved by this display of a virtue that is so rare among women, above all among those who, like Zelia, are slaves, and who, every day, see their shameless companions prostitute themselves to the colonists, thereby only feeding more licentiousness; instead of being moved, as I said, Alfred flew into a rage. . What!—him, the despot, the Bey, the Sultan of the Antilles, being spurned by a slave . . . how ironic! Thus he swore he would possess her. . . . A few days before Georges was recovered, Alfred summoned Zelia to his chamber. Then, attending to nothing but his criminal desires, he threw his arms around her and planted a burning kiss on her face. The young slave begged, pleaded, resisted; but all in vain. . . . Already he draws her toward the adulterous bed; already. . . . Then, the young slave, filled with a noble indignation, repulses him with one final effort, but one so sudden, so powerful, that Alfred lost his balance and struck his head as he fell. . . . At this sight, Zelia began to tear her hair in despair, crying tears of rage; for she understood perfectly, the unhappy girl, that death was her fate for having drawn the blood of a being so vile. After crying for some time, she left to be at her husband's side. He must have been dreaming about her, for there was a smile on his lips. "'Georges . . . Georges. . . .' she cried out in agony. "The mulatto opened his eyes; and his first impulse was to smile at the sight of his beloved. Zelia recounted for him everything that had happened. He didn't want to believe it, but soon he was convinced of his misfortune; for some men entered his hut and tied up his wife while she stood sobbing. . . . Georges made an effort to rise up; but, still weakened, he fell back onto his bed, his eyes haggard, his hands clenched, his mouth gasping for air." Section IV "Ten days later, two white creole children were playing in the street. "'Charles, 'one said to the other: 'is it true that the mulatto woman who wanted to kill her master is to be hung tomorrow?' "'At eight o'clock,' answered the other. "'Will you go?' "'Oh yes, certainly.' "'Won't that be fine, to see her pirouetting between the earth and the sky,' rejoined the first, laughing as they walked off. "Does it surprise you to hear two children, at ten years of age, conversing so gayly on the death of another? This is, perhaps, an inevitable consequence of their education. From their earliest days, they have heard it ceaselessly repeated, that we were born to serve them, that we were created to attend to their whims, and that they need have no more or less consideration for us than for a dog. . . . Indeed, what is our agony and suffering to them? Have they not, just as often, seen their best horses die? They don't weep for them, for they're rich, and tomorrow they'll buy others.. . . While these two children were speaking, Georges was at the feet of his master. "'Master, have mercy . . . mercy. . . .' he cried out,. weeping. . . . 'Have pity on her . . Master, pardon her. . . . Oh! yes, pardon her, it is in your power . . . oh! speak ... you have only to say the word . . . just one word . . . and she will live.' "Alfred made no answer. "'Oh! for pity's sake . . . master . . . for pity's sake, tell me you pardon her . . . oh! speak . . . answer me, master . . . won't you pardon her. . . .' The unhappy man was bent double with pain. . . . "Alfred remained impassive, turning his head aside. . . "'Oh!' continued Georges, begging, 'please answer . . . just one word . . . please say something; you see how your silence is tearing my heart in two . . . it's killing me . . . "'There's nothing I can do,' Alfred finally answered, in an icy tone. "The mulatto dried his tears, and raised himself to his full height. "'Master,' he continued in a hollow voice, 'do you remember what you said to me, as I lay twisting in agony on my bed?' "'No. . . .' "'Well! I can remember . . . the master said to the slave: you saved my life; what can I grant you in return? Do you want your freedom? 'Master,' answered the slave, 'I can never be free, while my son and my wife are slaves.' To which the master replied: 'If ever you ask me, I swear that your wishes shall be granted'; and the slave did not ask, for he was content/ that he had saved his master's life . . . but today, today when he knows that, in eighteen hours, his wife will no longer be among the living, he flies to throw himself at your feet, and to call out to you: master, in God's name, save my wife.' And the mulatto, his hands clasped, with a supplicating gaze, fell to his knees and began to cry, his tears falling like rain. . . . "Alfred turned his head away. . . . " 'Master . . . master . . . for pity, give me an answer. . . . Oh! say that you want her to live . . . in God's name . . . in your mother's name . . . mercy . . . have mercy upon us. . . .' and the mulatto kissed the dust at his feet. "Alfred stood silent. "'But speak, at least, to this poor man who begs you,' he said, sobbing. "Alfred said nothing. "'My God . . . my God! how miserable I am . . .' and he rolled on the floor, pulling at his hair in torment. "Finally, Alfred decided to speak: 'I have already told you that it is no longer up to me to pardon her.' "'Master,' murmured Georges, still crying, 'she will probably be condemned; for only you and I know that she is innocent.' "At these words from the mulatto, the blood rose to Alfred's face, and fury to his heart. . . . "Georges understood that it was no longer time to beg, for he had raised the veil that covered his master's crime; thus he stood up resolutely. "'Leave . . . get out,' Alfred shouted at him. "Instead of leaving, the mulatto crossed his arms on his chest and, with a fierce look, eyed his master scornfully from head to foot. "'Get out! get out, I say,' continued Alfred, more and more angrily. "'I'm not leaving,' answered Georges. "'This is defiance, you wretch.' He made a motion to strike him, but his hand remained at his side, so full of pride and hatred was George's gaze. "'What! you can leave her to be killed, to have her throat cut, to be murdered,' said the mulatto, 'when you know her to be innocent . . . when, like a coward, you wanted to seduce her?' "'Insolent! What are you saying?' "'I'm saying that it would be an infamous deed to let her die. . . . "'Georges . . . Georges. . . "'I am saying that you're a scoundrel,' screamed Georges, giving full rein to his anger, and seizing Alfred by the arm . . . 'ah! she'll die . . . she will die because she didn't prostitute herself to you . . . because you're white ... because you're her master . . . you lying coward.' "'Careful, Georges,' replied Alfred, trying to take a tone of assurance. `Be careful that instead of one victim tomorrow, the executioner does not find two.' "'You talk of victim and executioner, wretch,' shouted Georges. . . . 'So that means she dies . . . her . . . my Zelia ... but you should know that her life is linked to your own.' "'Georges!' "'You should know that your head will remain on your shoulders only so long as she lives.' "'Georges. . . Georges!' "'You should know that I will kill you, that I'll drink your blood, if even a hair on her head is harmed.' "During all this time, the mulatto was shaking Alfred with all his strength. "'Let me go,' cried Alfred. "'Ah! she's dying . . . she's dying' . . . the mulatto screamed deliriously. " 'Georges, let me go!' "'Shut your mouth . . . shut it, you scoundrel . . . ah! she's dying . . . well then, should the executioner put an end to my wife . . .' he continued with a hideous smile. "Alfred was so agitated he didn't even know that Georges had left. He went directly to his hut, where his child of two years was sleeping in a light cradle made from lianas; taking up the child, he slipped away. In order to understand what follows, you must know that there was only a small river to cross from Alfred's home before one arrives in the midst of those thick forests that seem to hold the new world in their arms. "For six long hours, Georges walked without a rest; at last he stopped, a few steps from a hut built in the deepest heart of the forest; you'll understand the joy that shone in his eyes when you realize that this tiny hut, isolated as it is, is the camp of the Maroons; that is, of slaves who have fled the tyranny of their masters. At this moment the hut was filled with murmurs; for a rustling had been heard in the forest, and the leader, swearing that the noise was not that of any animal, had taken his rifle and gone out. . . . Suddenly the underbrush parted before him and he found himself face to face with a stranger. "'By my freedom,' he cried, looking over the newcomer, 'you found our recess all too easily.' "'Africa and freedom,' Georges replied calmly, as he pushed aside the barrel of the rifle. . . . I'm one of you.' "'Your name.' "'Georges, slave of Alfred.' "They shook hands and embraced. "The next day the crowd clamored round a scaffold, from which hung the body of a young mulatto woman. . . . When she had expired, the executioner let her corpse down into a pine coffin and, ten minutes later, body and coffin were thrown into a ditch that was opened at the edge of the forest. "Thus this woman, for having been too virtuous, died the kind of death meted out to the vilest criminal. Would this alone not suffice to render the gentlest of men dangerous and bloodthirsty?" Section V "Three years had passed since the death of the virtuous Zelia. For a time, Alfred was in extreme torment; by day, he seemed to see a vengeful hand descending toward his head; he trembled at night because the darkness brought him hideous, frightful dreams. Soon, however, he banished from his thoughts both the painful memory of the martyr and the terrible threat Georges had made; he married and became a father. . . . Oh! how gratified he felt, when he was told that his prayers were answered, he who had humbly kissed the church floor each evening, beseeching the Virgin of Sorrows to grant him a son. "For Georges also, there was happiness in this child's arrival. For if he had hoped for three years without attempting to strike back at his wife's executioner; if he had lain sleepless so many nights, with fury in his heart and a hand on his dagger, it was because he was waiting for Alfred to find himself, like Georges, with a wife and a son. It was because he wished to kill him only when dear and precious bonds linked him to this world. . . . Georges had always maintained close ties with one of Alfred's slaves; indeed, he visited him each week; and that slave had never given Georges any news more important than that of the newborn's arrival. . . . He immediately set out for the house of his enemy. On his way he met a negress who was bringing a cup of broth to Madame Alfred; he stopped her, exchanged a few insignificant words, and went on. . . . After many difficulties, he managed to slip his way, like a snake, into Alfred's rooms; once there, hidden in the space between the bed and the wall, he awaited his master. . . . A moment later, Alfred entered the room, humming a tune; he opened his secretary and took out a superb jewel box, set with diamonds, that he had promised his wife, should she give him a son; but, filled with joy and happiness, he sat down and put his head between his hands, like a man who can't believe his unexpected good fortune. Then, on raising his head, he saw before him a kind of motionless shadow, with arms crossed on its breast and two burning eyes that possessed all the ferocity of a tiger preparing to tear its prey to pieces. Alfred made a motion to stand, but a powerful arm held him down in his chair. "'What do you want with me,' Alfred whispered, in a trembling voice. "'To compliment you on the birth of your child,' answered a voice that seemed to emerge from the tomb. "Alfred shook from head to toe, his hair stood on end, and a cold sweat poured over his limbs. "'I don't know you,' Alfred muttered weakly. . . . "'Georges is the name.' "'You. . . "'You thought I was dead, I suppose,' said the mulatto with a convulsive laugh. "'Help . . . help,' cried Alfred. "'Who will help you,' rejoined the mulatto . . . haven't you dismissed your servants, haven't you closed your doors, to be alone with your wife . . . so you see, your cries are useless . . . you should commend your soul to God.' "Alfred had begun to rise from his chair, but at these last words he fell back, pale and trembling. "'Oh! have pity, Georges ... don't kill me, not today.' "Georges shrugged his shoulders. 'Master, isn't it horrible to die when you're happy; to lie down in the grave at the moment you see your fondest dreams coming true . . . oh! it's horrible, isn't it,' said the mulatto with an infernal laugh. . . . "'Mercy, Georges. . . "'And yet,' he continued, 'such is your destiny . . . you shall die today, this hour, this minute, without giving your wife your last farewell. . . " 'Have pity . . . pity. . .' "'Without kissing your newborn son a second time. . . "'Oh! mercy . . . mercy.' "'I think my vengeance is worthy of your own . . . I would have sold my soul to the Devil, had he promised me this moment.' "'Oh! mercy . . . please take pity on me,' said Alfred, throwing himself at the feet of the mulatto. "Georges shrugged his shoulders and raised his axe. "'Oh! one more hour of life!' "'To embrace your wife, is that it?' "'One minute. . . .' "'To see your son again, right?' "'Oh! have pity. . . .' "'You might as well plead with the starving tiger to let go his prey.' "'In God's name, Georges.' "'I don't believe in that any longer.' "'In the name of your father. . . .' "At this, Georges's fury subsided. "'My father . . . my father,' repeated the mulatto, tears in his eyes. `Do you know him . . . oh! tell me his name. . . . What's his name . . . oh! tell me, tell me his name . . . I'll pardon you . . . I'll bless you.' "And the mulatto nearly fell on his knees before his master. But suddenly, sharp cries were heard. . . "'Good heavens ... that's my wife's voice,' cried Alfred, dashing toward the sounds. . . . "As if he were coming back to his senses, the mulatto remembered that he had come to the house of his master, not to learn the name of his father, but to settle accounts with him for his wife's blood. Holding Alfred back, he told him with a hideous grin: 'Hold on, master; it's nothing.' "'Jesus and Mary ... don't you hear her calling for help.' "'It's nothing, I tell you.' "'Let me go . . . let me go . . . it's my wife's voice.' "'No, it's the gasps of a dying woman.' "'Wretch, you're lying. . . .' "'I poisoned her. . . .' "'Oh!' "'Do you hear those cries . . . they're hers.' "'The Devil. . . .' "'Do you hear those screams . . . they're hers.' "'A curse. . . .' "During all this time, Alfred had been trying to shake free of the mulatto's grip; but he held him fast, tighter and tighter. As he did, his head rose higher, his heart beat fiercely, he steadied himself for his awful task. "'Alfred . . . help . . . water . . . I'm suffocating,' shouted a woman, as she threw herself into the middle of the room. She was pale and disheveled, her eyes were starting out of her head, her hair was in wild disarray. "'Alfred, Alfred . . . for heaven's sake, help me . . . some water . . . I need water . . . my blood is boiling . . . my heart is twitching . . . oh! water, water. . .' "Alfred struggled mightily to help her, but Georges held him fast with an iron hand. Laughing like one of the damned, he cried out: 'No, master . . . I'm afraid not . . . I want your wife to die ... right there. . . before your eyes . . . right in front of you . . . do you understand, master; right in front of you, asking you for water, for air, while you can do nothing to help her.' "'Damnation . . . may you be damned,' howled Alfred, as he struggled like a madman. "'You can curse and blaspheme all you want,' answered the mulatto . . . 'this is the way it's going to be. . .' "'Alfred,' the dying woman moaned again, 'good-bye . . . good-bye . I'm dying. . . "'Look well,' responded the mulatto, still laughing. . . . 'Look . . . she's gasping . . . goodness! a single drop of this water would restore her to life.' He showed him a small vial. "'My entire fortune for that drop of water. . . .' cried Alfred. "'Have you gone mad, master. . .' "'Ah! that water . . . that water . . . don't you see she's dying . . . give it to me . . . please give it to me. . .' "'Here . . .' and the mulatto flung the vial against the wall. "'Accursed,' screamed Alfred, seizing Georges by the neck. 'Oh! my entire life, my soul, for a dagger. . .' "Georges released Alfred's hands. "'Now that she's dead, it's your turn, master,' he said as he lifted his axe. "'Strike, executioner . . . strike . . . after poisoning her, you might as well kill your own fa—.' The ax fell, and Alfred's head rolled across the floor, but, as it rolled, the head distinctly pronounced the final syllable, '-ther . . . ' Georges at first believed he had misheard, but the word father, like a funeral knell, rang in his ears. To be certain, he opened the fateful pouch. . . . 'Ah!' he cried out, 'I'm cursed. . . .' An explosion was heard; and the next day, near the corpse of Alfred, was discovered the corpse of the unhappy Georges. . . ." 1837 BIBLIOGRAPHY- recommended resources Text Bonner, Thomas. "Victor Séjour (Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand)." In Afro-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Trudier Harris and Thadious M. Davis, 237–241. Detroit: Gale, 1986. (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 50) Brickhouse, Anna. Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter. New York: Penguin, 2003. (Originally published in 1853.) Chesnutt, Charles W. "The Goophered Grapevine." Charles W. Chesnutt: Selected Writing. Ed. SallyAnn H. Ferguson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001: 118–28. Daut, Marlene. "'Sons of White Fathers': Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in Victor Sejour's 'The Mulatto.'" Nineteenth-Century Literature 65, no. 1 (2010): 1–37. Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Dessens, Nathalie. From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. Fiehrer, Thomas Marc. "The African Presence in Colonial Louisiana: An Essay on the Continuity of Caribbean Culture." In Louisiana's Black Heritage, edited by Robert R. MacDonald, John R. Kemp, and Edward F. Haas. New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979: 3–31. Geggus, David Patrick. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Handley, George B. "A New World of Oblivion." In Look Away! The U. S. South in New World Studies, edited by Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: 25–51. Lowe, John Wharton. Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. O'Neill, Charles E. Séjour: Parisian Playwright from Louisiana. Lafayette, LA: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1995. Piacentino, Edward J. "Slavery through the White-Tinted Lens of an Embedded Black Narrator: Sejour's 'The Mulatto' and Chesnutt's 'Dave's Neckliss' as Intertexts." Southern Literary Journal 44, no. 1 (2011): 121–143. Séjour, Victor. "The Mulatto." Translated by Philip Barnard. In The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2nd Edition, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: Norton, 2004: 353–65. (Originally published as: "Le Mulâtre." La Revue des Colonies 3 (1837): 376–392.) Smith, Jon and Deborah Cohn. "Introduction: Uncanny Hybridities." In Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies, edited by John Smith and Deborah Cohn. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Spillers, Hortense J. "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book." Diacritics 17 no. 2 (1987): 64–81. Williams, Linda. Playing the Race Card: Melodramas in Black and White, From Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989 Web Bob Corbett. "The Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803: An Historical Essay in Four Parts." Webster University. http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/revolution1.htm. John R. Nemmers. A Guide to the Slavery and Plantations in Saint Domingue Collection. 2004. University of Florida Smathers Libraries. http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/stdomingue.htm. Haitian Immigration: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm?migration=5&bhcp=1. URL https://southernspaces.org/2007/seeds-rebellion-plantation-fiction-victor-sejours-mulatto/ Calendar URL https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/414-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour-two-versions-split-by-an-essay/

Weekly Anglo-African and The Pine and Palm Excerpts from 1861–1862 ARTICLE Content Weekly Anglo-African and The Pine and Palm (1861-1862) Spring 2018 – No. 4 Edited and introduced by Brigitte Fielder, Cassander Smith, and Derrick R. Spires Introduction Resolved, That we firmly, flatly, uncompromisingly oppose, condemn and denounce as unfair and unjust, as unwise and as unchristian, the fleeing, colonizing efforts urged by James Redpath, the white, seconded by George Lawrence, Jr., the black, who is employed by him. Resolved, That we do not deny the right of Mr. James Redpath and a Boston firm of white gentlemen to give eleven hundred dollars for the “Anglo-African,” and for Mr. Redpath to bind Mr. Thomas Hamilton, the late proprietor thereof, not to issue another paper for circulation among the colored people; but we do declare that he is not justified in the deceptive policy of placing at the head of the paper, like the figure-head of a ship, the name of George Lawrence, Jr., a colored man, although he has him in his employ; nor is he justified as a professed anti-slavery man, in closing the columns of the paper to a discussion of matters of public and general interest to the colored people, neither in making personal attacks upon individuals without permitting a reply. –The Christian Recorder, May 25, 1861 Image from The Weekly Anglo-African The Pine and Palm (1861-1862) is not a perfect example of a black newspaper, but rather a concentrated case study of all of the fault lines invoked in the terms “black press,” “black print culture,” and “black community.” In a way, the transition from the Weekly Anglo-African (1859-1861) to the Pine and Palm helped a contentious black print community (made up of newspapers, activists, readers, writers, and subscription agents) coalesce against a common enemy: James Redpath (1833-1891) and Haitian emigration. At the same time, this transition speaks to the precariousness of newspaper funding, as Thomas Hamilton (1823-1865) was forced to sell the Weekly Anglo-African to James Redpath, who then rebranded the Weekly for a new purpose. It speaks to the interracial and international character of the newspaper business more broadly and the importance of tracing financing. Hamilton, for instance sought funding for the Weekly Anglo-African from a wide range of sources: white abolitionist supporters such as John Jay, Jr, black activists such as James McCune Smith, selling books out of his offices, and borrowing against a life insurance policy he took out on himself for that purpose.[1] Throughout these efforts, no one questioned Hamilton’s status as the paper’s proprietor or the paper’s status as a black newspaper. As the resolution published in the Christian Recorder suggests, the Pine and Palm is more difficult to pin down. The Haitian government financed the paper, Redpath, a Scottish-American abolitionist, was its proprietor, George Lawrence, Jr., was (nominal) editor and wrote many of the editorials out of New York, and the paper was printed out of Boston in the same building that housed Garrison’s Liberator. Despite its funding and Lawrence’s editorial presence, however, black activists questioned its legitimacy as a black paper, from its first issues. Was Lawrence, as the resolution suggests, simply a figurehead for Redpath’s paper, a black presence to give his plan and position with Haiti legitimacy? Had Redpath duped the Haitian government into trusting him? Or, did Lawrence seize an opportunity to establish a paper that could speak to his own disaffection with the United States and interest in building a “negro nationality.” Or did Haitian President, Guillaume Fabre Nicolas Geffrard, simply find in Redpath a well-positioned vector into the U.S. print public? While these are all important questions, a closer look at the resolutions suggests a still another path focused less on who ran and financed the paper and more on how they ran it. The resolution invokes a ranging black public that saw in the Weekly Anglo-African an open space for debate, less a director of the public opinion and more a venue for “discussion[s] of matters of public and general interest to the colored people.” Staunch and vocal support from not just black individuals, but also black papers (Christian Recorder, Frederick Douglass’s Paper, and Provincial Freeman chief among them) speak to the importance they saw in the Weekly Anglo-African as a project not connected to a single individual or religious institution and their collective professional respect for Hamilton. The resolution suggests, and attempts to make real in the act of suggestion, that the Weekly Anglo-African had begun succeeding in doing something black activists had been attempting to do since the early days of the National Colored Convention Movement: create a unified black press that allowed black readers and writers of all stripes speak to and collective participate in creating a black print community. In this context, personal attacks were not an issue—the Weekly Anglo-African had published its fair share of them—instead, the committee took issue with the new editor’s not giving space for responses, as had been Hamilton’s practice. They wanted the paper to succeed as a space for open debate, and they saw the Redpath, Lawrence, and Pine and Palm as a threat to this ethos. Yet, the Pine and Palm also reminds us that these communities were not bound to, nor necessarily centered on, the United States. The Pine and Palm was as much a Haitian paper as it was an “African American” paper. Its critics rightly noted the paper’s emigrationist shift. Through visual images, historical accounts, and an array of correspondences and literature, the paper shifts attempts to create a print community of a different sort. The character of that community, as the pages we reproduce here suggest, was and remains up for debate. Lawrence, Redpath, and Haitian officials each had a slightly different vision of African Americans’ relation to Haiti and Haiti’s role in the Atlantic world even as they agreed on one point: a strong Haiti would be vital to toppling the slave power and white supremacy. The transition from Weekly Anglo-African to Pine and Palm, then, invites us to think about how black print communities envisioned themselves and the dynamics of responsibility and responsiveness—of ownership—they drew between themselves and black newspapers. The Weekly Anglo-African– Pine and Palm moment offers a play-by-play account of a seismic shift in African America that had ramifications for the broader print culture and for the way we read it. These periodicals don’t suggest a world of hope or impending civil war; we see instead a world deep in existential crisis. Writers seem aware that they are on a threshold, and they were attempting, collectively, to determine not only the flow of events, but also their next moves within that flow. Transition and Rebranding from the Weekly Anglo to the Pine and Palm Thomas Hamilton (1823-1865) founded the Weekly Anglo-African on July 23, 1859, out of his Beekman Street offices in New York as a weekly counterpart to the monthly Anglo-African Magazine, which had begun publication in January of that year. Hamilton described the Weekly as “a paper in which to give vent to our opinions and feelings, in which to compare notes with each other, in which to discuss the best plans to pursue, to sympathize if suffering come, to rejoice if victory come,” and his editorial practices reflected this sense of an open forum (December 15, 1860). The paper’s first year provided precisely that: an intense debate over the relation of “Anglo-Africans” to the United States, the ever-present mandate to end the enslavement, and the potential of political sovereignty in other lands. The debate featured a who’s who of black activism (James McCune Smith, Henry Highland Garnet, Lizzie Hart, Martin R. Delany, James W. C. Pennington, etc.) along with “Letters from the People” from across the country that challenged their leadership at every turn. The battle was as much over how to define a nation-state and who could participate in this process as over whether emigration was feasible and advisable. And it did, indeed, turn ugly. Though personally opposed to emigration, however, Hamilton restrained himself (and the paper) from siding with one group or the other. The effect was a sense of a vibrant (or acrimonious), geographically diverse, black American intellectual community. Under Hamilton’s editorship, then, the paper provided a virtual (and circulating) communal hub if not a home even as its contributors debated about how a political and, as importantly, cultural, home might look. Even as the debate around emigration suggested an existential crisis the paper’s cultural production catalogued regenerative creativity and ongoing literary cultural histories. The paper gave space to reports from literary societies such as the Banneker Institute of Philadelphia and literature, including the full run of William Wells Brown’s novel, Miralda, his first serialized revision of Clotel. Indeed, Hamilton’s muted editorial voice made the Weekly Anglo-African a unique space that cultivated critical debate and a robust black expressive culture. The paper reveals a print community frantically searching for answers, but also a community defining itself through the contentiousness, not despite it. Hamilton was well-suited for this task. As he noted in his January 1859 introduction for the Anglo-African Magazine: he had been “‘brought up’ among Newspapers, Magazines, &c.,” and, as a result, “he understands the business thoroughly.” His father, William (1773-1836), had been a fixture in New York black politics and the early National Colored Convention movement in the 1820s and 1830s. The Hamilton household was a hub of activist activity, and Thomas and his brother Robert, followed closely in their father’s footsteps. Both were students in New York’s Free African School. Thomas began a career the newspaper business as early as 1837, when he began working for the Colored American. His first paper, The People’s Press, began publication in 1841. This background may have given Hamilton a degree of credibility as a professional editor among his peers that even Frederick Douglass couldn’t rival. The Anglo-African Magazine demonstrates the amount of cultural capital he had amassed by 1859. The magazine burst at the seams with a who’s-who of black cultural production: Frances Harper (including her first short story, “The Two Offers”), Martin Delany (including installments of Blake), Sarah M. Douglass, James McCune Smith, William J. Wilson, James T. Holly, and the list goes on. Yet, like many nineteenth-century newspapers publishers, Thomas and Robert struggled to keep the publications viable. In Thomas’s case, ill-health compounded the financial struggles. As a result, the magazine ceased publication three issues into its second volume, and Hamilton was forced to sell the Weekly Anglo-African to James Redpath. As Benjamin Fagan documents, he did so with the understanding that Redpath would maintain the paper’s impartial character, and Hamilton would not start a rival paper. The transition from Weekly Anglo-African to Pine and Palm, and from impartial venue to emigrationist organ, began in the March 16, 1861 issue of the Weekly Anglo-African, when George Lawrence, Jr., an African American newspaperman, announced his taking over editorial and managerial duties for the paper. Like the Hamiltons, George Lawrence was part of the second generation of black activism in New York. His father, George, Sr., had been a trustee of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church and was active in New York activists circles, including the state convention movement. There are also early print connections between Lawrence and Hamilton. Among George, Jr.’s, early publications is the poem, “Lines to Cinque,” which appeared in the February 11, 1842 issue of The Liberator. The poem praised Joseph Cinque, the leader of the 1839 Amistad uprising and first appeared in Hamilton’s The People’s Press. By 1861, he had become the New York agent for the Bureau of Haitian Emigration. Lawrence’s first editorial for the Weekly Anglo-African declared that he would not continue Hamilton’s “rather ominous silence” and would instead “define our position on every question that arises in which the welfare of our people is involved” (March 23, 1861). Over the next few issues, the paper’s content shifted from a debate format to a more overtly polemical tone as correspondences and letters gave way to reprinted speeches on Haiti, James Redpath’s reports on the Haitian economy and politics, and increasingly strident denunciations of the United States as an irredeemable nation. The April 13, 1861 issue (appearing a day after the attack on Fort Sumter) featured an article calling for volunteers, not for the Union effort, but rather for emigration: We require a government that can not only catch slave-dealers and slaveholders, but will hang them so surely as they are caught.… We can make of Hayti the nucleus of a power that shall be to the black, what England has been to the white races, the hope of progress and the guarantee of permanent civilization…. From that centre let but the fire of Freedom radiate until it shall enkindle, in the whole of that vast area, the sacred flame of liberty upon the altar of every black man’s heart, and you effect at once the abolition of slavery and the regeneration of our race. Here, as elsewhere, we can also see the complicated relationship between Lawrence, would be African American emigrants, and Haiti. Lawrence frames the venture as founding a new republic and generates a mythical, but attainable utopian landscape for African American appropriation. This approach was likely a great recruitment pitch to African Americans, but it also removes Haiti from its own history. By April 27th of that year, Lawrence’s editorials (reproduced here) began appearing under a U.S. flag with the ribbon, “Emancipation or Extermination.” In the first, he argued: “the American flag is our flag; for we are Americans,” but, he continued, the creed behind the flag is so vile that “Withered forever be the hand, and paralyzed the arm of the colored American who lifts up either in support of the Federal Flag.” The next week, Lawrence announced that the paper was financially solvent (but did not mention Redpath’s purchase) and in the next sentence, renounced the name Anglo-African, for, “An Anglo-African is an Englishman of African decent, not a colored American at all.” (Lawrence was not the first to make a quip about the term; it had been a running joke of sorts in the Anglo-African Magazine since 1859.) Finally, on May 11th, Lawrence announced the paper’s new name: The Pine and Palm, which would appear the next week with a “supplement containing Wendell Phillips’ oration on Toussaint L’Ouverture.” What we have here is a prolonged rebranding effort, as Lawrence found his voice as an editor (however briefly), and as he paved the way for the transition to James Redpath and full-throated advocacy for Haitian emigration. But even this shift is complicated. As McKivigan has noted, Redpath either dictated or strongly influenced at least some of Lawrence’s editorial work.[2] At the same time, Lawrence clearly supported Haitian emigration, and the ideas articulated in these early editorials differ tonally from those printed in the Pine and Palm, raising questions about the extent to which Lawrence was negotiating between his own vision and Redpath’s. Nevertheless, the shift, while appearing calculated in hindsight, must have appeared an abrupt betrayal of trust from the perspective of the Weekly Anglo-African’s readers. Masthead of The Pine and Palm When the paper appeared under its new masthead it listed Redpath, Lawrence, and Richard J. Hinton (British immigrant and Redpath associate) as its editors.[3] Redpath had already appeared in the columns of the Weekly Anglo-African as an advocate of Haitian emigration. Beyond that, readers might have recognized him as the “roving editor” for the National Anti-Slavery Standard, writing of his travels in the slave states under the pseudonym, John Ball, Jr., and he wrote for a wide range of newspapers across the 1850s, including features on John Brown and the Kansas-Nebraska crisis. After Harper’s Ferry, Redpath published The Life of Captain John Brown (1860), which Hamilton sold out of his New York offices, and Echoes of Harper’s Ferry (1860), an edited collection praising Brown that included a letter from Frances Harper to Brown’s wife.[4] Redpath made several extended trips to Haiti during this time, and by 1860, he had been named Commissioner for Haitian Emigration from the United States and Canada. Once Redpath took the helm officially, he moved the paper’s printing operations from New York to Boston, occupying the same 221 Washington Street offices that printed the Liberator.[5] The move likely leveraged Redpath’s connections to Garrison and the Liberator, but also would have given him more control over the final product. Under Redpath’s ownership, the Pine and Palm’s primary purpose was recruitment for the Haitian Immigration Bureau, but Redpath had much broader plans for the paper and the hemisphere. In his first editorial, Redpath laid out his vision for a “Cosmopolitan Government of the Future.” He weaves a familiar narrative of the redeemer or “chosen” (to borrow Benjamin Fagan’s term) empire into a utopian telos, not ending with the return of a Messianic Savior, but rather with “the Cosmopolitan Government of the Future”: Yet we will not forget that, while the creation of a great Negro Commonwealth in the Antilles is necessary for the elevation of the African race here, and while the formation, also, of free tropical Confederacies is indispensable for the arraying of the physical forces of freedom against physical slavery, there is a higher possibility for humanity still—to which the world is tending, which America must inaugurate—the Cosmopolitan Government of the Future, which, superseding Nationalities and rendering war unnecessary, shall establish and secure forever, the ‘reign of peace on earth and good will to men.’” The paper symbolized this hemispheric union, the connections between the “Pines” of North America and the “Palms” of the Antilles. The first issue featured an engraving of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the next of General Joseph Lamothe, Secretary of State of the General Police of Hayti (included here). Subsequent issues carried images of Haitian currency and biographical sketches by William Wells Brown of “Celebrated Colored Americans,” such as Madison Washington, who led a rebellion aboard the ship Creole in 1841. And throughout, the paper reprinted debates in Congress over recognition of Hayti and Liberia as sovereign states. Taken as a whole, the paper continued the Anglo-African’s dedication to probing configurations of empire and the nation-state in terms of how variously configured black empires could dismantle the slave power, but the Pine and Palm unmoored this project from U.S. soil. Haiti would provide the basis for a hemispheric revolution that would not only result in immediate emancipation, but would also change the nature of government and politics in the hemisphere as a whole. Neither the Pine and Palm nor its vision of emigration to Haiti lasted long, however. Most of the roughly 1600 African Americans who were part of the initial wave of immigrants returned, because of a combination of under-preparedness, political instability, and the changing scene at home. The start of the Civil War changed the landscape. Douglass, who had intended to visit Haiti to ascertain the viability of emigration, disavowed the movement. The War saw even the staunchest black supporters of emigration (Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary among them) advocating for black enlistment and making sure the nation understood that the Civil War would be a war to free enslaved people, whether the North and South wanted it to be or not. On the Haitian front, questions of corruption and fraud swirled continuously around Redpath until he resigned as Emigration Commissioner and closed the Pine and Palm on September 4, 1862. Geffrard’s regime had never been as stable as Redpath and Lawrence’s writing suggested. He faced several conflicts in the decade, until he was finally overthrown in 1867. At the same time, a revived Anglo-African returned with a vengeance. Thomas and Robert Hamilton saw Redpath’s sharp turn to emigration as a breach of their original agreement. They brought the Anglo-African back in July 1861 with funding from James McCune Smith, Martin R. Delany, and others. The new paper joined Frederick Douglass’s Paper and the Provincial Freeman in levelling a full-throated assault on Redpath and emigration. Hamilton founded the Weekly Anglo-African as a black paper, run by black Americans for black Americans. Lawrence and Redpath produced a black paper, owned by a white agent, and financed by the Haitian government. Its articles and iconography centered Haiti, not the United States; its sense of citizenship was based in region, not a nation-state as such. Beyond the facts of publication, however, the swirl of events and writing surrounding the Weekly Anglo-African and Pine and Palm provide fruitful questions for the study of black periodicals, African American emigration movements, and black politics around the Civil War. Emigration Movements in African American Politics and Culture In its transition and rebranding, The Pine and Palm took up as one of its quintessential concerns black American emigration, but this was not the first time African Americans had taken up emigration in general or emigration to Haiti in particular. By 1861 there had been several African American emigration movements. One of the earliest occurred in the wake of the American Revolutionary War and was spearheaded by English abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. After the war, England experienced a migratory influx of formerly enslaved black Americans, those loyalists who had fought on the side of the British and had been promised their freedom for doing so. Many of those new immigrants struggled to find work. They turned up homeless and destitute on the streets of London in the 1780s. Among the proposals bandied about by English philanthropists was the idea of creating a colony on the coast of what is today Sierra Leone where the population they termed the “Black Poor” could start over with land and opportunity. Canada also experienced an influx of black Americans. Again, after the Revolutionary War, some black Loyalists opted to relocate to Nova Scotia, where they experienced similar hardships as their counterparts in London. In the 1790s, many of them made their way to Sierra Leone. By the mid-19th century, the British had succeeded in constructing a viable space for black Americans to relocate – and extend their imperial reach. In 1816, in the United States, the American Colonization Society (ACS) formed. Although the members of the organization had widely different reasons for supporting black emigration (some racist in nature), they eyed Sierra Leone as a potential space for relocating free-born and newly manumitted black Americans. Despite protests from some free-born black Americans, Paul Cuffee, the famed mixed-race Quaker and sea merchant, transported nearly 40 black American emigrants to Sierra Leone in 1816 with the intention of transporting more in subsequent years.[6] Ultimately, the ACS in 1822 chose to create its own colonies south of Sierra Leone that would become the independent country of Liberia 25 years later. Throughout the early nineteenth century many black activists who had contemplated emigration previous to the founding of the ACS, including Richard Allen, vehemently protested emigration afterward, because the ACS premised emigration on the assumption that African descended people were inferior to and incompatible with the burgeoning white republic. David Walker famously dissected this logic in his 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, and the first Colored Conventions of the 1830s took the ACS as one of their primary targets. Nevertheless, Alexander Crummell, Mary Shadd Cary, and others found emigration to Liberia, Canada, and elsewhere a more promising alternative to hoping that the United States would abolish slavery. The passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act accelerated emigration to Canada, and by the mid 1850s, both Martin R. Delany and Henry Highland Garnet had become vocal advocates of emigration even as they vehemently repudiated the ACS’s racist assumptions. Delany organized a National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, OH, in 1854 and led an expedition into Central Africa, while Garnet explored Jamaica as a potential new home before founding the African Civilization Society in 1858. Though its acronym was unfortunate, the African Civilization Society advocated for both emigration to and missionary work in Africa. In contrast to emigration movements in Canada and West Africa, the advertisements, editorials, short stories, and circulars that filled the pages of The Pine and Palm focused almost exclusively on Haiti.[7] By 1861, Haiti had been an independent, majority-black nation for more than half a century, the first in the Western hemisphere. For those advocating emigration, Haiti was an ideal location for a number of reasons. Among them was its proximity to the United States. Black Americans would not have to travel far. Proponents also touted its natural resources. In their opening statement about the emigration question, The Pine and Palm editors describe Haiti as “the most fertile island in the New World” (2). They go on to call it a “natural paradise,” that needs only labor to “develop its exhaustless resources” (2). In a sense, they resurrected the rhetoric of New World “discovery” initiated by the likes of Christopher Columbus. Haiti, comprising half of the island that Columbus named Hispaniola (which also includes the Dominican Republic), was among the very first of those lands Columbus encountered and claimed on behalf of Spain in 1492. In his diary, Columbus describes Hispaniola as filled with “lofty and beautiful mountains, large cultivated tracts, woods, fertile fields, and every thing adapted to the purposes of agriculture.”[8] Although Columbus imagined Hispaniola as a glittering jewel for Spain, the French actually capitalized on the region’s natural resources after usurping control in 1660. Over the course of more than two centuries, Haiti was the most lucrative of France’s American colonies, with extensive slave plantations that produced sugar, coffee, and cotton. The revolution that ended French domination of the island began in 1791 and concluded in 1804 with the emergence of the Republic of Haiti. For many onlookers, especially those black Africans scattered throughout the African Diaspora, the Haitian Revolution symbolized the potential for black African liberation, especially in the Western hemisphere. Haiti was a mother-country, the Queen of the Antilles beckoning her black children unto her liberatory bosom. In Haiti, black populations could enjoy in equal measure fertile land and liberty. “The Coins of Hayti” from The Pine and Palm Haitian emigration, though, was more than a call for a black nationalism. For some proponents, like Redpath and Lawrence, a successful all-black self-governing nation was a means – not an end unto itself – to dismantle racism and enslavement. For Redpath, the success of an independent Haiti would combat notions about the inferiority of black Africans and illustrate their intellectual, rational capacities. Europe and the United States would see this, he rationalized, and accept black Africans as racial equals. Beyond that, as Lawrence rationalized, Haiti’s economic influence could undercut the dominance of the U.S. cotton industry. To entice black Americans to move to Haiti, in 1859 the Haitian government, with the support of agents (Redpath and Lawrence among them) and other advocates in the United States, provided a number of incentives. For example, they offered farmers and skilled workers deferred fares for their ship passage. If they stayed in Haiti for a minimum of three years and lived without government subsidies, their passage was free. Even the unskilled could get assistance with passage fare and their “first necessities” upon arrival in Haiti. Would-be emigrants were offered allotments of land and assistance with housing. All were promised paths to citizenship, or naturalization, within one year (16). Of course, the question of emigration to Haiti did not begin with The Pine and Palm. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, black Americans contemplated and/or enacted emigration plans, especially in the 1820s when Haiti was under the rule of Jean-Pierre Boyer, who was president of Haiti from 1818 to 1843.[9] Two years after the Revolution ended and as a result of the assassination of the infant country’s first ruler, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti split into halves with the Kingdom of Haiti in the north and the Republic, or State, of Haiti in the south, led by King Henri (Christophe) I and President Alexandre Pétion, respectively. Upon the deaths of these leaders, both of whom had been key figures in the Revolution, Boyer assumed power and unified the country under one rule in 1821.[10] As president, he welcomed the immigration of black Americans to Haiti. In 1824, he collaborated with the American Colonization Society to transport some 6,000 black Americans, most of them free-born, to Haiti. The plan met with mixed success as many of those who migrated chose to return to the United States in a matter of years. They did so for a number of reasons, which included economic instability in Haiti and the fact that many black Americans identified with the United States and ultimately gravitated back toward their native homes. These same reasons made emigration a debatable point, rather than a foregone conclusion, in the pages of The Pine and Palm in 1861. Black Heroism and Haiti in the Pine and Palm With its emigrationist orientation, The Pine and Palm sought to keep its readers abreast of the current efforts of the Haytian Bureau of Emigration, sanctioned by President Guillaume Fabre Nicolas Geffrard and headed by Redpath. We can see that Redpath, himself, continued to have a prominent voice in the pages of the newspaper. Circulars of the Emigration Bureau and Laws on emigration and naturalization appear in our selections here, as well as a call for emigration penned by Haiti’s Secretary of State of Justice, François-Élie Dubois. Frederick Douglass’s proposed trip to Haiti was significant and Douglass’ prominence as a black intellectual makes his appearance in The Pine and Palm unsurprising. As The Pine and Palm celebrated Haiti, it also highlighted the nation’s revolutionary history and its founding. In a context in which black accomplishment was seldom celebrated, documented, or taught by mainstream white educators, nineteenth-century African American writers were foundational authors of early black history. Biographies of famous black people appeared throughout the black press, and Toussaint L’Ouverture was a popularly-featured icon. William Wells Brown’s 1863 The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievement and 1867 The Negro in the American Rebellion are examples of early black histories detailing “Celebrated Colored Americans.” Before then, his sketches of L’Ouverture and Madison Washington appeared in the Pine and Palm. Both entries, when contextualized in the Pine and Palm, connect Haiti and emigration to Haiti to a long black revolutionary tradition. As with the need for written histories, the need for other kinds of black representation was evident in a landscape in which black people more often appeared in white-created derogatory representations that caricatured black people. Educator and activist William J. Wilson imagined a gallery of black-created art in the “Afric-American Picture Gallery,” a series published in seven installments in the Anglo-African Magazine in 1859.[11] Wilson’s imagine gallery included busts of famous black leaders, including L’Ouverture. Also responding to this need for a non-derogatory “picture gallery” of black people, the portraits that appeared on the front pages of The Pine and Palm for May 18 and 25 and June 15, 1861 offer visual representations of prominent black military and political icons, a new set of “founding fathers.” The editors called the first of these, a portrait of Toussaint L’Ouverture, “the only correct likeness of him ever published in America.” This image was taken from an engraving Redpath may have gathered during his time in the country.[12] Other images reproduced in the selections here included Geffrard and General Joseph Lamothe. In addition to Haitian dignitaries, the front page of the June 8, 1861 issue also provided images of Haitian currency. These images and narratives, then, were both edificatory and educational: raising a black nationalist consciousness even as it educated readers on Haitian history and governance and economics. Poetry and Fiction: The Literary “Parlor” and Literature in the Black Press In addition to their political and historical importance, the Weekly Anglo-African and Pine and Palm offer case studies for thinking about the centrality of periodicals to the production and dissemination of literature. Nineteenth-century newspapers often contained a variety of genres, from news stories, essays, and editorials, to brief histories, biographical sketches, and advice columns, to short stories, serialized novels, and poetry. Newspapers published well-known and celebrated authors’ work as well as pieces that appeared under pseudonyms and sometimes anonymously. Periodicals of the era also practiced what Meredith McGill has called a “culture of reprinting,” widely circulating texts beyond their original venues, sometimes with and sometimes without attributing their original sources.[13] Occasionally, a piece’s first publication would be noted by a phrase such as “Written for The Pine and Palm.” Such is the case with Harper’s “Household Words” and Brown’s sketch of Madison Washington. Like other nineteenth-century U.S. periodicals, African American periodicals of the era published a breadth of genres and participated in the culture of reprinting texts from other publications. Black newspapers, including the Pine and Palm and Weekly Anglo-African, also sometimes reprinted white-authored texts, offering interesting recontextualizations of these when considered in the context of African American print culture.[14] Still, early African American newspapers like the Weekly Anglo-African and The Pine and Palm were dedicated to highlighting the work of black writers. Authors such as William Wells Brown and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper would have been well-known to readers of the black press at this time. The literature that appeared in the Weekly Anglo-African and The Pine and Palm represents some of the most important African American literature of the nineteenth century. In part due to its short form and the ease of including it in the pages of a newspaper, poetry appeared regularly in early African American newspapers and in nineteenth-century newspapers, more generally. While many poems were published anonymously, others included the by-lines of well-known poets.[15] Harper was the best known African American poet of the century. Her work was widely circulated in the black press and elsewhere. Longer-form literature like novels also frequently appeared, in serialized form. Not all novels that were serialized in nineteenth-century newspapers were subsequently published in monograph book form. Some serialized novels appeared as monographs only much later, as such work was “recovered” or “rediscovered” by later readers, sometimes by academics who produced scholarly editions of such texts for classroom teaching in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Because well-funded libraries and archives that collected newspapers were usually white-run and collectors did not value black newspapers in the same ways that they valued white publications, there are not complete archived runs of many nineteenth-century African American newspapers, including the Christian Recorder, the Weekly Anglo-African, and The Pine and Palm. As a result, some novels that were published in serialized form (like Frances Harper’s novels published in the Christian Recorder) are missing chapters that appeared in the issues we no longer have. This is the case for Martin Delany’s novel, Blake, or the Huts of America, which was serialized in the Anglo-African Magazine in 1859 and the revived Anglo-African between 1861 and 1862 and was not published in book form until 1970. William Wells Brown’s novel, Miralda; or, the Beautiful Quadroon, was serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African from December 15, 1860, to March 16, 1861. Miralda was a revision of Brown’s 1853 novel, Clotel; or the President’s Daughter, which he also revised in two other monograph editions, published in 1864 and 1867.[16] At the time of this writing, Miralda still does not exist in monograph form. Periodicals also provide a wealth of writing by women and children’s literature for which we have yet to fully account. Many nineteenth-century newspapers included “Parlor” or “Women’s Corner” sections, with content specifically aimed at women readers. Such sections might include advice columns, religious writing, fiction, poetry, news stories, discussions of domestic concerns, or writing intended for children. The call, by women, for such a section to be created in The Pine and Palm is therefore fitting with other newspapers’ practices of the time. Selections provided here include such calls from women writing in to The Pine and Palm, and they invite us to think about the ways women framed and organized themselves in print communities. Women-authored contributions, however, were not simply relegated to “women’s” or “parlor” portions of the paper, however, even in newspapers that designated such sections. As a single copy of the newspaper would be shared by several members of a household or even across households, reading practices most definitely resulted in readers’ consumption of various content even from sections of the paper not explicitly intended or framed for them based on assumptions about gender or age. * * * The histories of the first iteration of the Weekly Anglo-African and the Pine and Palm remind us that newspaper publication was (and continues to be) a messy business, and we need not smooth out that messiness. Rather than reconcile these tensions—in editorship, mission, financing, politics, articulations of blackness, etc.—the selections we offer here invite us to probe them for what they can teach us about an intensely active and highly collaborative black print public. Further Reading On African Americans and Emigration Movements Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock and Michael J. Drexler, eds. The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Dixon, Chris. African America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. Durrance, Ashley; Hannah Harkins; Nicholas Palombo; Leslie Rewis; Melanie Berry; Christy Hutcheson; Eli Jones; and Morgan Shaffer; Curators. “To Stay or Go: The National Emigration Convention of 1854.” Taught by Benjamin Fagan. Edited by Samantha Q. de Vera, Simone Austin, and Sarah Patterson. Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life. Fall 2016. http://coloredconventions.org/exhibits/show/conventions-black-press. Fanning, Sara. Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2015. McKivigan, John. Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America. Cornell University Press, 2008. Power-Greene, Ousmane K. Against the Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle Against the Colonization Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2014. On Haiti, the Haitian Revolution, and Early African American Literature Bernier, Celeste-Marie. Characters of Blood: Black Heroism In The Transatlantic Imagination. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Clavin, Matthew J. Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010. Daut, Marlene Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015. Dayan, Colin (Joan). Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. —. A Colony Of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation In The French Caribbean, 1787-1804. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2004. Foster, Frances Smith. “How do you Solve a Problem Like ‘Theresa?’” African American Review 40.4 (Winter 2006): 631-645. Levine, Robert S. Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Nwankwo, Ifeoma. Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. On the Weekly Anglo-African, the Hamilton Brothers, and Early African American Periodicals Bacon, Jacqueline. Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Bullock, Penelope L. The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838-1909. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Capshaw, Katharine and Anna Mae Duane, eds. Who Writes for Black Children? African American Children’s Literature before 1900. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Chiles, Katy. “Within and without the Raced Nation: Intratextuality, Martin Delany, and Blake; or the Huts of America.” American Literature 80 no. 2 (2008): 323-352. Clifton, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Ernest, John. Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Gardner, Eric. Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. —. Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Jackson, Debra. “A Black Journalist in Civil War Virginia: Robert Hamilton and the ‘Anglo- African.’”Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 116.1 (2008): 42–72. —. “‘A Cultural Stronghold’: The Anglo-African Newspaper and the Black Community of New York.” New York History 85.4 (Fall 2004): 331-357. Penn, I. Garland. The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer Company, Publishers, 1891. Pride, Amistead S. and Clint C. Wilson. A History of the Black Press. Washington, DC: Howard Univ Press, 1987. Soderberg, Laura. “One More Time with Feeling: Repetition, Reparation, and the Sentimental Subject in William Wells Brown’s Rewritings of Clotel,”American Literature 88.2 (June 2016): 241-267. Tripp, Bernell E. “Like Father, Like Son: The Antislavery Legacy of William Hamilton,” Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press. Edited by David B. Sachsman et. Al. Purdue University press, 2009: 97-106. Wilson, Ivy G. “The Brief Wondrous Life of the Anglo- African Magazine: Or, Antebellum African American Editorial Practice and Its Afterlives.” Publishing Blackness: Textual Constructions of Race since 1850. Eds. George Hutchinson and John K. Young. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013: 18–38. Bullock, Penelope L. The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838–1909. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Fagan, Benjamin. The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016. Primary Sources American Society of Free Persons of Colour (1830: Philadelphia, PA), “Constitution of the American Society of Free Persons of Colour, for improving their condition in the United States; for purchasing lands; and for the establishment of a settlement in upper Canada, also, The Proceedings of the Convention with their Address to Free Persons of Colour in the United States,” ColoredConventions.org, accessed April 4, 2018, http://coloredconventions.org/items/show/70. Brown, William Wells. 1863. The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. New York: Thomas Hamilton. Documenting the American South. Chapel Hill: University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownww/brown.html. Delany, Martin R. Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People in the United States Politically Considered. Philadelphia: King and Laird, 1852. National Emigration Convention of Colored People (1854: Cleveland, OH), “Proceedings of the National Emigration Convention of Colored People Held at Cleveland, Ohio, On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, The 24th, 25th, and 26th of August, 1854,” ColoredConventions.org, accessed May 24, 2018, http://coloredconventions.org/items/show/314. Redpath, James. A Guide to Hayti. Boston: Haytian Bureau of Emigration, 1861. —. The Roving Editor, Or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States[1859], ed. John R. McKivigan. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. “To Emigrate or Remain at Home? 1773-1833” in Early Negro Writing, 1760-1837, edited by Dorothy Porter, 249-307. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1995. [1] See Thomas Hamilton to John Jay, 27 May 1859, Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. C. Peter Ripley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 26-27; and Fagan, Black Newspaper, 122-125. [2] McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 69. [3] This triumvirate might be deceptive in its representation of a collaborative relationship, though. John McKivigan’s biography of Redpath suggests that Redpath was dictatorial in approach to his correspondents—an apparent polar opposite to Hamilton. His biography is the best source of information on Redpath. See McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 69-82. [4] Redpath’s publisher was Thayer and Eldridge, who also published the 1860/61 edition of Leaves of Grass. [5] George T. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison’s brother, likely printed both papers. [6] Cuffee died a year later. The ACS, while it managed to convince several thousand black Africans to migrate to Liberia over a 20-year period, failed ultimately to effect its mass colonization plan. Many African Americans were skeptical and cynical about black emigration and colonization, among them the abolitionist-writer David Walker and, later, Frederick Douglass. [7] This makes sense because, as mentioned earlier, the newspaper was an outlet for the Haitian Emigration Bureau. [8] See Columbus’s Personal Narrative of the First voyage of Columbus to America. (Boston: Thomas B. Wait and Son, 1827), 243. [9] As one example, when the former slave and merchant Denmark Vesey plotted a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822, the plot included the mass emigration of the city’s black population to Haiti. Vesey assumed the country would welcome them as refugees. The revolt failed and Vesey was executed. [10] For a brief period, beginning in 1822, he unified all of Hispaniola, including present-day Dominican Republic. [11] Ethiop (William J. Wilson), “Afric-American Picture Gallery,” Just Teach One: Early African American Print no. 2 (Fall 2015), edited and introduced by Leif Eckstrom and Britt Rusert. [12] Matthew J. Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution, (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010), 46. [13] See Meredith McGill. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-53. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). [14] Eric Gardner examines this phenomenon with relation to material reprinted in the “children” and “family” sections of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s weekly newspaper, the Christian Recorder. See Eric Gardner, “Children’s Literature in the Christian Recorder: An Initial Comparative Bibliography for May 1862 and April 1873” in Who Writes for Black Children: African American Children’s Literature before 1900. Ed. Katharine Capshaw and Anna Mae Duane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 225-245. [15] On poetry in nineteenth-century American newspapers, see Ryan Cordell and Abby Mullen, ““Fugitive Verses”: The Circulation of Poems in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism, vol. 27 no. 1 (2017): 29-52. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/652267. [16] For a comparison of these editions, see Samantha Marie Sommers, “A Tangled Text: William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853, 1860, 1864, 1867).” Undergraduate Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2009 and Clotel: An Electronic Scholarly Edition, Ed. Christopher Mulvey, (University of Virginia Press, 2006.) URL https://jtoaa.americanantiquarian.org/welcome-to-just-teach-one-african-american/weekly-anglo-african-and-the-pine-and-palm/ Referral https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/collections/commonwealth:5712sv871 PDF VERSION PUBLIC VERSION IN CASE URL FAILS BELOW https://1drv.ms/b/c/ea9004809c2729bb/ERiMnpkOy3NAjaToX84CZl0BxAX4Q2WT6fXbpN4AgOD0zQ?e=YPp8TV URL https://jtoaa.americanantiquarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Weekly-Anglo-African-and-Pine-and-Palm-for-JTO-EAAP.pdf CITATIONS Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/sn87055554/ Virginia Historical Society https://web.archive.org/web/20130501152449/http://vahistorical.org/publications/abstract_jackson.htm Blake; or The Huts of America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley, the Southern United States, and Cuba is a two part novel by Martin Delany, The first was published in 1859 by The Anglo-African , and the second part was published in 1861-62 by the Weekly Anglo-African Magazine [ publication from 1859 to December 1865, the anglo african was the first name of the publication, the weekly anglo african magazine was the second name and a magazine called the "pine and the palm" was added] The May 1862 issue is missing so it is incomplete The parts known with additions from other authors https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088726 Blake; or, The Huts of America, By Martin R. Delany (1859-1862; rpt. ed. Floyd J. Miller [Boston: Beacon Press, 1970]). PART ONE Content CHAPTER 1 The Project On one of those exciting occasions during a contest for the presidency of the United States, a number of gentlemen met in the city of Baltimore. They were few in number, and appeared little concerned about the affairs of the general government. Though men of intelligence, their time and attention appeared to be entirely absorbed in an adventure of self-interest. They met for the purpose of completing arrangements for refitting the old ship “Merchantman,” which then lay in the harbor near Fell's Point. Colonel Stephen Franks, Major James Armsted, Captain Richard Paul, and Captain George Royer composed those who represented the American side—Captain Juan Garcia and Captain Jose Castello, those of Cuban interest. Here a conversation ensued upon what seemed a point of vital importance to the company; it related to the place best suited for the completion of their arrangements. The Americans insisted on Baltimore as affording the greatest facilities, and having done more for the encouragement and protection of the trade than any other known place, whilst the Cubans, on the other side, urged their objections on the ground that the continual increase of liberal principles in the various political parties, which were fast ushering into existence, made the objection beyond a controversy. Havana was contended for as a point best suited for adjusting their arrangements, and that too with many apparent reasons; but for some cause, the preference for Baltimore prevailed. Subsequently to the adjustment of their affairs by the most complete arrangement for refitting the vessel, Colonel Franks took leave of the party for his home in the distant state of Mississippi. CHAPTER 2 Colonel Franks at Home On the return of Colonel Stephen Franks to his home at Natchez, he met there Mrs. Arabella, the wife of Judge Ballard, an eminent jurist of one of the Northern States. She had arrived but a day before him, on a visit to some relatives, of whom Mrs. Franks was one. The conversation, as is customary on the meeting of Americans residing in such distant latitudes, readily turned on the general policy of the country. Mrs. Ballard possessed the highest intelligence, and Mrs. Maria Franks was among the most accomplished of Southern ladies. “Tell me, Madam Ballard, how will the North go in the present issue?” enquired Franks. “Give yourself no concern about that, Colonel,” replied Mrs. Ballard, “you will find the North true to the country.” “What you consider true, may be false—that is, it might be true to you, and false to us,” continued he. “You do not understand me, Colonel,” she rejoined, “we can have no interests separate from yours; you know the time-honored motto, 'united we stand,' and so forth, must apply to the American people under every policy in every section of the Union.” “So it should, but amidst the general clamor in the contest for ascendancy, may you not lose sight of this important point?” “How can we? You, I'm sure, Colonel, know very well that in our country commercial interests have taken precedence of all others, which is a sufficient guarantee of our fidelity to the South.” “That may be, madam, but we are still apprehensive.” “Well, sir, we certainly do not know what more to do to give you assurance of our sincerity. We have as a plight of faith yielded Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—the intelligence and wealth of the North—in carrying out the Compromise measures for the interests of the South; can we do more?” “True, Madam Ballard, true! I yield the controversy. You have already done more than we of the South expected. I now remember that the Judge himself tried the first case under the Act, in your city, by which the measures were tested.” 5 “He did, sir, and if you will not consider me unwomanly by telling you, desired me, on coming here, to seek every opportunity to give the fullest assurance that the judiciary are sound on that question. Indeed, so far as an individual might be concerned, his interests in another direction—as you know—place him beyond suspicion,” concluded Mrs. Ballard. “I am satisfied, madam, and by your permission, arrest the conversation. My acknowledgements, madam!” bowed the Colonel, with true Southern courtesy. “Maria, my dear, you look careworn; are you indisposed?” inquired Franks of his wife, who during conversation sat silent. “Not physically, Colonel,” replied she, “but——” Just at this moment a servant, throwing open the door, announced dinner. Besides a sprightly black boy of some ten years of age, there was in attendance a prepossessing, handsome maidservant, who generally kept, as much as the occasion would permit, behind the chair of her mistress. A mutual attachment appeared to exist between them, the maid apparently disinclined to leave the mistress, who seemed to keep her as near her person as possible. Now and again the fat cook, Mammy Judy, would appear at the door of the dining room bearing a fresh supply for the table, who with a slight nod of the head, accompanied with an affectionate smile and the word “Maggie,” indicated a tie much closer than that of mere fellow servants. Maggie had long been the favorite maidservant of her mistress, having attained the position through merit. She was also nurse and foster mother to the two last children of Mrs. Franks, and loved them, to all appearance, as her own. The children reciprocated this affection, calling her “Mammy.” Mammy Judy, who for years had occupied this position, ceded it to her daughter; she preferring, in consequence of age, the less active life of the culinary department. The boy Tony would frequently cast a comic look upon Mrs. Ballard, then imploringly gaze in the face of his mistress. So intent was he in this, that twice did his master admonish him by a nod of the head. “My dear,” said the Colonel, “you are dull today; pray tell me what makes you sad?” 6 “I am not bodily afflicted, Colonel Franks, but my spirit is heavy,” she replied. “How so? What is the matter?” “That will be best answered at another time and place, Colonel.” Giving his head an unconscious scratch accompanied with a slight twitch of the corner of the mouth, Franks seemed to comprehend the whole of it. On one of her Northern tours to the watering places—during a summer season some two years previous, having with her Maggie the favorite—Mrs. Franks visited the family of the Judge, at which time Mrs. Ballard first saw the maid. She was a dark mulatto of a rich, yellow, autumnlike complexion, with a matchless, cushionlike head of hair, neither straight nor curly, but handsomer than either. Mrs. Franks was herself a handsome lady of some thirty-five summers, but ten years less in appearance, a little above medium height, between the majestic and graceful, raven-black hair, and dark, expressive eyes. Yet it often had been whispered that in beauty the maid equalled if not excelled the mistress. Her age was twenty-eight. The conduct of Mrs. Franks toward her servant was more like that of an elder sister than a mistress, and the mistress and maid sometimes wore dresses cut from the same web of cloth. Mrs. Franks would frequently adjust the dress and see that the hair of her maid was properly arranged. This to Mrs. Ballard was as unusual as it was an objectionable sight, especially as she imagined there was an air of hauteur in her demeanor. It was then she determined to subdue her spirit. Acting from this impulse, several times in her absence, Mrs. Ballard took occasion to administer to the maid severities she had never experienced at the hands of her mistress, giving her at one time a severe slap on the cheek, calling her an “impudent jade.” At this, Mrs. Franks, on learning, was quite surprised; but on finding that the maid gave no just cause for it, took no further notice of it, designedly evading the matter. But before leaving, Mrs. Ballard gave her no rest until she gave her the most positive assurance that she would part with the maid on her next visit to Natchez. And thus she is found pressing her suit at the residence of the Mississippi planter. CHAPTER 3 The Fate of Maggie After dinner Colonel Franks again pressed the inquiry concerning the disposition of his lady. At this time the maid was in the culinary department taking her dinner. The children having been served, she preferred the company of her old mother whom she loved, the children hanging around, and upon her lap. There was no servant save the boy Tony present in the parlor. “I can't, I won't let her go! she's a dear good girl!” replied Mrs. Franks. “The children are attached to her, and so am I; let Minny or any other of them go—but do not, for Heaven's sake, tear Maggie from me!” “Maria, my dear, you've certainly lost your balance of mind! Do try and compose yourself,” admonished the Colonel. “There's certainly no disposition to do contrary to your desires; try and be a little reasonable.” “I'm sure, cousin, I see no cause for your importunity. No one that I know of designs to hurt the Negro girl. I'm sure it's not me!” impatiently remarked Mrs. Ballard. During this, the boy had several times gone into the hall, looking toward the kitchen, then meaningly into the parlor as if something unusual were going on. Mammy Judy becoming suspicious, went into the hall and stood close beside the parlor door, listening at the conversation. “Cousin, if you will listen for a moment, I wish to say a word to you,” said Mrs. Ballard. “The Judge, as you know, has a countryseat in Cuba near the city of Havana, where we design making every year our winter retreat. As we cannot take with us either free Negroes or white servants, on account of the existing restrictions, I must have a slave, and of course I prefer a well-trained one, as I know all yours to be. The price will be no object; as I know it will be none to you, it shall be none to me.” “I will not consent to part with her, cousin Arabella, and it is useless to press the matter any further!” emphatically replied Mrs. Franks. “I am sure, cousin Maria, it was well understood between the Colonel and the Judge, that I was to have one of your best-trained maidservants!” continued Mrs. Ballard. 8 “The Colonel and the Judge! If any such understanding exist, it is without my knowledge and consent, and ——” “It is true, my dear,” interposed the Colonel, “but ——” “Then,” replied she, “heaven grant that I may go too! from——” “Pah, pah! cousin Maria Franks, I'm really astonished at you to take on so about a Negro girl! You really appear to have lost your reason. I would not behave so for all the Negroes in Mississippi.” “My dear,” said Franks, “I have been watching the conduct of that girl for some time past; she is becoming both disobedient and unruly, and as I have made it a rule of my life never to keep a disobedient servant, the sooner we part with her the better. As I never whip my servants, I do not want to depart from my rule in her case.” Maggie was true to her womanhood, and loyal to her mistress, having more than once communicated to her ears facts the sounds of which reflected no credit in his. For several repulses such as this, it was that she became obnoxious to her master. “Cousin Maria, you certainly have forgotten; I'm sure, when last at the North, you promised in presence of the girl, that I was to have her, and I'm certain she's expecting it,” explained Mrs. Ballard. “This I admit,” replied Mrs. Franks, “but you very well know, cousin Arabella, that that promise was a mere ruse, to reconcile an uneasiness which you informed me you discovered in her, after over-hearing a conversation between her and some free Negroes, at Saratoga Springs.” “Well, cousin, you can do as you please,” concluded Mrs. Ballard. “Colonel, I'm weary of this conversation. What am I to expect?” enquired Mrs. Franks. “It's a settled point, my dear, she must be sold!” decisively replied Franks. “Then I must hereafter be disrespected by our own slaves! You know, Colonel, that I gave my word to Henry, her husband, your most worthy servant, that his wife should be here on his return. He had some misgiving that she was to be taken to Cuba before his return, when I assured him that she should be here. How can I bear to meet this poor creature, who places every confidence in what we tell him? He'll surely be frantic.” “Nonsense, cousin, nonsense,” sneered Mrs. Ballard. “Frantic, indeed! Why you speak of your Negro slaves as if speaking of equals. 9 Make him know that whatever you order, he must be contented with.” “I'll soon settle the matter with him, should he dare show any feelings about it!” interposed Franks. “When do you look for him, Maria?” “I'm sure, Colonel, you know more about the matter than I do. Immediately after you left, he took the horses to Baton Rouge, where at the last accounts he was waiting the conclusion of the races. Judge Dilbreath had entered them according to your request—one horse for each day's races. I look for him every day. Then there are more than him to reconcile. There's old Mammy Judy, who will run mad about her. You know, Colonel, she thought so much of her, that she might be treated tenderly the old creature gave up her situation in the house as nurse and foster mother to our children, going into the kitchen to do the harder work.” “Well, my dear, we'll detain your cousin till he comes. I'll telegraph the Judge that, if not yet left, to start him home immediately.” “Colonel, that will be still worse, to let him witness her departure; I would much rather she'd leave before his return. Poor thing!” she sighed. “Then she may go!” replied he. “And what of poor old mammy and his boy?” “I'll soon settle the matter with old Judy.” Mrs. Franks looking him imploringly in the face, let drop her head, burying her face in the palms of her hands. Soon it was found necessary to place her under the care of a physician. Old Mammy Judy had long since beckoned her daughter, where both stood in breathless silence catching every word that passed. At the conclusion, Maggie, clasping her hands, exclaimed in suppressed tones, “O mammy, O mammy! what shall I do? O, is there no hope for me? Can't you beg master—can't you save me!” “Look to de Laud, my chile! Him ony able to bring yeh out mo' nah conkeh!” was the prayerful advice of the woe-stricken old mother. Both, hastening into the kitchen, falling upon their knees, invoked aloud the God of the oppressed. Hearing in that direction an unusual noise, Franks hastened past the kitchen door, dropping his head, and clearing his throat as he went along. This brought the slaves to an ordinary mood, who trembled at his approach. CHAPTER 4 Departure of Maggie The countryseat of Franks, or the “great house” of the cotton plantation, was but a short distance from the city. Mrs. Franks, by the advice of her physician, was removed there to avoid the disturbance of the town, when at the same time Mrs. Ballard left with her slave Maggie en route for Baltimore, whither she designed leaving her until ready to sail for Cuba. “Fahwell, my chile! fahwell; may God A'mighty be wid you!” were the parting words of the poor old slave, who with streaming eyes gazed upon her parting child for the last time. “O mammy! Can't you save me? O Lord, what shall I do? O my husband! O my poor child! O my! O my!” were the only words, the sounds of which died upon the breeze, as the cab hastily bore her to a steamer then lying at the wharf. Poor old Mammy Judy sat at the kitchen door with elbows resting upon her knee, side of the face resting in the palm of the hand, tears streaming down, with a rocking motion, noticing nothing about her, but in sorrow moaning just distinctly enough to be understood: “Po' me! Po' me! Po' me!” The sight was enough to move the heart of anyone, and it so affected Franks that he wished he had “never owned a Negro.” Daddy Joe, the husband of Mammy Judy, was a field hand on the cotton place, visiting his wife at the town residence every Saturday night. Colonel Franks was a fine, grave, senatorial-looking man, of medium height, inclined to corpulency, black hair, slightly grey, and regarded by his slaves as a good master, and religiously as one of the best of men. On their arrival at the great house, those working nearest gathered around the carriage, among whom was Daddy Joe. “Wat a mautta wid missus?” was the general inquiry of the gang. “Your mistress is sick, boys,” replied the master. “Maus, whah's Margot?” enquired the old man, on seeing his mistress carried into the house without the attendance of her favorite maidservant. “She's in town, Joe,” replied Franks. 11 “How's Judy, seh?” “Judy is well.” “Tank'e seh!” politely concluded the old man, with a bow, turning away in the direction of his work—with a countenance expressive of anything but satisfaction—from the interview. The slaves, from their condition, are suspicious; any evasion or seeming design at suppressing the information sought by them frequently arouses their greatest apprehension. Not unfrequently the mere countenance, a look, a word, or laugh of the master, is an unerring foreboding of misfortune to the slave. Ever on the watch for these things, they learn to read them with astonishing precision. This day was Friday, and the old slave consoled himself with the thought that on the next evening he would be able to see and know for himself the true state of things about his master's residence in town. The few hours intervening were spent with great anxiety, which was even observed by his fellow slaves. At last came Saturday evening and with it, immediately after sunset, Daddy Joe made his appearance at the hall door of the great house, tarrying only long enough to inquire “How's missus?” and receive the reply, “she's better,” when a few moments found him quite out of sight, striding his way down the lane toward the road to the city. The sudden and unexpected fate of Maggie had been noised among the slaves throughout the entire neighborhood; many who had the opportunity of doing so, repairing to the house to learn the facts. In the lower part of the town, bordering on the river there is a depot or receptacle for the slave gangs brought by professional traders. This part of the town is known as “Natchez-under-the-Hill.” It is customary among the slaves when any of their number are sold, to say that they are gone “under the hill,” and their common salutation through the day was that “Franks' Mag had gone under the hill.” As with quickened steps Daddy Joe approached the town, his most fearful apprehensions became terribly realized when meeting a slave who informed him that “Margot had gone under the hill.” Falling upon his knees, in the fence corner, the old man raised his voice in supplication of Divine aid: “O Laud! dow has promis' in dine own wud, to be a fadah to de fadaless, an' husban to de widah! O Laud, let dy wud run an' be glorify! Sof'en de haud haut ob de presseh, an' let my po' chile cum back! an'——” 12 “Stop that noise there, old nigger!” ordered a patrol approaching him. “Who's boy are you?” “Sahvant, mausta!” saluted the old slave, “I b'long to cunel Frank, seh!” “Is this old Joe?” “Dis is me maus Johnny.” “You had better trudge along home then, as it's likely old Judy wants to see you about this time.” “Tank'e seh,” replied the old man, with a bow, feeling grateful that he was permitted to proceed. “Devilish good, religious old Negro,” he remarked to his associates, as the old man left them in the road. A few minutes more, and Daddy Joe entered the kitchen door at his master's residence. Mammy Judy, on seeing him, gave vent afresh to bitter wailing, when the emotion became painfully mutual. “O husban'! Husban! Onah po' chile is gone!” exclaimed the old woman, clasping him around the neck. “Laud! dy will be done!” exclaimed he. “Ole umin, look to de Laud! as he am suffishen fah all tings”; both, falling on their knees, breathed in silence their desires to God. “How long! How long! O Laud how long!” was the supplicating cry of the old woman being overcome with devotion and sorrow. Taking the little grandchild in his arms, “Po' chile,” said the old man, “I wish yeh had nebeh been baun!” impressing upon it kisses whilst it slept. After a fervant and earnest prayer to God for protection to themselves, little grandson Joe, the return of his mother their only child, and blessings upon their master and the recovery of their mistress, the poor old slaves retired to rest for the evening, to forget their sorrows in the respite of sleep. CHAPTER 5 A Vacancy This morning the sun rose with that beauty known to a Southern sky in the last month of autumn. The day was Sabbath, and with it was ushered in every reminiscence common to the customs of that day and locality. That she might spend the day at church for the diversion of her mind, Mrs. Franks was brought in to her city residence; and Natchez, which is usually gay, seemed more so on this day than on former occasions. When the bells began to signal the hour of worship, the fashionable people seemed en masse to crowd the streets. The carriages ran in every direction, bearing happy hearts and cheerful faces to the various places of worship—there to lay their offerings on the altar of the Most High for the blessings they enjoyed, whilst peering over every gate, out of every alley, or every kitchen door, could be seen the faithful black servants who, staying at home to prepare them food and attend to other domestic duties, were satisfied to look smilingly upon their masters and families as they rode along, without for a moment dreaming that they had a right to worship the same God, with the same promise of life and salvation. “God bless you, missus! Pray fah me,” was the honest request of many a simplehearted slave who dared not aspire to the enjoyment of praying for himself in the Temple of the living God. But amidst these scenes of gaiety and pleasure, there was one much devoted to her church who could not be happy that day, as there to her was a seeming vacancy which could not be filled—the seat of her favorite maidservant. The Colonel, as a husband and father, was affectionate and indulgent; but his slave had offended, disobeyed his commands, and consequently, had to be properly punished, or he be disrespected by his own servants. The will of the master being absolute, his commands should be enforced, let them be what they may, and the consequences what they would. If slavery be right, the master is justifiable in enforcing obedience to his will; deny him this, and you at once deprive him of the right to hold a slave—the one is a 14 necessary sequence of the other. Upon this principle Colonel Franks acted, and the premise justified the conclusion. When the carriage drove to the door, Mrs. Franks wept out most bitterly, refusing to enter because her favorite maid could not be an incumbent. Fears being entertained of seriousness in her case, it was thought advisable to let her remain quietly at home. Daddy Joe and Mammy Judy were anxious spectators of all that transpired at the door of the mansion, and that night, on retiring to their humble bed, earnestly petitioned at the altar of Grace that the Lord would continue upon her his afflictions until their master, convinced of his wrongs, would order the return of their child. This the Colonel would have most willingly done without the petition of Joe or Judy, but the case had gone too far, the offense was too great, and consequently there could be no reconsideration. “Poor things,” muttered Mrs. Franks in a delirium, “she served him right! And this her only offense! Yes, she was true to me!” Little Joe, the son of Maggie, in consequence of her position to the white children—from whom her separation had been concealed—had been constantly with his grandmother, and called her “mammy.” Accustomed to being without her, he was well satisfied so long as permitted to be with the old woman Judy. So soon as her condition would permit, Mrs. Franks was returned to her countryseat to avoid the contingencies of the city. CHAPTER 6 Henry's Return Early on Monday morning, a steamer was heard puffing up the Mississippi. Many who reside near the river, by custom can tell the name of every approaching boat by the peculiar sound of the steampipe, the one in the present instance being the “Sultana.” Daddy Joe had risen and just leaving for the plantation, but stopped a moment to be certian. “Hush!” admonished Mammy Judy. “Hush! Sho chile, do'n yeh heah how she hollah? Sholy dat's de wat's name! wat dat yeh call eh? 'Suckana,' wat not; sho! I ain' gwine bautha my head long so—sho! See, ole man see! Dah she come! See dat now! I tole yeh so, but yeh 15 uden bleve me!” And the old man and woman stood for some minutes in breathless silence, although the boat must have been some five miles distant, as the escape of steam can be heard on the western waters a great way off. The approach toward sunrise admonished Daddy Joe of demands for him at the cotton farm, when after bidding “good monin' ole umin,” he hurried to the daily task which lay before him. Mammy Judy had learned—by the boy Tony—that Henry was expected on the “Sultana,” and at the approach of every steamer, her head had been thrust out of the door or window to catch a distinct sound. In motionless attitude after the departure of her husband this morning, the old woman stood awaiting the steamer, when presently the boat arrived. But then to be certain that it was the expected vessel—now came the suspense. The old woman was soon relieved from this most disagreeable of all emotions, by the cry of newsboys returning from the wharf: “'Ere's the 'Picayune,' 'Atlas,' 'Delta'! Lates' news from New Orleans by the swift steamer 'Sultana'!” “Dah now!” exclaimed Mammy Judy in soliloquy. “Dah now! I tole yeh so!—de wat's name come!” Hurrying into the kitchen, she waited with anxiety the arrival of Henry. Busying about the breakfast for herself and other servants about the house—the white members of the family all being absent—Mammy Judy for a time lost sight of the expected arrival. Soon however, a hasty footstep arrested her attention, when on looking around it proved to be Henry who came smiling up the yard. “How'd you do, mammy! How's Mag' and the boy?” inquired he, grasping the old woman by the hand. She burst into a flood of tears, throwing herself upon him. “What is the matter!” exclaimed Henry. “Is Maggie dead?” “No chile,” with increased sobs she replied, “much betteh she wah.” “My God! Has she disgraced herself?” “No chile, may be betteh she dun so, den she bin heah now an' not sole. Maus Stephen sell eh case she!—I dun'o, reckon dat's da reason.” “What!—Do you tell me, mammy, she had better disgraced herself than been sold! By the——!” “So, Henry! yeh ain't gwine swah! hope yeh ain' gwine lose yeh 'ligion? Do'n do so; put yeh trus' in de Laud, he is suffishen fah all!” 16 “Don't tell me about religion! What's religion to me? My wife is sold away from me by a man who is one of the leading members of the very church to which both she and I belong! Put my trust in the Lord! I have done so all my life nearly, and of what use is it to me? My wife is sold from me just the same as if I didn't. I'll——” “Come, come, Henry, yeh mus'n talk so; we is po' weak an' bline cretehs, an' cah see de way uh da Laud. He move' in a mystus way, his wundahs to puhfaum.” “So he may, and what is all that to me? I don't gain anything by it, and——” “Stop, Henry, stop! Ain' de Laud bless yo' soul? Ain' he take yeh foot out de miah an' clay, an' gib yeh hope da uddah side dis vale ub teahs?” “I'm tired looking the other side; I want a hope this side of the vale of tears. I want something on this earth as well as a promise of things in another world. I and my wife have been both robbed of our liberty, and you want me to be satisfied with a hope of heaven. I won't do any such thing; I have waited long enough on heavenly promises; I'll wait no longer. I——” “Henry, wat de mauttah wid yeh? I neveh heah yeh talk so fo'—yeh sin in de sight ub God; yeh gone clean back, I reckon. De good Book tell us, a tousan' yeahs wid man, am but a day wid de Laud. Boy, yeh got wait de Laud own pinted time.” “Well, mammy, it is useless for me to stand here and have the same gospel preached into my ears by you, that I have all my life time heard from my enslavers. My mind is made up, my course is laid out, and if life last, I'll carry it out. I'll go out to the place today, and let them know that I have returned.” “Sho boy! What yeh gwine do, bun house down? Bettah put yeh trus' in de Laud!” concluded the old woman. “You have too much religion, mammy, for me to tell you what I intend doing,” said Henry in conclusion. After taking up his little son, impressing on his lips and cheeks kisses for himself and tears for his mother, the intelligent slave left the abode of the careworn old woman, for that of his master at the cotton place. Henry was a black—a pure Negro—handsome, manly and intelligent, in size comparing well with his master, but neither so fleshy nor heavy 17 built in person. A man of good literary attainments—unknown to Colonel Franks, though he was aware he could read and write—having been educated in the West Indies, and decoyed away when young. His affection for wife and child was not excelled by Colonel Franks's for his. He was bold, determined and courageous, but always mild, gentle and courteous, though impulsive when an occasion demanded his opposition. Going immediately to the place, he presented himself before his master. Much conversation ensued concerning the business which had been entrusted to his charge, all of which was satisfactorily transacted, and full explanations concerning the horses, but not a word was uttered concerning the fate of Maggie, the Colonel barely remarking “your mistress is unwell.” After conversing till a late hour, Henry was assigned a bed in the great house, but sleep was far from his eyes. He turned and changed upon his bed with restlessness and anxiety, impatiently awaiting a return of the morning. CHAPTER 7 Master and Slave Early on Tuesday morning, in obedience to his master's orders, Henry was on his way to the city to get the house in readiness for the reception of his mistress, Mrs. Franks having improved in three or four days. Mammy Judy had not yet risen when he knocked at the door. “Hi Henry! yeh heah ready! huccum yeh git up so soon; arter some mischif I reckon? Do'n reckon yeh arter any good!” saluted Mammy Judy. “No, mammy,” replied he, “no mischief, but like a good slave such as you wish me to be, come to obey my master's will, just what you like to see.” “Sho boy! none yeh nonsens'; huccum I want yeh bey maus Stephen? Git dat nonsens' in yeh head las' night long so, I reckon! Wat dat yeh gwine do now?” “I have come to dust and air the mansion for their reception. They have sold my wife away from me, and who else would do her work?” This reply excited the apprehension of Mammy Judy. 18 “Wat yeh gwine do, Henry? Yeh arter no good; yeh ain' gwine 'tack maus Stephen, is yeh?” “What do you mean, mammy, strike him?” “Yes! Reckon yeh ain' gwine hit 'im?” “Curse——!” “Henry, Henry, membeh wat ye 'fess! Fah de Laud sake, yeh ain' gwine take to swahin?” interupted the old woman. “I make no profession, mammy. I once did believe in religion, but now I have no confidence in it. My faith has been wrecked on the stony hearts of such pretended Christians as Stephen Franks, while passing through the stormy sea of trouble and oppression! And——” “Hay, boy! yeh is gittin high! Yeh call maussa 'Stephen'?” “Yes, and I'll never call him 'master' again, except when compelled to do so.” “Bettah g'long ten' t' de house fo' wite folks come, an' nebeh mine talkin' 'bout fightin' 'long wid maus Stephen. Wat yeh gwine do wid white folks? Sho!” “I don't intend to fight him, Mammy Judy, but I'll attack him concerning my wife, if the words be my last! Yes, I'll——!” and, pressing his lips to suppress the words, the outraged man turned away from the old slave mother with such feelings as only an intelligent slave could realize. The orders of the morning were barely executed when the carriage came to the door. The bright eyes of the footboy Tony sparkled when he saw Henry approaching the carriage. “Well, Henry! Ready for us?” enquired his master. “Yes, sir,” was the simple reply. “Mistress!” he saluted, politely bowing as he took her hand to assist her from the carriage. “Come, Henry my man, get out the riding horses,” ordered Franks after a little rest. “Yes, sir.” A horse for the Colonel and lady each was soon in readiness at the door, but none for himself, it always having been the custom in their morning rides, for the maid and manservant to accompany the mistress and master. “Ready, did you say?” enquired Franks on seeing but two horses standing at the stile. “Yes, sir.” 19 “Where's the other horse?” “What for, sir?” “What for? Yourself, to be sure!” “Colonel Franks!” said Henry, looking him sternly in the face. “When I last rode that horse in company with you and lady, my wife was at my side, and I will not now go without her! Pardon me—my life for it, I won't go!” “Not another word, you black imp!” exclaimed Franks, with an uplifted staff in a rage, “or I'll strike you down in an instant!” “Strike away if you will, sir, I don't care—I won't go without my wife!” “You impudent scoundrel! I'll soon put an end to your conduct! I'll put you on the auction block, and sell you to the Negro-traders.” “Just as soon as you please sir, the sooner the better, as I don't want to live with you any longer!” “Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll cut it out of your head! You ungrateful black dog! Really, things have come to a pretty pass when I must take impudence off my own Negro! By gracious!—God forgive me for the expression—I'll sell every Negro I have first! I'll dispose of him to the hardest Negro-trader I can find!” said Franks in a rage. “You may do your mightiest, Colonel Franks. I'm not your slave, nor never was and you know it! And but for my wife and her people, I never would have stayed with you till now. I was decoyed away when young, and then became entangled in such domestic relations as to induce me to remain with you; but now the tie is broken! I know that the odds are against me, but never mind!” “Do you threaten me, sir! Hold your tongue, or I'll take your life instantly, you villain!” “No, sir, I don' threaten you, Colonel Franks, but I do say that I won't be treated like a dog. You sold my wife away from me, after always promising that she should be free. And more than that, you sold her because——! And now you talk about whipping me. Shoot me, sell me, or do anything else you please, but don't lay your hands on me, as I will not suffer you to whip me!” Running up to his chamber, Colonel Franks seized a revolver, when Mrs. Franks, grasping hold of his arm, exclaimed, “Colonel! what does all this mean?” “Mean, my dear? It's rebellion! A plot—this is but the shadow of a 20 could that's fast gathering around us! I see it plainly, I see it!” responded the Colonel, starting for the stairs. “Stop, Colonel!” admonished his lady. “I hope you'll not be rash. For Heaven's sake, do not stain your hands in blood!” “I do not mean to, my dear! I take this for protection!” Franks hastening down stairs, when Henry had gone into the back part of the premises. “Dah now! Dah now!” exclaimed Mammy Judy as Henry entered the kitchen. “See wat dis gwine back done foh yeh! Bettah put yo' trus' in de Laud! Henry, yeh gone clean back t' de wuhl ghin, yeh knows it!” “You're mistaken, Mammy; I do trust the Lord as much as ever, but I now understand him better than I use to, that's all. I dont intend to be made a fool of any longer by false preaching.” “Henry!” interrogated Daddy Joe—who, apprehending difficulties in the case, had managed to get back to the house. “Yeh gwine lose all yo' 'ligion? Wat yeh mean, boy!” “Religion!” replied Henry rebukingly. “That's always the cry with black people. Tell me nothing about religion when the very man who hands you the bread at communion has sold your daughter away from you!” “Den yeh 'fen' God case man 'fen' yeh! Take cah, Henry, take cah! mine wat yeh 'bout; God is lookin' at yeh, an' if yeh no' willin' trus' 'im, yeh need'n call on 'im in time o' trouble.” “I dont intend, unless He does more for me then than He has done before. 'Time of need!' If ever man needed His assistance, I'm sure I need it now.” “Yeh do'n know wat yeh need; de Laud knows bes'. On'y trus' in 'im, an' 'e bring yeh out mo' nah conkah. By de help o' God I's heah dis day, to gib yeh cumfut!” “I have trusted in Him, Daddy Joe, all my life, as I told Mammy Judy this morning, but——” “Ah boy, yeh's gwine back! Dat on't do Henry, dat on't do!” “Going back from what? My oppressor's religion! If I could only get rid of his inflictions as easily as I can his religion, I would be this day a free man, when you might then talk to me about 'trusting.' ” “Dis, Henry, am one uh de ways ob de Laud; 'e fus 'flicks us an' den he bless us.” 21 “Then it's a way I don't like.” “Mine how yeh talk, boy! 'God moves in a myst'us way His wundahs to pehfaum,' an——” “He moves too slow for me, Daddy Joe; I'm tired waiting so——” “Come Henry, I hab no sich talk like dat! yeh is gittin' rale weaked; yeh gwine let de debil take full 'session on yeh! Take cah boy, mine how yeh talk!” “It is not wickedness, Daddy Joe; you don't understand these things at all. If a thousand years with us is but a day with God, do you think that I am required to wait all that time?” “Don't, Henry, don't! De wud say 'stan' still an' see de salbation.' ” “That's no talk for me, Daddy Joe; I've been 'standing still' long enough—I'll 'stand still' no longer.” “Den yeh no call t' bey God wud? Take cah boy, take cah!” “Yes I have, and I intend to obey it, but that part was intended for the Jews, a people long since dead. I'll obey that intended for me.” “How yeh gwine bey it?” “ 'Now is the accepted time, today is the day of salvation.' So you see, Daddy Joe, this is very different to standing still.” “Ah boy, I's feahd yeh's losen yeh 'ligion!” “I tell you once for all, Daddy Joe, that I'm not only 'losing' but I have altogether lost my faith in the religion of my oppressors. As they are our religious teachers, my estimate of the thing they give is no greater than it is for those who give it.” With elbows upon his knees, and face resting in the palms of his hands, Daddy Joe for some time sat with his eyes steadily fixed on the floor, whilst Ailcey who for a part of the time had been an auditor to the conversation, went into the house about her domestic duties. “Never mind, Henry! I hope it will not always be so with you. You have been kind and faithful to me and the Colonel, and I'll do anything I can for you!” sympathetically said Mrs. Franks, who, having been a concealed spectator of the interview between Henry and the old people, had just appeared before them. Wiping away the emblems of grief which stole down his face, with a deep-toned voice upgushing from the recesses of a more than iron-pierced soul, he enquired, “Madam, what can you do! Where is my wife?” To this, Mrs. Franks gave a deep sigh. “Never mind, never mind!” continued he, “yes, I will mind, and by——!” 22 “O! Henry, I hope you've not taken to swearing! I do hope you will not give over to wickedness! Our afflictions should only make our faith the stronger.” “ 'Wickedness.' Let the righteous correct the wicked, and the Christian condemn the sinner!” “That is uncharitable in you, Henry! As you know I have always treated you kindly, and God forbid that I should consider myself any less than a Christian! And I claim as much at least for the Colonel, though like frail mortals he is liable to err at times.” “Madam!” said he with suppressed emotion—starting back a pace or two—“Do you think there is anything either in or out of hell so wicked, as that which Colonel Franks has done to my wife, and now about to do to me? For myself I care not—my wife!” “Henry!” said Mrs. Franks, gently placing her hand upon his shoulder. “There is yet a hope left for you, and you will be faithful enough, I know, not to implicate any person. It is this: Mrs. Van Winter, a true friend of your race, is shortly going to Cuba on a visit, and I will arrange with her to purchase you through an agent on the day of your sale, and by that means you can get to Cuba, where probably you may be fortunate enough to get the master of your wife to become your purchaser.” “Then I have two chances!” replied Henry. Just then Ailcey, thrusting her head in the door, requested the presence of her mistress in the parlor. CHAPTER 8 The Sale “Dah now, dah now!” exclaimed Mammy Judy. “Jis wat ole man been tellin' on yeh! Yeh go out yandah, yeh kick up yeh heel, git yeh head clean full proclamation an' sich like dat, an' let debil fool yeh, den go fool long wid wite folks long so, sho! Bettah go 'bout yeh bisness; been sahvin' God right, yeh no call t'do so eh reckon!” “I don't care what comes! my course is laid out and my determination fixed, and nothing they can do can alter it. So you and Daddy 23 Joe, mammy, had just as well quit your preaching to me the religion you have got from your oppressors.” “Soul-driveh git yeh, yeh cah git way fom dem eh doh recken! Sho chile, yeh ain' dat mighty!” admonished Mammy Judy. “Henry, my chile, look to de Laud! Look to de Laud! Case 'e 'lone am able t' bah us up in ouah trouble! An——” “Go directly sir, to Captain John Harris' office and ask him to call immediately to see me at my house!” ordered Franks. Politely bowing, Henry immediately left the premises on his errand. “Laud a' messy maus Stephen!” exclaimed Mammy Judy, on hearing the name of John Harris the Negro-trader. “Hope yeh arteh no haum! Gwine sell all on us to de tradehs?” “Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! Judy, give yourself no uneasiness about that till you have some cause for it. So you and Joe may rest contented, Judy,” admonished Franks. “Tank'e maus Stephen! Case ah heahn yeh tell Henry dat yeh sell de las' nig——” “Hush, ole umin, hush! Yeh tongue too long! Put yeh trus' in de Laud!” interrupted Daddy Joe. “I treat my black folks well,” replied Franks, “and all they have to——” Here the doorbell having been rung, he was interrupted with a message from Ailcey, that a gentleman awaited his presence in the parlor. At the moment which the Colonel left the kitchen, Henry stepped over the stile into the yard, which at once disclosed who the gentleman was to whom the master had been summoned. Henry passed directly around and behind the house. “See, ole man, see! Reckon 'e gwine dah now!” whispered Mammy Judy, on seeing Henry pass through the yard without going into the kitchen. “Whah?” enquired Daddy Joe. “Dun'o out yandah, whah 'e gwine way from wite folks!” she replied. The interview between Franks and the trader Harris was not over half an hour duration, the trader retiring, Franks being prompt and decisive in all of his transactions, making little ceremony. 24 So soon as the front door was closed, Ailcey smiling bore into the kitchen a half-pint glass of brandy, saying that her master had sent it to the old people. The old man received it with compliments to his master, pouring it into a black jug in which there was both tansy and garlic, highly recommending it as a “bitters” and certain antidote for worms, for which purpose he and the old woman took of it as long as it lasted, though neither had been troubled with that particular disease since the days of their childhood. “Wat de gwine do wid yeh meh son?” enquired Mammy Judy as Henry entered the kitchen. “Sell me to the soul-drivers! what else would they do?” “Yeh gwin 'tay 'bout till de git yeh?” “I shant move a step! and let them do their——” “Maus wants to see yeh in da front house, Henry,” interrupted Ailcey, he immediately obeying the summons. “Heah dat now!” said mammy Judy, as Henry followed the maid out of the kitchen. “Carry this note, sir, directly to Captain Jack Harris!” ordered Franks, handing to Henry a sealed note. Receiving it, he bowed politely, going out of the front door, directly to the slave prison of Harris. “Eh heh! I see,” said Harris on opening the note, “Colonel Frank's boy; walk in here,” passing through the office into a room which proved to be the first department of the slave prison. “No common Negro, I see! You're a shade higher. A pretty deep shade too! Can read, write, cipher; a good religious fellow, and has a Christian and sir name. The devil you say! Who's your father? Can you preach?” “I have never tried,” was the only reply. “Have you ever been a member of Congress?” continued Harris with ridicule. To this Henry made no reply. “Wont answer, hey! Beneath your dignity. I understand that you're of that class of gentry who dont speak to common folks! You're not quite well enough dressed for a gentleman of your cloth. Here! Mr. Henry, I'll present you with a set of ruffles: give yourself no trouble sir, as I'll dress you! I'm here for that purpose,” said Harris, fastening upon the wrists of the manly bondman a heavy pair of handcuffs. 25 “You hurt my wrist!” admonished Henry. “New clothing will be a little tight when first put on. Now sir!” continued the trader, taking him to the back door and pointing into the yard at the slave gang there confined. “As you have been respectably dressed, walk out and enjoy yourself among the ladies and gentlemen there; you'll find them quite a select company.” Shortly after this the sound of the bellringer's voice was heard—a sound which usually spread terror among the slaves: “Will be sold this afternoon at three o'clock by public outcry, at the slave prison of Captain John Harris, a likely choice Negro fellow, the best trained body servant in the state, trained to the business by the most accomplished lady and gentleman Negro-trainers in the Mississippi Valley. Sale positive without a proviso.” “Dah, dah! Did'n eh tell yeh so? Ole man, ole man! heah dat now! Come heah. Dat jis what I been tellin on im, but 'e uden bleve me!” ejaculated old Mammy Judy on hearing the bell ring and the handbill read. Falling upon their knees, the two old slaves prayed fervently to God, thanking him that it was as “well with them” as it was. “Bless de Laud! My soul is happy!” cried out Mammy Judy being overcome with devotion, clapping her hands. “Tang God, fah wat I feels in my soul!” responded Daddy Joe. Rising from their knees with tears trickling down their cheeks, the old slaves endeavored to ease their troubled souls by singing, Oh, when shall my sorrows subside, And when shall my troubles be ended; And when to the bosom of Christ be conveyed, To the mansions of joy and bliss; To the mansions of joy and bliss! “Wuhthy to be praise! Blessed be de name uh de Laud! Po' black folks, de Laud o'ny knows sats t' come ob us!” exclaimed Mammy Judy. “Look to de Laud ole umin, 'e's able t' bah us out mo' neh conkeh. Keep de monin' stah in sight!” advised Daddy Joe. “Yes, ole man, yes, dat I done dis many long day, an' ah ain' gwine lose sight uh it now! No, God bein' my helpeh, I is gwine keep my eyes right on it, dat I is!” 26 As the hour of three drew near, many there were going in the direction of the slave prison, a large number of persons having assembled at the sale. “Draw near, gentlemen, draw near!” cried Harris. “The hour of sale is arrived: a positive sale with no proviso, cash down, or no sale at all!” A general laugh succeeded the introduction of the auctioneer. “Come up here my lad!” continued the auctioneer, wielding a long red rawhide. “Mount this block, stand beside me, an' let's see which is the best looking man! We have met before, but I never had the pleasure of introducing you. Gentlemen one and all, I take pleasure in introducing to you Henry—pardon me, sir—Mr. Henry Holland, I believe—am I right, sir?—Mr. Henry Holland, a good looking fellow you will admit. “I am offered one thousand dollars; one thousand dollars for the best looking Negro in all Mississippi! If all the negro boys in the state was as good looking as him, I'd give two thousand dollars for 'em all myself!” This caused another laugh. “Who'll give me one thousand five——” Just then a shower of rain came on. “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the auctioneer. “Without a place can be obtained large enough to shelter the people here assembled, the sale will have to be postponed. This is a proviso we couldn't foresee, an' therefore is not responsible for it.” There was another hearty laugh. A whisper went through the crowd, when presently a gentleman came forward, saying that those concerned had kindly tendered the use of the church which stood nearby, in which to continue the sale. “Here we are again, gentlemen! Who bids five hundred more for the likely Negro fellow? I am offered fifteen hundred dollars for the finest Negro servant in the state! Come, my boy, bestir yourself an' don't stan' there like a statute; can't you give us a jig? whistle us a song! I forgot, the Negro fellow is religious; by the by, an excellent recommendation, gentlemen. Perhaps he'll give us a sermon. Say, git up there old fellow, an' hold forth. Can't you give us a sermon on Abolition? I'm only offered fifteen hundred dollars for the likely Negro boy! Fifteen, sixteen, sixteen hundred, just agoing at—eighteen, eighteen, nineteen hundred, nineteen hundred! Just agoing at nineteen hundred dollars for the best body servant in the state; just agoing at nineteen and without a better bid I'll——Going! Going! Go——!” Just at this point a note was passed up the aisle to the auctioneer, 27 who after reading it said, “Gentlemen! Circumstances beyond my control make it necessary that the sale be postponed until one day next week; the time of continuance will be duly announced,” when, bowing, he left the stand. “That's another proviso not in the original bill!” exclaimed a voice as the auctioneer left the stand, at which there were peals of laughter. To secure himself against contingency, Harris immediately delivered Henry over to Franks. There were present at the sale, Crow, Slider, Walker, Borbridge, Simpson, Hurst, Spangler and Williams, all noted slave traders, eager to purchase, some on their return home, and some with their gangs en route for the Southern markets. The note handed the auctioneer read thus: CAPT. HARRIS:—Having learned that there are private individuals at the sale, who design purchasing my Negro man, Harry, for his own personal advantage, you will peremptorily postpone the sale—making such apology as the occasion demands—and effect a private sale with Richard Crow, Esq., who offers me two thousand dollars for him. Let the boy return to me. Believe me to be, Very Respectfully, STEPHEN FRANKS Capt. John Harris. Natchez, Nov. 29th, 1852. “Now, sir,” said Franks to Henry, who had barely reached the house from the auction block, “take this pass and go to Jackson and Woodville, or anywhere else you wish to see your friends, so that you be back against Monday afternoon. I ordered a postponement of the sale, thinking that I would try you awhile longer, as I never had cause before to part with you. Now see if you can't be a better boy!” Eagerly taking the note, thanking him with a low bow, turning away, Henry opened the paper, which read: Permit the bearer my boy Henry, sometimes calling himself Henry Holland—a kind of negro pride he has—to pass and repass wherever he wants to go, he behaving himself properly. STEPHEN FRANKS To all whom it may concern. Natchez, Nov. 29th, 1852. 28 Carefully depositing the charte volante in his pocket wallet, Henry quietly entered the hut of Mammy Judy and Daddy Joe. CHAPTER 9 The Runaway “De Laud's good—bless his name!” exclaimed Mammy Judy wringing her hands as Henry entered their hut. “ 'e heahs de prahs ob 'is chilen. Yeh hab reason t' tang God yeh is heah dis day!” “Yes Henry, see wat de Laud's done fah yeh. Tis true's I's heah dis day! Tang God fah dat!” added Daddy Joe. “I think,” replied he, after listening with patience to the old people, “I have reason to thank our Ailcey and Van Winter's Biddy; they, it seems to me, should have some credit in the matter.” “Sho boy, g'long whah yeh gwine! Yo' backslidin' gwine git yeh in trouble ghin eh reckon?” replied Mammy Judy. Having heard the conversation between her mistress and Henry, Ailcey, as a secret, informed Van Winter's Derba, who informed her fellow servant Biddy, who imparted it to her acquaintance Nelly, the slave of esquire Potter, Nelly informing her mistress, who told the 'Squire, who led Franks into the secret of the whole matter. “Mus'n blame me, Henry!” said Ailcey in an undertone. “I did'n mean de wite folks to know wat I tole Derba, nor she di'n mean it nuther, but dat devil, Pottah's Nell! us gals mean da fus time we ketch uh out, to duck uh in da rivah! She's rale wite folk's nigga, dat's jus' wat she is. Nevah mine, we'll ketch her yit!” “I don't blame you Ailcey, nor either of Mrs. Van Winter's girls, as I know that you are my friends, neither of whom would do anything knowingly to injure me. I know Ailcey that you are a good girl, and believe you would tell me——” “Yes Henry, I is yo' fren' an' come to tell yeh now wat da wite folks goin' to do.” “What is it Ailcey; what do you know?” 29 “Wy dat ugly ole devil Dick Crow—God fah gim me! But I hate 'im so, case he nothin' but po' wite man, no how—I know 'im he come from Fagina on——” “Never mind his origin, Ailcey, tell me what you know concerning his visit in the house.” “I is goin' to, but da ugly ole devil, I hates 'im so! Maus Stephen had 'im in da pahla, an' 'e sole yeh to 'im, dat ugly ole po' wite devil, fah—God knows how much—a hole heap a money; 'two' somethin.” “I know what it was, two thousand dollars, for that was his selling price to Jack Harris.” “Yes, dat was da sum, Henry.” “I am satisfied as to how much he can be relied on. Even was I to take the advice of the old people here, and become reconciled to drag out a miserable life of degradation and bondage under them, I would not be permitted to do so by this man, who seeks every opportunity to crush out my lingering manhood, and reduce my free spirit to the submission of a slave. He cannot do it, I will not submit to it, and I defy his power to make me submit.” “Laus a messy, Henry, yeh free man! huccum yeh not tell me long'o? Sho boy, bettah go long whah yeh gwine, out yandah, an' not fool long wid wite folks!” said Mammy Judy with surprise, “wat bring yeh heah anyhow?” “That's best known to myself, mammy.” “Wat make yeh keep heah so long den, dat yeh ain' gone fo' dis?” “Your questions become rather pressing, mammy; I can't tell you that either.” “Laud, Laud, Laud! So yeh free man? Well, well, well!” “Once for all, I now tell you old people what I never told you before, nor never expected to tell you under such circumstances; that I never intend to serve any white man again. I'll die first!” “De Laud a' messy on my po' soul! An' huccum yeh not gone befo'?” “Carrying out the principles and advice of you old people 'standing still, to see the salvation.' But with me, 'now is the accepted time, today is the day of salvation.' ” “Well, well, well!” sighed Mammy Judy. “I am satisfied that I am sold, and the wretch who did it seeks to 30 conceal his perfidy by deception. Now if ever you old people did anything in your lives, you must do it now.” “Wat dat yeh want wid us?” “Why, if you'll go, I'll take you on Saturday night, and make our escape to a free country.” “Wat place yeh call dat?” “Canada!” replied Henry, with emotion. “How fah yeh gwine take me?” earnestly enquired the old woman. “I can't just now tell the distance, probably some two or three thousand miles from here, the way we'd have to go.” “De Laus a messy on me! An' wat yeh gwine do wid little Joe; ain gwine leave 'im behine?” “No, Mammy Judy, I'd bury him in the bottom of the river first! I intend carrying him in a bundle on my back, as the Indians carry their babies.” “Wat yeh gwine do fah money; yeh ain' gwine rob folks on de road?” “No mammy, I'll starve first. Have you and Daddy Joe saved nothing from your black-eye peas and poultry selling for many years?” “Ole man, how much in dat pot undeh de flo' dah; how long since yeh count it?” “Don'o,” replied Daddy Joe, “las' time ah count it, da wah faughty guinea* uh sich a mauttah, an' ah put in some six-seven guinea mo' since dat.” “Then you have some two hundred and fifty dollars in money.” “Dat do yeh?” enquired Mammy Judy. “Yes, that of itself is enough, but——” “Den take it an' go long whah yeh gwine; we ole folks too ole fah gwine headlong out yandah an' don'o whah we gwine. Sho boy! take de money an' g'long!” decisively replied the old woman after all her inquisitiveness. “If you don't know, I do, mammy, and that will answer for all.” “Dat ain' gwine do us. We ole folks ain' politishon an' undestan' de graumma uh dese places, an' w'en we git dah den maybe do'n like it an cahn' git back. Sho chile, so long whah yeh gwine!” 31 “What do you say, Daddy Joe? Whatever you have to say, must be said quick, as time with me is precious.” “We is too ole dis time a day, chile, t'go way out yauah de Laud knows whah; bettah whah we is.” “You'll not be too old to go if these whites once take a notion to sell you. What will you do then?” “Trus' to de Laud!” “Yes, the same old slave song—'Trust to the Lord.' Then I must go, and——” “Ain' yeh gwine take de money, Henry?” interrupted the old woman. “No, mammy, since you will not go, I leave it for you and Daddy Joe, as you may yet have use for it, or those may desire to use it who better understand what use to make of it than you and Daddy Joe seem willing to be instructed in.” “Den yeh 'ont have de money?” “I thank you and Daddy most kindly, Mammy Judy, for your offer, and only refuse because I have two hundred guineas about me.” “Sho boy, yeh got all dat, no call t'want dat little we got. Whah yeh git all dat money? Do'n reckon yeh gwine tell me! Did'n steal from maus Stephen, do'n reckon?” “No, mammy, I'm incapable of stealing from any one, but I have, from time to time, taken by littles, some of the earnings due me for more than eighteen years' service to this man Franks, which at the low rate of two hundred dollars a year, would amount to sixteen hundred dollars more than I secured, exclusive of the interest, which would have more than supplied my clothing, to say nothing of the injury done me by degrading me as a slave. 'Steal' indeed! I would that when I had an opportunity, I had taken fifty thousand instead of two. I am to understand you old people as positively declining to go, am I?” “No, no, chile, we cahn go! We put ouh trus' in de Laud, he bring us out mo' nah conkah.” “Then from this time hence, I become a runaway. Take care of my poor boy while he's with you. When I leave the swamps, or where I'll go, will never be known to you. Should my boy be suddenly missed, and you find three notches cut in the bark of the big willow tree, on the side away from your hut, then give yourself no uneasiness; but if you don't find these notches in the tree, then I know nothing about 32 him. Goodbye!” And Henry strode directly for the road to Woodville. “Fahwell me son, fahwell, an' may God a'mighty go wid you! May de Laud guide an' 'tect yeh on de way!” The child, contrary to his custom, commenced crying, desiring to see Mamma Maggie and Dadda Henry. Every effort to quiet him was unavailing. This brought sorrow to the old people's hearts and tears to their eyes, which they endeavored to soothe in a touching lamentation: See wives and husbands torn apart, Their children's screams, they grieve my heart. They are torn away to Georgia! Come and go along with me— They are torn away to Georgia! Go sound the Jubilee! CHAPTER 10 Merry Making The day is Saturday, a part of which is given by many liberal masters to their slaves, the afternoon being spent as a holiday, or in vending such little marketable commodities as they might by chance possess. As a token of gratitude, it is customary in many parts of the South for the slaves to invite their masters to their entertainments. This evening presented such an occasion on the premises of Colonel Stephen Franks. This day Mammy Judy was extremely busy, for in addition to the responsibility of the culinary department, there was her calico habit to be done up—she would not let Potter's Milly look any better than herself—and an old suit of the young master George's clothes had to be patched and darned a little before little Joe could favorably compare with Craig's Sooky's little Dick. And the cast-off linen given to her husband for the occasion might require a “little doing up.” “Wat missus sen' dis shut heah wid de bres all full dis debilment an' nonsense fah?” said Mammy Judy, holding up the garment, looking at 33 the ruffles. “Sho! Missus mus' be crack, sen' dis heah! Ole man ain' gwine sen' he soul to de ole boy puttin' on dis debilment!” And she hastened away with the shirt, stating to her mistress her religious objections. Mrs. Franks smiled as she took the garment, telling her that the objections could be easily removed by taking off the ruffles. “Dat look sumphen like!” remarked the old woman, when Ailcey handed her the shirt with the ruffles removed. “Sen' dat debilment an' nonsense heah! Sho!” And carrying it away smiling, she laid it upon the bed. The feast of the evening was such as Mammy Judy was capable of preparing when in her best humor, consisting of all the delicacies usually served up on the occasion of corn huskings in the graingrowing region. Conscious that he was not entitled to their gratitude, Colonel Franks declined to honor the entertainment, though the invitation was a ruse to deceive him, as he had attempted to deceive them. The evening brought with it much of life's variety, as may be seen among the slave population of the South. There were Potter's slaves, and the people of Mrs. Van Winter, also those of Major Craig, and Dr. Denny, all dressed neatly, and seemingly very happy. Ailcey was quite the pride of the evening, in an old gauze orange dress of her mistress, and felt that she deserved to be well thought of, as proving herself the friend of Henry, the son-in-law of Daddy Joe and Mammy Judy, the heads of the entertainment. Mammy Judy and Potter's Milly were both looking matronly in their calico gowns and towlinen aprons, and Daddy Joe was the honored and observed of the party, in an old black suit with an abundance of surplus. “He'p yeh se'f, chilen!” said Mammy Judy, after the table had been blessed by Daddy Joe. “Henry ain' gwine be heah, 'e gone to Woodville uh some whah dah, kick'n up 'e heel. Come, chilen, eat haughty, mo' whah dis come f'om. He'p yeh se'f now do'n——” “I is, Aun' Judy; I likes dis heah kine a witals!” drawled out Potter's Nelse, reaching over for the fifth or sixth time. “Dis am good shaut cake!” “O mammy, look at Jilson!” exclaimed Ailcey, as a huge, rough field hand—who refused to go to the table with the company, but sat sulkily by himself in one corner—was just walking away, with two whole “cakes” of bread under his arm. 34 “Wat yeh gwine do wid dat bread, Jilson?” enquired the old woman. “I gwine eat it, dat wat I gwine do wid it! I ain' had no w'eat bread dis two hauvest!” he having come from Virginia, where such articles of food on harvest occasion were generally allowed the slave. “Big hog, so 'e is!” rebukingly said Ailcey, when she saw that Jilson was determined in his purpose. “Nebeh mine dat childen, plenty mo!” responded Mammy Judy. “Ole umin, dat chile in de way dah; de gals haudly tu'n roun,” suggested Daddy Joe, on seeing the pallet of little Joe crowded upon as the girls were leaving the table, seating themselves around the room. “Ailcey, my chile, jes' run up to de hut wid 'im, 'an lay 'im in de bed; ef yeh fuhd, Van Wintah' Ben go wid yeh; ah knows 'e likes to go wid de gals,” said Mammy Judy. Taking up his hat with a bland smile, Ben obeyed orders without a demur. The entertainment was held at the extreme end of a two-acre lot in the old slave quarters, while the hut of Mammy Judy was near the great house. Ailcey thought she espied a person retreat into the shrubbery and, startled, she went to the back door of the hut, but Ben hooted at the idea of any person out and about on such an occasion, except indeed it was Jilson with his bread. The child being carefully placed in bed, Ailcey and her protector were soon mingled with the merry slaves. There were three persons generally quite prominent among the slaves of the neighborhood, missed on this occasion; Franks' Charles, Denny's Sam, and Potter's Andy; Sam being confined to bed by sickness. “Ailcey, whah's Chaules—huccum 'e not heah?” enquired Mammy Judy. “Endeed, I dun'o mammy.” “Huccum Pottah's Andy ain' heah muddah?” “Andy a' home tonight, Aun' Judy, an' uh dun'o whah 'e is,” replied Winny. “Gone headlong out yandah, arteh no good, uh doh reckon, an' Chaules 'e gone dah too,” replied the old woman. “Da ain' nothin' mattah wid dis crowd, Aun' Judy,” complimented Nelse as he sat beside Derba. At this expression Mammy Judy gave a deep sigh, on the thought of her absent daughter. “Come, chilen,” suggested Mammy Judy, “yeh all eat mighty hauty, 35 an' been mighty merry, an' 'joy yehse'f much; we now sing praise to de Laud fah wat 'e done fah us,” raising a hymn in which all earnestly joined: Oh! Jesus, Jesus is my friend, He'll be my helper to the end,... “Young folk, yeh all bettah git ready now an' go, fo' de patrollas come out. Yeh all 'joy yeh se'f much, now time yeh gone. Hope yeh all sauv God Sunday. Ole man fo' de all gone, hab wud uh prah,” advised the old woman; the following being sung in conclusion: The Lord is here, and the Lord is all around us; Canaan, Canaan's a very happy home— O, glory! O, glory! O, glory! God is here, when the gathering dispersed, the slaves going cheerfully to their homes. “Come ole man, yeh got mautch? light sum dem shavens dah, quick. Ah cah fine de chile heah on dis bed!” said Mammy Judy, on entering the hut and feeling about in the dark for little Joe. “Ailcey, wat yeh done wid de chile?” “E's dah, Mammy Judy, I lain 'im on de bed, ah spose 'e roll off.” The shavings being lit, here was no child to be found. “My Laud, ole man! whah's de chile? Wat dis mean! O, whah's my po' chile gone; my po' baby!” exclaimed Mammy Judy, wringing her hands in distress. “Stay, ole 'umin! De tree! De tree!” When, going out in the dark, feeling the trunk of the willow, three notches in the bark were distinct to the touch. “Ole 'umin!” exclaimed Daddy Joe in a suppressed voice, hastening into the hut. “It am he, it am Henry got 'im!” “Tang God, den my po' baby safe!” responded Mammy Judy, when they raised their voices in praise of thankfulness: 'O, who's like Jesus! Hallelujah! praise ye the Lord; O, who's like Jesus! Hallelujah! love and serve the Lord!' 36 Falling upon their knees, the old man offered an earnest, heartful prayer to God, asking his guardianship through the night, and protection through the day, especially upon their heartbroken daughter, their runaway son-in-law, and the little grandson, when the two old people retired to rest with spirits mingled with joy, sorrow, hope, and fear; Ailcey going into the great house. CHAPTER 11 A Shadow “Ah, boys! Here you are, true to your promise,” said Henry, as he entered a covert in the thicket adjacent the cotton place, late on Sunday evening, “have you been waiting long?” “Not very,” replied Andy, “not mo' dan two-three ouahs.” “I was fearful you would not come, or if you did before me, that you would grow weary, and leave.” “Yeh no call to doubt us Henry, case yeh fine us true as ole steel!” “I know it,” answered he, “but you know, Andy, that when a slave is once sold at auction, all respect for him——” “O pshaw! we ain' goin' to heah nothin' like dat a tall! case——” “No!” interrupted Charles, “all you got to do Henry, is to tell we boys what you want, an' we're your men.” “That's the talk for me!” “Well, what you doin' here?” enquired Charles. “W'at brought yeh back from Jackson so soon?” further enquired Andy. “How did you get word to meet me here?” “By Ailcey; she give me the stone, an' I give it to Andy, an' we both sent one apiece back. Didn't you git 'em?” “Yes, that's the way I knew you intended to meet me,” replied Henry. “So we thought,” said Charles, “but tell us, Henry, what you want us to do.” “I suppose you know all about the sale, that they had me on the auction block, but ordered a postponement, and——” “That's the very pint we can't understand, although I'm in the same family with you,” interrupted Charles. 37 “But tell us Henry, what yeh doin' here?” impatiently enquired Andy. “Yes,” added Charles, “we want to know.” “Well, I'm a runaway, and from this time forth, I swear—I do it religiously—that I'll never again serve any white man living!” “That's the pint I wanted to git at before,” explained Charles, “as I can't understan' why you run away, after your release from Jack Harris, an'——” “Nah, I nuthah!” interrupted Andy. “It seems to me,” continued Charles, “that I'd 'ave went before they 'tempted to sell me, an' that you're safer now than before they had you on the block.” “Dat's da way I look at it,” responded Andy. “The stopping of the sale was to deceive his wife, mammy, and Daddy Joe, as he had privately disposed of me to a regular soul-driver by the name of Crow.” “I knows Dick Crow,” said Andy, “'e come f'om Faginy, whah I did, da same town.” “So Ailcey said of him. Then you know him without any description from me,” replied Henry. “Yes 'n deed! an' I knows 'im to be a inhuman, mean, dead-po' white man, dat's wat I does.” “Well, I was privately sold to him for two thousand dollars, then ordered back to Franks, as though I was still his slave, and by him given a pass, and requested to go to Woodville where there were arrangements to seize me and hold me, till Crow ordered me, which was to have been on Tuesday evening. Crow is not aware of me having been given a pass; Franks gave it to deceive his wife, in case of my not returning, to make the impression that I had run away, when in reality I was sold to the trader.” “Then our people had their merrymaking all for nothin',” said Charles, “an' Franks got what 'e didn't deserve—their praise.” “No, the merrymaking was only to deceive Franks, that I might have time to get away. Daddy Joe, Mammy Judy, and Ailcey knew all about it, and proposed the feast to deceive him.” “Dat's good! Sarve 'im right, da 'sarned ole scamp!” rejoined Andy. “It couldn't be better!” responded Charles. “Henry uh wish we was in yo' place an' you none da wus by it,” said Andy. 38 “Never mind, boys, give yourselves no uneasiness, as it wont be long before we'll all be together.” “You think so, Henry?” asked Charles. “Well uh hope so, but den body can haudly 'spect it,” responded Andy. “Boys,” said Henry, with great caution and much emotion, “I am now about to approach an important subject and as I have always found you true to me—and you can only be true to me by being true to yourselves—I shall not hesitate to impart it! But for Heaven's sake!—perhaps I had better not!” “Keep nothin' back, Henry,” said Charles, “as you know that we boys 'll die by our principles, that's settled!” “Yes, I wants to die right now by mine; right heah, now!” sanctioned Andy. “Well it is this—close, boys! close!” when they gathered in a huddle, beneath an underbush, upon their knees, “you both go with me, but not now. I——” “Why not now?” anxiously enquired Charles. “Dat's wat I like to know!” responded Andy. “Stop, boys, till I explain. The plans are mine and you must allow me to know more about them than you. Just here, for once, the slave-holding preacher's advice to the black man is appropriate, 'Stand still and see the salvation.”' “Then let us hear it, Henry,” asked Charles. “Fah God sake!” said Andy, “let us heah w'at it is, anyhow, Henry; yeh keep a body in 'spence so long, till I's mose crazy to heah it. Dat's no way!” “You shall have it, but I approach it with caution! Nay, with fear and trembling, at the thought of what has been the fate of all previous matters of this kind. I approach it with religious fear, and hardly think us fit for the task; at least, I know I am not. But as no one has ever originated, or given us anything of the kind, I suppose I may venture.” “Tell it! tell it!” urged both in a whisper. “Andy,” said Henry, “let us have a word of prayer first!” when they bowed low, with their heads to the ground, Andy, who was a preacher of the Baptist pursuasion among his slave brethren, offering a solemn and affecting prayer, in whispers to the Most High, to give them knowledge and courage in the undertaking, and success in the effort. 39 Rising from their knees, Andy commenced an anthem, by which he appeared to be much affected, in the following words: About our future destiny, There need be none debate— Whilst we ride on the tide, With our Captain and his mate. Clasping each other by the hand, standing in a band together, as a plight of their union and fidelity to each other, Henry said, “I now impart to you the secret, it is this: I have laid a scheme, and matured a plan for a general insurrection of the slaves in every state, and the successful overthrow of slavery!” “Amen!” exclaimed Charles. “God grant it!” responded Andy. “Tell us, Henry, how's dis to be carried out?” enquired Andy. “That's the thing which most concerns me, as it seems that it would be hard to do in the present ignorant state of our people in the slave States,” replied Charles. “Dat's jis wat I feah!” said Andy. “This difficulty is obviated. It is so simple that the most stupid among the slaves will understand it as well as if he had been instructed for a year.” “What!” exclaimed Charles. “Let's heah dat again!” asked Andy. “It is so just as I told you! So simple is it that the trees of the forest or an orchard illustrate it; flocks of birds or domestic cattle, fields of corn, hemp, or sugar cane; tobacco, rice, or cotton, the whistling of the wind, rustling of the leaves, flashing of lightning, roaring of thunder, and running of streams all keep it constantly before their eyes and in their memory, so that they can't forget it if they would.” “Are we to know it now?” enquired Charles. “I'm boun' to know it dis night befo' I goes home, 'case I been longin' fah ole Pottah dis many day, an' uh mos' think uh got 'im now!” “Yes boys, you've to know it before we part, but——” “That's the talk!” said Charles. “Good nuff talk fah me!” responded Andy. 40 “As I was about to say, such is the character of this organization, that punishment and misery are made the instruments for its propagation, so——” “I can't understan' that part——” “You know nothing at all about it Charles, and you must——” “Stan' still an' see da salvation!” interrupted Andy. “Amen!” responded Charles. “God help you so to do, brethren!” admonished Henry. “Go on Henry tell us! give it to us!” they urged. “Every blow you receive from the oppressor impresses the organization upon your mind, making it so clear that even Whitehead's Jack could understand it as well as his master.” “We are satisfied! The secret, the secret!” they importuned. “Well then, first to prayer, and then to the organization. Andy!” said Henry, nodding to him, when they again bowed low with their heads to the ground, whilst each breathed a silent prayer, which was ended with “Amen” by Andy. Whilst yet upon their knees, Henry imparted to them the secrets of his organization. “O, dat's da thing!” exclaimed Andy. “Capital, capital!” responded Charles. “What fools we was that we didn't know it long ago!” “I is mad wid myse'f now!” said Andy. “Well, well, well! Surely God must be in the work,” continued Charles. “'E's heah; Heaven's nigh! Ah feels it! It's right heah!” responded Andy, placing his hand upon his chest, the tears trickling down his cheeks. “Brethren,” asked Henry, “do you understand it?” “Understand it? Why, a child could understand, it's so easy!” replied Charles. “Yes,” added Andy, “ah not only undestan' myse'f, but wid da knowledge I has uv it, ah could make Whitehead's Jack a Moses!” “Stand still, then, and see!” said he. “Dat's good Bible talk!” responded Andy. “Well, what is we to do?” enquired Charles. “You must now go on and organize continually. It makes no difference when, nor where you are, so that the slaves are true and 41 trustworthy, as the scheme is adapted to all times and places.” “How we gwine do Henry, 'bout gittin' da things 'mong da boys?” enquired Andy. “All you have to do, is to find one good man or woman—I don't care which, so that they prove to be the right person—on a single plantation, and hold a seclusion and impart the secret to them, and make them the organizers for their own plantation, and they in like manner impart it to some other next to them, and so on. In this way it will spread like smallpox among them.” “Henry, you is fit fah leadah ah see,” complimentingly said Andy. “I greatly mistrust myself, brethren, but if I can't command, I can at least plan.” “Is they anything else for us to do Henry?” enquired Charles. “Yes, a very important part of your duties has yet to be stated. I now go as a runaway, and will be suspected of lurking about in the thickets, swamps and caves; then to make the ruse complete, just as often as you think it necessary, to make a good impression, you must kill a shoat, take a lamb, pig, turkey, goose, chickens, ham of bacon from the smoke house, a loaf of bread or crock of butter from the spring house, and throw them down into the old waste well at the back of the old quarters, always leaving the heads of the fowls lying about and the blood of the larger animals. Everything that is missed dont hesitate to lay it upon me, as a runaway, it will only cause them to have the less suspicion of your having such a design.” “That's it—the very thing!” said Charles. “An it so happens that they's an ole waste well on both Franks' and Potter's places, one for both of us.” “I hope Andy, you have no religious objections to this?” “It's a paut ah my 'ligion Henry, to do whateveh I bleve right, an' shall sholy do dis, God being my helpah!” “Now he's talkin!” said Charles. “You must make your religion subserve your interests, as your oppressors do theirs!” advised Henry. “They use the Scriptures to make you submit, by preaching to you the texts of 'obedience to your masters' and 'standing still to see the salavation,' and we must now begin to understand the Bible so as to make it of interest to us.” “Dat's gospel talk,” sanctioned Andy. “Is da anything else yeh want tell us boss—I calls 'im boss, 'case 'e aint nothing else but 'boss'—so we 42 can make 'ase an' git to wuck? 'case I feels like goin' at 'em now, me!” “Having accomplished our object, I think I have done, and must leave you tomorrow.” “When shall we hear from you, Henry?” enquired Charles. “Not until you shall see me again; when that will be, I don't know. You may see me in six months, and might not not in eighteen. I am determined, now that I am driven to it, to complete an organization in every slave state before I return, and have fixed two years as my utmost limit.” “Henry, tell me before we part, do you know anything about little Joe?” enquired Charles. “I do!” “Wha's da chile?” enquired Andy. “He's safe enough, on his way to Canada!” at which Charles and Andy laughed. “Little Joe is on 'is way to Canada?” said Andy. “Mighty young travelah!” “Yes,” replied Henry with a smile. “You're a-joking Henry?” said Charles, enquiringly. “I am serious, brethren,” replied he. “I do not joke in matters of this kind. I smiled because of Andy's surprise.” “How did 'e go?” further enquired Andy. “In company with his 'mother' who was waiting on her 'mistress!' ” replied he quaintly. “Eh heh!” exclaimed Andy. “I knows all 'bout it now; but whah'd da 'mammy' come from?” “I found one!” “Aint 'e high!” said Andy. “Well, brethren, my time is drawing to a close,” said Henry, rising to his feet. “O!” exclaimed Andy. “Ah like to forgot, has yeh any money Henry?” “Have either of you any?” “We has.” “How much?” “I got two-three hundred dollahs!” replied Andy. “An' so has I, Henry!” added Charles. “Then keep it, as I have two thousand dollars now around my waist, and you'll find use for all you've got, and more, as you will before 43 long have an opportunity of testing. Keep this studiously in mind and impress it as an important part of the scheme of organization, that they must have money, if they want to get free. Money will obtain them everything necessary by which to obtain their liberty. The money is within all of their reach if they only knew it was right to take it. God told the Egyptian slaves to 'borrow from their neighbors'—meaning their oppressors—'all their jewels;' meaning to take their money and wealth wherever they could lay hands upon it, and depart from Egypt. So you must teach them to take all the money they can get from their masters, to enable them to make the strike without a failure. I'll show you when we leave for the North, what money will do for you, right here in Mississippi. Bear this in mind; it is your certain passport through the white gap, as I term it.” “I means to take all ah can git; I bin doin' dat dis some time. Ev'ry time ole Pottah leave 'is money pus, I borrys some, an' e' all'as lays it on Miss Mary, but 'e think so much uh huh, dat anything she do is right wid 'im. Ef 'e 'spected me, an' Miss Mary say 'twant me, dat would be 'nough fah 'im.” “That's right!” said Henry. “I see you have been putting your own interpretation on the Scriptures, Andy, and as Charles will now have to take my place, he'll have still a much better opportunity than you, to “borrow from his master.' ” “You needn't fear, I'll make good use of my time!” replied Charles. The slaves now fell upon their knees in silent communion, all being affected to the shedding of tears, a period being put to their devotion by a sorrowful trembling of Henry's voice singing to the following touching words: Farewell, farewell, farewell! My loving friends farewell! Farewell old comrades in the cause, I leave you here, and journey on; And if I never more return, Farewell, I'm bound to meet you there! “One word before we part,” said Charles. “If we never should see you again, I suppose you intend to push on this scheme?” “Yes!” 44 “Insurrection shall be my theme! My watchword 'Freedom or the grave!' Until from Rappahannock's stream, To where the Cuato* waters lave, One simultaneous war cry Shall burst upon the midnight air! And rouse the tyrant but to sigh— Mid sadness, wailing, and despair!” Grasping each eagerly by the hand, the tears gushing from his eyes, with an humble bow, he bid them finally “farewell!” and the runaway was off through the forest. CHAPTER 12 The Discovery “It can't be; I won't believe it!” said Franks at the breakfast table on Sunday morning, after hearing that little Joe was missed. “He certainly must be lost in the shrubbery.” After breakfast a thorough search was made, none being more industrious than Ailcey in hunting the little fugitive, but without success. “When was he last seen?” enquired Franks. “He wah put to bed las' night while we wuh at de suppeh seh!” replied Ailcey. “There's something wrong about this thing, Mrs. Franks, and I'll be hanged if I don't ferret out the whole before I'm done with it!” said the Colonel. “I hope you don't suspect me as——” “Nonsense! my dear, not at all—nothing of the sort, but I do suspect respectable parties in another direction.” “Gracious, Colonel! Whom have you reference to? I'm sure I can't imagine.” “Well, well, we shall see! Ailcey, call Judy.” 45 “Maus Stephen, yeh sen' fah me?” enquired the old woman, puffing and blowing. “Yes, Judy. Do you know anything about little Joe? I want you to tell me the truth!” sternly enquired Franks. “Maus Stephen! I cah lie! so long as yeh had me, yu nah missus neveh knows me tell lie. No, bless de Laud! Ah sen' my soul to de ole boy dat way? No maus Stephen, ah uhdn give wat I feels in my soul——” “Well never mind, Judy, about your soul, but tell us about——” “Ah! maus Stephen, ah 'spects to shout wen de wul's on fiah! an——” “Tell us about the boy, Judy, and we'll hear about your religion another time.” “If you give her a little time, Colonel, I think she'll be able to tell about him!” suggested Mrs. Franks on seeing the old woman weeping. “Sho, mammy!” said Ailcey in a whisper with a nudge, standing behind her, “wat yeh stan' heah cryin' befo' dese ole wite folks fah!” “Come, come, Judy! what are you crying about! let us hear quickly what you've got to say. Don't be frightened!” “No maus Stephen, I's not feahed; ah could run tru troop a hosses an' face de debil! My soul's happy, my soul's on fiah! Whoo! Blessed Jesus! Ride on, King!” when the old woman tossed and tumbled about so dexterously, that the master and mistress considered themselves lucky in getting out of the way. “The old thing's crazy! We'll not be able to get anything out of her, Mrs. Franks.” “No maus Stephen, blessed be God a'mighty! I's not crazy, but sobeh as a judge! An——” “Then let us hear about little Joe, as you can understand so well what is said around you, and let us have no more of your whooping and nonsense, distracting the neighborhood!” “Blessed God! Blessed God! Laud sen' a nudah gale! O, fah a nudah showeh!” “I really believe she's crazy! We've now been here over an hour, and no nearer the information than before.” “I think she's better now!” said Mrs. Franks. “Judy, can you compose yourself long enough to answer my questions?” enquired Franks. 46 “O yes, mausta! ah knows wat I's 'bout, but w'en mausta Jesus calls, ebry body mus' stan' back, case 'e's 'bove all!” “That's all right, Judy, all right; but let us hear about little Joe—do you know anything about him, where he is, or how he was taken away?” “ 'E wah dah Sattiday night, maus Stephen.” “What time, Judy, on Saturday evening was he there?” “W'en da wah eatin suppeh, seh.” “How do you know, when you were at the lower quarters, and he in your hut?” “ 'E wah put to bed den.” “Who put him to bed—you?” “No, seh, Ailcey.” “Ailcey—who went with her, any one?” “Yes seh, Van Wintah Ben went wid uh.” “Van Winter's Ben! I thought we'd get at the thieves presently; I knew I'd ferret it out! Well now, Judy, I ask you as a Christian, and expect you to act with me as one Christian with another—has not Mrs. Van Winter been talking to you about this boy?” “No seh, nebeh!” “Nor to Henry?” “No seh!” “Did not she, to your knowledge, send Ben there that night to steal away little Joe?” “No, seh!” “Did you not hear Ailcey tell some one, or talking in her sleep, say that Mrs. Van Winter had something to do with the abduction of that boy?” “Maus Stephen, ah do'n undehstan' dat duckin uh duckshun, dat w'at yeh call it—dat big wud!” “O! 'abduction' means stealing away a person, Judy.” “Case ah waun gwine tell nothin 'bout it.” “Well, what do you know, Judy?” “As dah's wud a troof in me, ah knows nothin' 'bout it.” “Well, Judy, you can go now. She's an honest old creature, I believe!” said Franks, as the old fat cook turned away. “Yes, poor old black fat thing! She's religious to a fault,” replied Mrs. Franks. “Well, Ailcey, what do you know about it?” enquired the master. 47 “Nothin' seh, o'ny Mammy Judy ask me toat 'im up to da hut an' put 'im in bed.” “Well, did you do it?” “Yes, seh!” “Did Ben go with you?” “Yes, seh!” “Did he return with you to the lower quarters?” “Yes, seh!” “Did he not go back again, or did he remain in the house?” “ 'E stay in.” “Did you not see some one lurking about the house when you took the boy up to the hut?” “Ah tot ah heahn some un in da bushes, but Ben say 'twan no one.” “Now Ailcey, don't you know who that was?” “No, seh!” “Was'nt it old Joe?” “No, seh, lef' 'im in de low quahteh.” “Was it Henry?” “Dun no, seh!” “Wasn't it Mrs. Van Winter's——” “Why Colonel!” exclaimed Mrs. Franks with surprise. “Negroes, I mean! You didn't let me finish the sentence, my dear!” explained he, correcting his error. “Ah dun'o, seh!” “Now tell me candidly, my girl, who and what you thought it was at the time?” “Ah do'n like to tell!” replied the girl, looking down. “Tell, Ailcey! Who do you think it was, and what they were after?” enquired Mrs. Franks. “Ah do'n waun tell, missus!” “Tell, you goose you! did you see any one?” continued Franks. “Ah jis glance 'em.” “Was the person close to you?” further enquired Mrs. Franks. “Yes, um, da toched me on da shouldeh an' run.” “Well, why don't you tell then, Ailcey, who you thought it was, and what they were after, you stubborn jade you, speak!” stormed Franks, stamping his foot. “Don't get out of temper, Colonel! make some allowance for her 48 under the circumstances. Now tell, Ailcey, what you thought at the time?” mildly asked Mrs. Franks. “Ah tho't t'wah maus Stephen afteh me.” “Well, if you know nothing about it, you may go now!” gruffly replied her master. “These Negroes are not to be trusted. They will endeavor to screen each other if they have the least chance to do so. I'll sell that girl!” “Colonel, don't be hasty in this matter, I beg of you!” said Mrs. Franks earnestly. “I mean to let her go to the man she most hates, that's Crow.” “Why do you think she hates Crow so badly?” “By the side looks she gives him when he comes into the house.” “I pray you then, Colonel, to attempt no more auction sales, and you may avoid unpleasant association in that direction.” “Yes, by the by, speaking of the auction, I really believe Mrs. Van Winter had something to do with the abduction of that little Negro.” “I think you do her wrong, Colonel Franks; she's our friend, and aside from this, I don't think her capable of such a thing.” “Such friendship is worse than open enmity, my dear, and should be studiously shunned.” “I must acquit her, Colonel, of all agency in this matter.” “Well, mark what I tell you, Mrs. Franks, you'll yet hear more of it, and that too at no distant day.” “Well it may be, but I can't think so.” “'May be'! I'm sure so. And more: I believe that boy has been induced to take advantage of my clemency, and run away. I'll make an example of him, because what one Negro succeeds in doing, another will attempt. I'll have him at any cost. Let him go on this way and there won't be a Negro in the neighborhood presently.” “Whom do you mean, Colonel?” “I mean that ingrate Henry, that's who.” “Henry gone!” “I have no doubt of it at all, as he had a pass to Woodville and Jackson; and now that the boy is stolen by someone, I've no doubt himself. I might have had some leniency towards him had he not committed a theft, a crime of all others the most detestable in my estimation.” “And Henry is really gone?” with surprise again enquired Mrs. Franks. 49 “He is, my dear, and you appear to be quite inquisitive about it!” remarked Franks as he thought he observed a concealed smile upon her lips. “I am inquisitive, Colonel, because whatever interests you should interest me.” “By Monday evening, hanged if I don't know all about this thing. Ailcey, call Charles to get my saddle horse!” “Charles ain' heah, maus Stephen.” “Where's old Joe?” “At de hut, seh.” “Tell him to saddle Oscar immediately, and bring him to the door.” “Yes, seh!” replied the girl, lightly tripping away. The horse was soon at the door, and with his rider cantering away. “Tony, what is Mammy Judy about?” enquired Mrs. Franks as evening approached. “She's sif'en meal, missus, to make mush fah ouah suppah.” “You must tell mammy not to forget me, Tony, in the distribution of her mush and milk.” “Yes, missus, ah tell uh right now!” when away ran Tony bearing the message, eager as are all children to be the agents of an act of kindness. Mammy Judy, smiling, received the message with the assurance of “Yes, dat she shall hab much as she want!” when, turning about, she gave strict orders that Ailcey neglect not to have a china bowl in readiness to receive the first installment of the hasty pudding. The hut of Mammy Judy served as a sort of headquarters on Saturday and Sunday evenings for the slaves from the plantation, and those in town belonging to the “estate,” who this evening enjoyed a hearty laugh at the expense of Daddy Joe. Slaves are not generally supplied with light in their huts; consequently, except from the fat of their meat and that gathered about the kitchen with which they make a “lamp,” and the use of pinewood tapers, they eat and do everything about their dwellings in the dark. Hasty pudding for the evening being the bill of fare, all sat patiently awaiting the summon of Mammy Judy, some on blocks, some on logs of wood, some on slab benches, some on inverted buckets and half-barrel wash tubs, and whatever was convenient, while many of the girls and other young people were seated on the floor around against the wall. 50 “Hush, chilen!” admonished Mammy Judy, after carefully seeing that each one down to Tony had been served with a quota from the kettle. “Laud, make us truly tankful fah wat we 'bout to 'ceive!” petitioned Daddy Joe with uplifted hands. “Top dah wid yo' nause an' nonsense ole people cah heah deh yeahs to eat!” admonished the old man as he took the pewter dish between his knees and commenced an earnest discussion of its contents. “Do'n yeh heah me say hush dah? Do'n yeh heah!” “Joe!” was the authoritative voice from without. “Sah!” “Take my horse to the stable!” “Yes, sah!” responded the old man, sitting down his bowl of mush and milk on the hearth in the corner of the jam. “Do'n any on yeh toch dat, yeh heah?” “We ain gwine to, Daddy Joe,” replied the young people. “Huccum de young folks, gwine eat yo' mush and milk? Sho, ole man, g'long whah yeh gwine, ad' let young folk 'lone!” retorted Mammy Judy. On returning from the stable, in his hurry the old man took up the bowl of a young man who sat it on his stool for the moment. “Yoheh, Daddy Joe, dat my mush!” said the young man. “Huccum dis yone?” replied the old man. “Wy, ah put it dah; yeh put yone in de chimbly connoh.” “Ah! Dat eh did!” exclaimed he, taking up the bowl eating heartily. “Wat dat yeh all been doin' heah? Some on yeh young folks been prankin' long wid dis mush an' milk!” continued the old man, champing and chewing in a manner which indicated something more solid than mush and milk. “Deed we did'n, Daddy Joe; did'n do nothin' to yo' mush an' milk, so we did'n!” replied Ailcey, whose word was always sufficient with the old people. “Hi, what dis in heah! Sumpen mighty crisp!” said Daddy Joe, still eating heartily and now and again blowing something from his mouth like coarse meal husks. “Sumpen heah mighty crisp, ah tells yeh! Ole umin, light dat pine knot dah; so dahk yeh cah'n see to talk. Git light dah quick ole umin! Sumpen heah mighty crisp in dis mush an' milk!—Mighty crisp!” 51 “Good Laud! see dah now! Ah tole yeh so!” exclaimed Mammy Judy when, on producing a light, the bowl was found to be partially filled with large black house roaches. “Reckon Daddy Joe do'n tank'im fah dat!” said little Tony, referring to the blessing of the old man; amidst an outburst of tittering and snickering among the young people. Daddy Joe lost his supper, when the slaves retired for the evening. CHAPTER 13 Perplexity Early on Monday morning Colonel Franks arose to start for Woodville and Jackson in search of the fugitive. “My dear, is Ailcey up? Please call Tony,” said Mrs. Franks, the boy soon appearing before his mistress. “Tony, call Ailcey,” continued she, “your master is up and going to the country.” “Missus Ailcey ain' dah!” replied the boy, returning in haste from the nursery. “Certainly she is; did you go into the nursery?” “Yes, um!” “Are the children there?” “Yes, um, boph on 'em.” “Then she can't be far—she'll be in presently.” “Missus, she ain' come yit,” repeated the boy after a short absence. “Did you look in the nursery again?” “Yes, um!” “Are the children still in bed?” “Yes, um, boph sleep, only maus George awake.” “You mean one asleep and the other awake!” said Mrs. Franks, smiling. “Yes um boph wake!” replied the boy. “Didn't you tell me, Tony, that your master George only was awake?” asked the mistress. “Miss Matha sleep fus, den she wake up and talk to maus George,” explained the boy, his master laughing, declared that a Negro's skull was too thick to comprehend anything. 52 “Don't mistake yourself, Colonel!” replied Mrs. Franks. “That boy is anything but a blockhead, mind that!” “My dear, can't you see something about that girl?” said the Colonel. “Run quickly, Tony, and see if Ailcey is in the hut,” bade Mrs. Franks. “Dear me,” continued she, “since the missing of little Joe, she's all gossip, and we needn't expect much of her until the thing has died away.” “She'll not gossip after today, my dear!” replied the Colonel decisively, “as I'm determined to put her in my pocket in time, before she is decoyed away by that ungrateful wretch, who is doubtless ready for anything, however vile, for revenge.” Ailcey was a handsome black girl, graceful and intelligent, but having been raised on the place, had not the opportunity of a house maid for refinement. The Colonel, having had a favorable opinion of her as a servant, frequently requested that she be taken from the field, long before it had been done. This had not the most favorable impression upon the mind of his lady, who since the morning of the interview, the day before, had completely turned against the girl. Mrs. Franks was an amiable lady and lenient mistress, but did a slave offend, she might be expected to act as a mistress; and still more, she was a woman; but concerning Ailcey she was mistaken, as a better and more pure-hearted female slave there was not to be found; and as true to her mistress and her honor, as was Maggie herself. “Missus, she ain't dare nudder! aun' Judy ain seed 'er from las' night!” said the boy who came running up the stairs. “Then call Charles immediately!” ordered she; when away went he and shortly came Charles. “Servant, mist'ess!” saluted Charles, as he entered her presence. “Charles, do you know anything of Ailcey?” enquired she. “No mist'ess I don't.” “When did you see her last?” “Last night, ma'm.” “Was she in company with anyone?” “Yes ma'm, Potter's Rachel.” “What time in the evening was it, Charles?” “After seven o'clock, ma'm.” 53 “O, she was home after that and went to bed in the nursery, where she has been sleeping for several nights.” “My dear, this thing must be probed to the bottom at once! things are taking such a strange course, that we don't know whom to trust. I'll be hanged if I understand it!” The carriage being ordered, they went directly down to 'squire Potter's. “Good morning Mrs. Potter!—you will pardon us for the intrusion at so early an hour, but as the errand may concern us all, I'll not stop to be ceremonious—do I find the 'squire in?” The answer being in the affirmative, a servant being in attendance, the old gentleman soon made his appearance. “Good morning, Colonel and Madam Franks!” saluted he. “Good morning, 'squire! I shan't be ceremonious, and to give you a history of my errand, and to make a short story of a long one, we'll 'make a lump job of it,' to use a homely phrase.” “I know the 'squire will be interested!” added Mrs. Franks. “No doubt of it at all, ma'm!” replied Mrs. Potter, who seemed to anticipate them. “It is this,” resumed the Colonel. “On Friday I gave my boy Henry verbal permission to go to the country, when he pretended to leave. On Saturday evening during the Negro-gathering at the old quarters, my little Negro boy Joe was stolen away, and on last evening, our Negro girl Ailcey the nurse, cleared out, and it seems was last seen in company with your Negro girl Rachel.” “Titus, call Rachel there! No doubt but white men are at the bottom of it,” said Potter. “Missus, heah I is!” drawled the girl awkwardly, with a curtsy. “Speak to your master there; he wants you,” ordered Mrs. Potter. “Mausta!” saluted the girl. “Rachel, my girl, I want you to tell me, were you with Colonel Franks' black girl Ailcey on last evening?” “Yes seh, I wah.” “Where, Rachel?” continued the master. “Heah seh, at ouah house.” “Where did you go to?” “We go down to docteh Denny.” “What for—what took you down to Dr. Denny's, Rachel?” “Went 'long wid Ailcey.” 54 “What did Ailcey go there for—do you know?” “Went dah to see Craig' Polly.” “Craig's Polly, which of Mr. Craig's Negro girls is that?” “Dat un w'ot mos' white.” “Well, was Polly there?” “She waun dah w'en we go, but she soon come.” “Why did you go to Dr. Denny's to meet Polly?” “Ailcey say Polly go'n to meet uh dah.” “Well, did they leave there when you did?” “Yes, seh.” “Where did you go to then?” “I come home, seh.” “Where did they go?” “Da say da go'n down undah da Hill.” “Who else was with them besides you?” “No un, seh.” “Was there no man with them, when they left for under the Hill?” “No, seh.” “Did you see no man about at all, Rachel?” “No, seh.” “Now don't be afraid to tell: was there no white person at all spoke to you when together last night?” “None but some white gent'men come up an' want walk wid us, same like da al'as do we black girls w'en we go out.” “Did the girls seem to be acquainted and glad to see them?” “No seh, the girls run, and da gent'men cus——” “Never mind that, Rachel, you can go now,” concluded her master. “Well, 'squire, hanged if this thing mus'nt be stopped! Four slaves in less than that many days gone from under our very eyes, and we unable to detect them! It's insufferable, and I believe whites to be at the head of it! I have my suspicions on a party who stands high in the community, and——” “Now Colonel, if you please!” interrupted Mrs. Franks. “Well, I suppose we'll have for the present to pass that by,” replied he. “Indeed, something really should be done!” said the 'squire. “Yes, and that quickly, if we would keep our Negroes to prevent us from starving.” 55 “I think the thing should at once be seen into; what say you, Colonel?” “As I have several miles to ride this morning,” said Franks, looking at his watch, it now being past nine o'clock, “I must leave so as to be back in the evening. Any steps that may be taken before my return, you have the free use of my name. Good morning!” A few minutes and the Colonel was at his own door, astride of a horse, and on his way to Woodville. CHAPTER 14 Gad and Gossip This day the hut of Mammy Judy seemed to be the licensed resort for all the slaves of the town; and even many whites were seen occasionally to drop in and out, as they passed along. Everyone knew the residence of Colonel Franks, and many of the dusky inhabitants of the place were solely indebted to the purse-proud occupants of the “great house” for their introduction to that part of Mississippi. For years he and Major Armsted were the only reliable traders upon whom could be depended for a choice gang of field Negroes and other marketable people. And not only this section, but the whole Mississippi Valley to some extent was to them indebted. First as young men the agents of Woolford, in maturer age their names became as household words and known as the great proprietary Mississippi or Georgia Negro-traders. Domestic service seemed for the time suspended, and little required at home to do, as the day was spent as a kind of gala-day, in going about from place to place talking of everything. Among the foremost of these was Mammy Judy, for although she partially did, and was expected to stay and be at home today, and act as an oracle, yet she merely stole a little time to run over to Mrs. Van Winter's, step in at 'squire Potter's to speak a word to Milly, drop by Dr. Denny's, and just poke in her head at Craig's a moment. “Ah been tellin' on 'em so! All along ah been tellin' on 'em, but da uden bleve me!” soliloquized Mammy Judy, when the first dash of news through the boy Tony reached her, that Ailcey had gone and 56 taken with her some of 'squire Potter's people, several of Dr. Denny's, a gang of Craig's, and half of Van Winter's. “Dat jis wat ah been tellin' on 'em all along, but da uden bleve me!” concluded she. “Yeah heah de news!” exclaimed Potter's Minney to Van Winter's Biddy. “I heah dat Ailcey gone!” replied Biddy. “Dat all; no mo?” enquired the girl with a high turban of Madras on her head. “I heahn little Joe go too!” “Didn yeh heah dot Denny' Sookey, an' Craig' Polly, took a whole heap uh Potteh' people an' clah'd out wid two po' white mens, an' dat da all seen comin' out Van Winteh de old ablish'neh, soon in de monin' fo' day?” “No!” replied the good-natured, simple-hearted Biddy, “I did'n!” “Yes, sho's yeh baun dat true, case uhly dis monin' cunel Frank' an' lady come see mausta—and yeh know 'e squiah an' make de law—an' mauster ghin 'em papehs, an' da go arter de Judge to put heh in jail!” “Take who to jail?” “Wy, dat ole ablish'neh, Miss Van Winteh! Ah wish da all dead, dese ole ablish'nehs, case da steal us an' sell us down souph to haud maustas, w'en we got good places. Any how she go'n to jail, an' I's glad!” Looking seriously at her, Biddy gave a long sigh, saying nothing to commit herself, but going home, communicated directly to her mistress that which she heard, as Mrs. Van Winter was by all regarded as a friend to the Negro race, and at that time the subject of strong suspicion among the slaveholders of the neighborhood. Eager to gad and gossip, from place to place the girl Minney passed about relating the same to each and all with whom she chanced to converse, they imparting to others the same strange story, until reaching the ears of intelligent whites who had heard no other version, it spread through the city as a statement of fact. Learning as many did by sending to the house, that the Colonel that day had gone in search of his slaves, the statement was confirmed as having come from Mrs. Franks, who was known to be a firm friend of Mrs. Van Winter. “Upon my word!” said Captain Grason on meeting Sheriff Hughes. “Sheriff, things are coming to a pretty pass!” 57 “What's that, Captain?” enquired the Sheriff. “Have you not heard the news yet, concerning the Negroes?” “Why, no! I've been away to Vicksburg the last ten days, and just getting back.” “O, Heavens! we're no longer safe in our own houses. Why, sir, we're about being overwhelmed by an infamous class of persons who live in our midst, and eat at our tables!” “You surprise me, Captain! what's the matter?” “Sir, it would take a week to relate the particulars, but our slaves are running off by wholesale. On Sunday night a parcel of Colonel Franks' Negroes left, a lot of Dr. Denny's, some of 'squire Potter's, and a gang of Craig's, aided by white men, whom together with the Negroes were seen before day in the morning coming out of the widow Van Winters, who was afterwards arrested, and since taken before the judge on a writ of habeas corpus, but the circumstances against her being so strong she was remanded for trial, which so far strengthens the accusation. I know not where this thing will end!” “Surprising indeed, sir!” replied Hughes. “I had not heard of it before, but shall immediately repair to her house, and learn all the facts in the case. I am well acquainted with Mrs. Van Winter—in fact she is a relation of my wife—and must hasten. Good day, sir!” On ringing the bell, a quick step brought a person to the door, when on being opened, the Sheriff found himself in the warm embraces of the kind-hearted and affectionate Mrs. Van Winter herself. After the usual civilities, she was the first to introduce the subject, informing him of their loss by their mutual friends Colonel Franks and lady, with others, and no surprise was greater than that on hearing the story current concerning herself. Mammy Judy was as busy as she well could be, in hearing and telling news among the slaves who continually came and went through the day. So overwhelmed with excitement was she, that she had little else to say in making a period, then “All a long ah been tellin' on yeh so, but yeh uden bleve me!” Among the many who thronged the hut was Potter's Milly. She in person is black, stout and fat, bearing a striking resemblance to the matronly old occupant Mammy Judy. For two hours or more letting a number come in, gossip, and pass out, only to be immediately succeeded by another; who like the old country woman who for the 58 first time in visiting London all day stood upon the sidewalk of the principal thoroughfare waiting till the crowd of people and cavalcade of vehicles passed, before she made the attempt to cross the street; she sat waiting till a moment would occur by which in private to impart a secret to her friend alone. That moment did at last arrive. “Judy!” said the old woman in a whisper. “Ah been waitin' all day long to see yeh fah sumpen' ticlar!” “W'at dat, Milly?” whispered Mammy Judy scarcely above her breath. “I's gwine too!” and she hurried away to prepare supper for the white folks, before they missed her, though she had been absent full two hours and a half, another thirty minutes being required for the fat old woman to reach the house. “Heah dat now!” whispered Mammy Judy. “Ah tole yeh so!” “Well, my dear, not a word of that graceless dog, the little Negro, nor that girl,” said Franks who had just returned from the country, “but I am fully compensated for the disappointment, on learning of the arrest and imprisonment of that——!” “Who, Colonel?” interrupted his wife. “I hope after this you'll be willing to set some estimation on my judgment—I mean your friend Mrs. Van Winter the abolitionist!” “I beg your pardon, Colonel, as nothing is farther from the truth! From whom did you receive that intelligence?” “I met Captain Grason on his way to Woodville, who informed me that it was current in town, and you had corroborated the statement. Did you see him?” “Nothing of the kind, sir, and it has not been more than half an hour since Mrs. Van Winter left here, who heartily sympathizes with us, though she has her strange notions that black people have as much right to freedom as white.” “Well, my dear, we'll drop the subject!” concluded the Colonel with much apparent disappointment. The leading gentlemen of the town and neighborhood assembled inaugurating the strictest vigilant police regulations, when after free and frequent potations of brandy and water, of which there was no scarcity about the Colonel's mansion, the company separated, being much higher spirited, if not better satisfied, than when they met in council. 59 This evening Charles and Andy met each other in the street, but in consequence of the strict injunction on the slaves by the patrol law recently instituted, they only made signs as they passed, intending to meet at a designated point. But the patrol reconnoitred so closely in their track, they were driven entirely from their purpose, retiring to their homes for the night. CHAPTER 15 Interchange of Opinion The landing of a steamer on her downward trip brought Judge Ballard and Major Armsted to Natchez. The Judge had come to examine the country, purchase a cotton farm, and complete the arrangements of an interest in the “Merchantman.” Already the proprietor of a large estate in Cuba, he was desirous of possessing a Mississippi cotton place. Disappointed by the absence of his wife abroad, he was satisfied to know that her object was accomplished. Major Armsted was a man of ripe intelligence, acquired by years of rigid experience and close observation, rather than literary culture, though his educational attainments as a business man were quite respectable. He for years had been the partner in business with Colonel Stephen Franks. In Baltimore, Washington City, Annapolis, Richmond, Norfolk, Charlestown, and Winchester, Virginia, a prison or receptacle for coffle-gangs of slaves purchased and sold in the market, comprised their principal places of business in the slaveowning states of the Union. The Major was a great jester, full of humor, and fond of a good joke, ever ready to give and take such even from a slave. A great common sense man, by strict attention to men and things, and general observation, had become a philosopher among his fellows. “Quite happy to meet you, Judge, in these parts!” greeted Franks. “Wonder you could find your way so far south, especially at such a period, these being election times!” “Don't matter a bit, as he's not up for anything I believe just now, except for Negro-trading! And in that he is quite a proselyte, and heretic to the teachings of his Northern faith!” jocosely remarked Armsted. 60 “Don't mistake me, gentlemen, because it was the incident of my life to be born in a nonslaveholding state. I'm certain that I am not at all understood as I should be on this question!” earnestly replied the Judge. “The North has given you a bad name, Judge, and it's difficult to separate yourself now from it, holding the position that you do, as one of her ablest jurists,” said Armsted. “Well, gentlemen!” seriously replied the Judge. “As regards my opinion of Negro slavery, the circumstances which brought me here, my large interest and responsibility in the slave-labor products of Cuba, should be, I think, sufficient evidence of my fidelity to Southern principles, to say nothing of my official records, which modesty should forbid my reference to.” “Certainly, certainly, Judge! The Colonel is at fault. He has lost sight of the fact that you it was who seized the first runaway Negro by the throat and held him by the compromise grasp until we Southern gentlemen sent for him and had him brought back!” “Good, good, by hookie!” replied the Colonel, rubbing his hands together. “I hope I'm understood, gentlemen!” seriously remarked the Judge. “I think so, Judge, I think so!” replied Armsted, evidently designing a full commitment on the part of the Judge. “And if not, a little explanation will set us right.” “It is true that I have not before been engaged in the slave trade, because until recently I had conscientious scruples about the thing—and I suppose I'm allowed the right of conscience as well as other folks,” smilingly said the Judge, “never having purchased but for peopling my own plantation. But a little sober reflection set me right on that point. It is plain that the right to buy implies the right to hold, also to sell; and if there be right in the one, there is in the other; the premise being right, the conclusion follows as a matter of course. I have therefore determined, not only to buy and hold, but buy and sell also. As I have heretofore been interested for the trade I will become interested in it.” “Capital, capital, by George! That's conclusive. Charles! A pitcher of cool water here; Judge, take another glass of brandy.” “Good, very good!” said Armsted. “So far, but there is such a thing as feeding out of two cribs—present company, you know, and so— 61 ahem!—therefore we should like to hear the Judge's opinion of equality, what it means anyhow. I'm anxious to learn some of the doctrines of human rights, not knowing how soon I may be called upon to practice them, as I may yet marry some little Yankee girl, full of her Puritan notions. And I'm told an old bachelor 'can't come it' up that way, except he has a 'pocket full of rocks,' and can talk philanthropy like old Wilberforce.” “Here, gentlemen, I beg to make an episode, before replying to Major Armsted,” suggested the Judge. “His jest concerning the Yankee girl reminds me—and I hope it may not be amiss in saying so—that my lady is the daughter of a clergyman, brought up amidst the sand of New England, and I think I'll not have to go from the present company to prove her a good slaveholder. So the Major may see that we northerners are not all alike.” “How about the Compromise measures, Judge? Stand up to the thing all through, and no flinching.” “My opinion, sir, is a matter of record, being the first judge before whom a case was tested, which resulted in favor of the South. And I go further than this; I hold as a just construction of the law, that not only has the slaveholder a right to reclaim his slave when and wherever found, but by its provision every free black in the country, North and South, are liable to enslavement by any white person. They are freemen by sufferance or slaves-at-large, whom any white person may claim at discretion. It was a just decision of the Supreme Court—though I was in advance of it by action—that persons of African descent have no rights that white men are bound to respect!” “Judge Ballard, with this explanation, I am satisfied; indeed as a Southern man I would say, that you've conceded all that I could ask, and more than we expected. But this is a legal disquisition; what is your private opinion respecting the justice of the measures?” “I think them right, sir, according to our system of government.” “But how will you get away from your representative system, Judge? In this your blacks are either voters, or reckoned among the inhabitants.” “Very well, sir, they stand in the same relation as your Negroes. In some of the states they are permitted to vote, but can't be voted for, and this leaves them without any political rights at all. Suffrage, sir, is one thing, franchisement another; the one a mere privilege—a thing 62 permitted—the other a right inherent, that which is inviolable—cannot be interfered with. And my good sir, enumeration is a national measure, for which we are not sectionally responsible.” “Well, Judge, I'm compelled to admit that you are a very good Southerner; upon the whole, you are severe upon the Negroes; you seem to allow them no chance.” “I like Negroes well enough in their place!” “How can you reconcile yourself to the state of things in Cuba, where the blacks enter largely into the social system?” “I don't like it at all, and never could become reconciled to the state of things there. I consider that colony as it now stands, a moral pestilence, a blighting curse, and it is useless to endeavor to disguise the fact; Cuba must cease to be a Spanish colony, and become American territory. Those mongrel Creoles are incapable of self-government, and should be compelled to submit to the United States.” “Well, Judge, admit the latter part of that, as I rather guess we are all of the same way of thinking—how do you manage to get on with society when you are there?” “I cannot for a moment tolerate it! One of the hateful customs of the place is that you must exchange civilities with whomsoever solicits it, consequently, the most stupid and ugly Negro you meet in the street may ask for a 'light' from your cigar.” “I know it, and I invariably comply with the request. How do you act in such cases?” “I invariably comply, but as invariably throw away my cigar! If this were all, it would not be so bad, then the idea of meeting Negroes and mulattoes at the levees of the Captain General is intolerable! It will never do to permit this state of things so near our own shores.” “Why throw away the cigar, Judge? What objection could there be to it because a negro took a light from it?” “Because they are certain to take hold of it with their black fingers!” “Just as I've always heard, Judge Ballard. You Northerners are a great deal more fastidious about Negroes than we of the South, and you'll pardon me if I add, 'more nice than wise,' to use a homily. Did ever it occur to you that black fingers made that cigar, before it entered your white lips!—all tobacco preparations being worked by 63 Negro hands in Cuba—and very frequently in closing up the wrapper, they draw it through their lips to give it tenacity.” “The deuce! Is that a fact, Major!” “Does that surprise you, Judge? I'm sure the victuals you eat is cooked by black hands, the bread kneaded and made by black hands, and the sugar and molasses you use, all pass through black hands, or rather the hands of Negroes pass through them; at least you could not refrain from thinking so, had you seen them as I have frequently, with arms full length immersed in molasses.” “Well, Major, truly there are some things we are obliged to swallow, and I suppose these are among them.” “Though a Judge, Your Honor, you perceive that there are some things you have not learned.” “True, Major, true; and I like the Negro well enough in his place, but there is a disposition peculiar to the race, to shove themselves into the notice of the whites.” “Not peculiar to them, Judge, but common to mankind. The black man desires association with the white, because the latter is regarded his superior. In the South it is the poor white man with the wealthy, and in Europe the common with the gentlefolks. In the North you have not made these distinctions among the whites, which prevents you from noticing this trait among yourselves.” “Tell me, Major, as you seem so well to understand them, why a Negro swells so soon into importance?” “Simply because he's just like you, Judge, and I! It is simply a manifestation of human nature in an humble position, the same as that developed in the breast of a conqueror. Our strictures are not just on this unfortunate race, as we condemn in them that which we approve in ourselves. Southerner as I am, I can joke with a slave just because he is a man; some of them indeed, fine warmhearted fellows, and intelligent, as was the Colonel's Henry.” “I can't swallow that, Major! Joking with a Negro is rather too large a dose for me!” “Let me give you an idea of my feeling about these things: I have on my place two good-natured black fellows, full of pranks and jokes—Bob and Jef. Passing along one morning Jef was approaching me, when just as we met and I was about to give him the time of day, he made a sudden halt, placing himself in the attitude of a pugilist, 64 grasping the muscle of his left arm, looking me full in the eyes exclaimed, 'Maus Army, my arm aches for you!' when stepping aside he gave the path for me to pass by.” “Did you not rebuke him for the impudence?” “I laid my hand upon his shoulders as we passed, and gave him a laugh instead. At another time, passing along in company, Bob was righting up a section of fence, when Jef came along. 'How is yeh, Jef?' saluted Bob, without a response. Supposing he had not seen me, I halloed out: 'How are you Jef!' but to this, he made no reply. A gentleman in company with me who enjoyed the joke, said: 'Why Jef, you appear to be above speaking to your old friends!' Throwing his head slightly down with a rocking motion in his walk, elongating his mouth after the manner of a sausage—which by the way needed no improvement in that direction—in a tone of importance still looking down he exclaimed, 'I totes a meat!' He had indeed, a fine gammon on his shoulder from which that evening, he doubtless intended a good supper with his wife, which made him feel important, just as Judge Ballard feels, when he receives the news that 'sugar is up,' and contemplates large profits from his crop of that season.” “I'll be plagued, Major, if your love of the ludicrous don't induce you to give the freest possible license to your Negroes! I wonder they respect you!” “One thing, Judge, I have learned by my intercourse with men, that pleasantry is the life and soul of the social system; and good treatment begets more labor from the slave than bad. A smile from the master is better than cross looks, and one crack of a joke with him is worth a hundred cracks of the whip. Only confide in him, and let him be satisfied that you respect him as a man, he'll work himself to death to prove his worthiness.” “After all, Major, you still hold them as slaves, though you claim for them the common rights of other people!” “Certainly! And I would just as readily hold a white as a black in slavery, were it the custom and policy of the country to do so. It is all a matter of self-interest with me; and though I am morally opposed to slavery, yet while the thing exists, I may as well profit by it, as others.” “Well, Major,” concluded the Judge, “let us drop the subject, and I 65 hope that the free interchange of opinion will prove no detriment to our future prospects and continued friendship.” “Not at all, sir, not at all!” concluded the Major with a smile. CHAPTER 16 Solicitude and Amusement Mrs. Franks sought the earliest opportunity for an interview with the Major concerning her favorite, Maggie. The children now missed her, little George continued fretful, and her own troubled soul was pressed with anxiety. On conversing with the Major, to her great surprise she learned that the maid had been sold to a stranger, which intelligence he received from Mrs. Ballard herself, whom he met on the quay as he left Havana. The purchaser was a planter formerly of Louisiana, a bachelor by the name of Peter Labonier. This person resided twelve miles from Havana, the proprietor of a sugar estate. The apprehension of Mrs. Franks, on learning these facts, were aroused to a point of fearful anxiety. These fears were mitigated by the probable chance, in her favor by a change of owners, as his first day's possession of her, turned him entirely against her. He would thus most probably part with her, which favored the desires of Mrs. Franks. She urged upon the Major as a favor to herself, to procure the release of Maggie, by his purchase and enfranchisement with free papers of unconditional emancipation. To this Major Armsted gave the fullest assurance, at the earliest possible opportunity. The company were to meet at no distant day, when he hoped to execute the orders. “How did you leave cousin Arabella, Judge?” enquired Mrs. Franks, as he and the Colonel entered the parlor directly from the back porch, where they had been engaged for the last two hours in close conversation. “Very well, Maria, when last heard from; a letter reaching me just before I left by the kindness of our mutual friend the Major. By the way, your girl and she did not get on so well, I be——!” 66 An admonitory look from Franks arrested the subject before the sentence was completed. Every reference to the subject was carefully avoided, though the Colonel ventured to declare that henceforth towards his servants, instead of leniency, he intended severity. They were becoming every day more and more troublesome, and less reliable. He intended, in the language of his friend the Judge, to “lay upon them a heavy hand” in future. “I know your sentiments on this point,” he said in reply to an admonition from Armsted, “and I used to entertain the same views, but experience has taught me better.” “I shall not argue the point Colonel, but let you have your own way!” replied Armsted. “Well, Judge, as you wish to become a Southerner; you must first 'see the sights,' as children say, and learn to get used to them. I wish you to ride out with me to Captain Grason's, and you'll see some rare sport; the most amusing thing I ever witnessed,” suggested Franks. “What is it?” enquired the Major. “The effect is lost by previous knowledge of the thing,” replied he. “This will suit you, Armsted, as you're fond of Negro jokes.” “Then, Colonel, let's be off,” urged the Major. “Off it is!” replied Franks, as he invited the gentlemen to take a seat in the carriage already at the door. “Halloo, halloo, here you are, Colonel! Why Major Armsted, old fellow, 'pon my word!” saluted Grason, grasping Armsted by the hand as they entered the porch. “Judge Ballard, sir,” said Armsted. “Just in time for dinner, gentlemen! Be seated,” invited he, holding the Judge by the hand. “Welcome to Mississippi, Sir! What's up, gentlemen?” “We've come out to witness some rare sport the Colonel has been telling us about,” replied the Major. “Blamed if I don't think the Colonel will have me advertised as a showman presently! I've got a queer animal here; I'll show him to you after dinner,” rejoined Grason. “Gentlemen, help yourself to brandy and water.” Dinner over, the gentlemen walked into the pleasure grounds, in the rear of the mansion. 67 “Nelse, where is Rube? Call him!” said Grason to a slave lad, brother to the boy he sent for. Shortly there came forward, a small black boy about eleven years of age, thin visage, projecting upper teeth, rather ghastly consumptive look, and emaciated condition. The child trembled with fear as he approached the group. “Now gentlemen,” said Grason, “I'm going to show you a sight!” having in his hand a long whip, the cracking of which he commenced, as a ringmaster in the circus. The child gave him a look never to be forgotten; a look beseeching mercy and compassion. But the decree was made, and though humanity quailed in dejected supplication before him, the command was imperative, with no living hand to stay the pending consequences. He must submit to his fate, and pass through the ordeal of training. “Wat maus gwine do wid me now? I know wat maus gwine do,” said this miserable child, “he gwine make me see sights!” when going down on his hands and feet, he commenced trotting around like an animal. “Now gentlemen, look!” said Grason. “He'll whistle, sing songs, hymns, pray, swear like a trooper, laugh, and cry, all under the same state of feelings.” With a peculiar swing of the whip, bringing the lash down upon a certain spot on the exposed skin, the whole person being prepared for the purpose, the boy commenced to whistle almost like a thrush; another cut changed it to a song, another to a hymn, then a pitiful prayer, when he gave utterance to oaths which would make a Christian shudder, after which he laughed outright; then from the fullness of his soul he cried: “O maussa, I's sick! Please stop little!” casting up gobs of hemorrhage.* Franks stood looking on with unmoved muscles. Armsted stood aside whittling a stick; but when Ballard saw, at every cut the flesh turn open in gashes streaming down with gore, till at last in agony he appealed for mercy, he involuntarily found his hand with a grasp on the whip, arresting its further application. “Not quite a Southerner yet Judge, if you can't stand that!” said Franks on seeing him wiping away the tears. 68 “Gentlemen, help yourself to brandy and water. The little Negro don't stand it nigh so well as formerly. He used to be a trump!” “Well, Colonel,” said the Judge, “as I have to leave for Jackson this evening, I suggest that we return to the city.” The company now left Grason's, Franks for the enjoyment of home, Ballard and Armsted for Jackson, and the poor boy Reuben, from hemorrhage of the lungs, that evening left time for eternity. CHAPTER 17 Henry at Large On leaving the plantation carrying them hanging upon his arm, thrown across his shoulders, and in his hands Henry had a bridle, halter, blanket, girt, and horsewhip, the emblems of a faithful servant in discharge of his master's business. By shrewdness and discretion—such was his management as he passed along—that he could tell the name of each place and proprietor long before he reached them. Being a scholar, he carefully kept a record of the plantations he had passed, that when accosted by a white, as an overseer or patrol, he invariably pretended to belong to a back estate, in search of his master's racehorse. If crossing a field, he was taking a near cut; but if met in a wood, the animal was in the forest, as being a great leaper no fence could debar him, though the forest was fenced and posted. The blanket, a substitute for a saddle, was in reality carried for a bed. With speed unfaltering and spirits unflinching, his first great strive was to reach the Red River, to escape from his own state as quickly as possible. Proceeding on in the direction of the Red River country, he met with no obstruction except in one instance, when he left his assailant quietly upon the earth. A few days after an inquest was held upon the body of a deceased overseer—verdict of the Jury, “By hands unknown.” On approaching the river, after crossing a number of streams, as the Yazoo, Ouchita, and such, he was brought to sad reflections. A dread came over him, difficulties lay before him, dangers stood staring him in the face at every step he took. Here for the first time since his 69 maturity of manhood responsibilities rose up in a shape of which he had no conception. A mighty undertaking, such as had never before been ventured upon, and the duty devolving upon him, was too much for a slave with no other aid than the aspirations of his soul panting for liberty. Reflecting upon the peaceful hours he once enjoyed as a professing Christian, and the distance which slavery had driven him from its peaceful portals, here in the wilderness, determining to renew his faith and dependence upon Divine aid, when falling upon his knees he opened his heart to God, as a tenement of the Holy Spirit. “Arm of the Lord, awake! Renew my faith, confirm my hope, perfect me in love. Give strength, give courage, guide and protect my pathway, and direct me in my course!” Springing to his feet as if a weight had fallen from him, he stood up a new man. The river is narrow, the water red as if colored by iron rust, the channel winding. Beyond this river lie his hopes, the broad plains of Louisiana with a hundred thousand bondsmen seeming anxiously to await him. Standing upon a high bank of the stream, contemplating his mission, a feeling of humbleness and a sensibility of unworthiness impressed him, and that religious sentiment which once gave comfort to his soul now inspiring anew his breast, Henry raised in solemn tones amidst the lonely wilderness: Could I but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er; Not Jordan's streams, nor death's cold flood, Could drive me from the shore! To the right of where he stood was a cove, formed by the washing of the stream at high water, which ran quite into the thicket, into which the sun shone through a space among the high trees. While thus standing and contemplating his position, the water being too deep to wade, and on account of numerous sharks and alligators, too dangerous to swim, his attention was attracted by the sound of a steamer coming up the channel. Running into the cove to shield himself, a singular noise disturbed him, when to his terror he found himself amidst a squad of huge alligators, which sought the advantages of the sunshine. 70 His first impulse was to surrender himself to his fate and be devoured, as in the rear and either side the bank was perpendicular, escape being impossible except by the way he entered, to do which would have exposed him to the view of the boat, which could not have been avoided. Meantime the frightful animals were crawling over and among each other, at a fearful rate. Seizing the fragment of a limb which lay in the cove, beating upon the ground and yelling like a madman, giving them all possible space, the beasts were frightened at such a rate, that they reached the water in less time than Henry reached the bank. Receding into the forest, he thus escaped the observation of the passing steamer, his escape serving to strengthen his fate in a renewed determination of spiritual dependence. While gazing upon the stream in solemn reflection for Divine aid to direct him, logs came floating down, which suggested a proximity to the raft with which sections of that stream is filled, when going but a short distance up, he crossed in safety to the Louisiana side. His faith was now fully established, and thenceforth, Henry was full of hope and confident of success. Reaching Alexandria with no obstruction, his first secret meeting was held in the hut of aunt Dilly. Here he found them all ready for an issue. “An dis you, chile?” said the old woman, stooping with age, sitting on a low stool in the chimney corner. “Dis many day, I heahn on yeh!” though Henry had just entered on his mission. From Alexandria he passed rapidly on to Latuer's, making no immediate stops, prefering to organize at the more prominent places. This is a mulatto planter, said to have come from the isle of Guadaloupe. Riding down the road upon a pony at a quick gallop was a mulatto youth, a son of the planter, an old black man on foot keeping close to the horse's heels. “Whose boy are you?” enquired the young mulatto, who had just dismounted, the old servant holding his pony. “I'm in search of master's race horse.” “What is your name?” further enquired the young mulatto. “Gilbert, sir.” “What do you want?” “I am hungry, sir.” 71 “Dolly,” said he to an old black woman at the woodpile, “show this man into the Negro quarter, and give him something to eat; give him a cup of milk. Do you like milk, my man?” “Yes, sir, I have no choice when hungry; anything will do.” “Da is none heah but claubah, maus Eugene,” replied the old cook. “Give him that,” said the young master. “You people like that kind of stuff I believe; our Negroes like it.” “Yes, sir,” replied Henry when the lad left. “God knows 'e needn' talk 'bout wat we po' black folks eat, case da don' ghin us nothin' else but dat an' caun bread,” muttered the old woman. “Don't they treat you well, aunty?” enquired Henry. “God on'y knows, my chile, wat we suffeh.” “Who was that old man who ran behind your master's horse?” “Dat Nathan, my husban'.” “Do they treat him well, aunty?” “No, chile, wus an' any dog, da beat 'im foh little an nothin'.” “Is uncle Nathan religious?” “Yes, chile, ole man an' I's been sahvin' God dis many day, fo yeh baun! Wen any one on 'em in de house git sick, den da sen foh 'uncle Nathan' come pray foh dem; 'uncle Nathan' mighty good den!” “Do you know that the Latuers are colored people?” “Yes, chile; God bless yeh soul yes! Case huh mammy ony dead two-three yehs, an' she black as me.” “How did they treat her?” “Not berry well; she nus da childen; an eat in a house arter all done.” “What did Latuer's children call her?” “Da call huh 'mammy' same like wite folks childen call de nus.” “Can you tell me, aunty, why they treat you people so badly, knowing themselves to be colored, and some of the slaves related to them?” “God bless yeh, hunny, de wite folks, dese plantehs make 'em so; da run heah, an' tell 'em da mus'n treat deh niggers well, case da spile 'em.” “Do the white planters frequently visit here?” “Yes, hunny, yes, da heah some on 'em all de time eatin' an' drinkin' long wid de old man; da on'y tryin' git wat little 'e got, dat 72 all! Da 'tend to be great frien' de ole man; but laws a massy, hunny, I doh mine dese wite folks no how!” “Does your master ever go to their houses and eat with them?” “Yes, chile, some time 'e go, but den half on 'em got nothin' fit to eat; da hab fat poke an' bean, caun cake an' sich like, dat all da got, some on 'em.” “Does Mr. Latuer give them better at his table?” “Laws, hunny, yes; yes'n deed, chile! 'E got mutton—some time whole sheep mos'—fowl, pig, an' ebery tum ting a nuddeh, 'e got so much ting dah, I haudly know wat cook fus.” “Do the white planters associate with the family of Latuer?” “One on 'em, ten 'e coatin de dahta; I don't recon 'e gwine hab heh. Da cah fool long wid 'Toyeh's gals dat way.” “Whose girls, Metoyers?” “Yes, chile.” “Do you mean the wealthy planters of that name?” “Dat same, chile.' “Well, I want to understand you; you don't mean to say that they are colored people?” “Yes, hunny, yes; da good culed folks anybody. Some five-six boys' an five-six gals on 'em; da all rich.” “How do they treat their slaves?” “Da boys all mighty haud maustas, de gals all mighty good; sahvants all like 'em.” “You seem to understand these people very well, aunty. Now please tell me what kind of masters there are generally in the Red River country.” “Haud 'nough, chile, haud 'nough, God on'y knows!” “Do the colored masters treat theirs generally worse than the whites?” “No, hunny, 'bout da same.” “That's just what I want to know. What are the usual allowances for slaves?” “Da 'low de fiel' han' two suit a yeah; foh umin one long linen coat,* make suit; an' foh man, pantaloon an' jacket.” “How about eating?” “Half-peck meal ah day foh family uh fo!” 73 “What about weekly privileges? Do you have Saturday to yourselves?” “Laud, honny, no! No, chile, no! Da do'n 'low us no time, 'tall. Da 'low us ebery uddeh Sunday wash ouh close; dat all de time we git.” “Then you don't get to sell anything for yourselves?” “No, hunny, no. Da don' 'low pig, chicken, tucky, goose, bean, pea, tateh, nothin' else.” “Well, aunty. I'm glad to meet you, and as evening's drawing nigh, I must see your husband a little, then go.” “God bless yeh, chile, whah ebeh yeh go! Yeh ain' arteh no racehos, dat yeh ain't.” “You got something to eat, my man, did you?” enquired the lad Eugene, at the conclusion of his interview with uncle Nathan. “I did, sir, and feasted well!” replied Henry in conclusion. “Good bye!” and he left for the next plantation suited to his objects. “God bless de baby!” said old aunt Dolly as uncle Nathan entered the hut, referring to Henry. “Ah, chile!” replied the old man with tears in his eyes; “my yeahs has heahn dis day!” CHAPTER 18 Fleeting Shadows In high spirits Henry left the plantation of Latuer, after sowing seeds from which in due season, he anticipated an abundant harvest. He found the old man Nathan all that could be desired, and equal to the task of propagating the scheme. His soul swelled with exultation on receiving the tidings, declaring that though nearly eighty years of age, he never felt before an implied meaning, in the promise of the Lord. “Now Laud!” with uplifted hand exclaimed he at the conclusion of the interview. “My eyes has seen, and meh yeahs heahn, an' now Laud! I's willin' to stan' still an' see dy salvation!” On went Henry to Metoyers, visiting the places of four brothers, having taken those of the white planters intervening, all without detection or suspicion of being a stranger. Stopping among the people of Colonel Hopkins at Grantico summit, here as at Latuer's and all intermediate places, he found the people 74 patiently looking for a promised redemption. Here a pet female slave, Silva, espied him and gave the alarm that a strange black was lurking among the Negro quarters, which compelled him to retirement sooner than intended. Among the people of Dickson at Pine Bluff, he found the best of spirits. There was Newman, a young slave man born without arms, who was ready any moment for a strike. “How could you fight?” said Henry. “You have no arms!” “I am compelled to pick with my toes, a hundred pound of cotton a day,* and I can sit on a stool and touch off a cannon!” said this promising young man whose heart panted with an unsuppressed throb for liberty. Heeley's, Harrison's, and Hickman's slaves were fearfully and pitiably dejected. Much effort was required to effect a seclusion, and more to stimulate them to action. The continual dread “that maus wont let us!” seemed as immovably fixed as the words were constantly repeated; and it was not until an occasion for another subject of inquest, in the person of a pest of an old black slave man, that an organization was effected. Approaching Crane's on Little River, the slaves were returning from the field to the gin. Many—being females, some of whom were very handsome—had just emptied their baskets. So little clothing had they, and so loosely hung the tattered fragments about them, that they covered themselves behind the large empty baskets tilted over on the side, to shield their person from exposure. The overseer engaged in another direction, the master absent, and the family at the great house, a good opportunity presented for an inspection of affairs. “How do you do, young woman?” saluted Henry. “How de do, sir!” replied a sprightly, comely young mulatto girl, who stood behind her basket with not three yards of cloth in the tattered relic of the only garment she had on. “Who owns this place?” “Mr. Crane, sir,” she politely replied with a smile. “How many slaves has he?” “I don'o, some say five 'a six hunded.” “Do they all work on this place?” 75 “No, sir, he got two-three places.” “How many on this place?” “Oveh a hundred an' fifty.” “What allowances have you?” “None, sir.” “What! no Saturday to yourselves?” “No, sir.” “They allow you Sundays, I suppose.” “No, sir, we work all day ev'ry Sunday.” “How late do you work?” “Till we can' see to pick no mo' cotton; but w'en its moon light we pick till ten o'clock at night.” “What time do you get to wash your clothes?” “None, sir; da on'y 'low us one suit ev'ry New Yehs day,* an' us gals take it off every Satady night aftah de men all gone to bed and wash it fah Sunday.” “Why do you want clean clothes on Sunday, if you have to work on that day?” “It's de Laud's day, an' we wa to be clean, and we feel betteh.” “How do the men do for clean clothes?” “We wash de men's clothes afteh da go to bed.” “And you say you are only allowed one suit a year? Now, young woman, I don't know your name but——” “Nancy, sir.” “Well, Nancy, speak plainly, and dont be backward; what does your one suit consist of?” “A frock, sir, made out er coarse tow linen.” “Only one piece, and no underclothes at all?” “Dat's all, sir!” replied she modestly looking down and drawing the basket, which sufficiently screened her, still closer to her person. “Is that which you have on a sample of the goods your clothes are made of?” “Yes, sir, dis is da kine.” “I would like to see some other of your girls.” “Stop, sir, I go call Susan!” when, gathering up and drawing around and before her a surplus of the back section, the only remaining sound remnant of the narrow tattered garment that she wore, off she ran 76 behind the gin, where lay in the sun, a number of girls to rest themselves during their hour of “spell.” “Susan!” she exclaimed rather loudly. “I do'n want you gals!” she pleasantly admonished, as the whole twelve or fifteen rose from their resting place, and came hurriedly around the building, Nancy and Susan in the lead. They instinctively as did Nancy, drew their garments around and about them, on coming in sight of the stranger. Standing on the outside of the fence, Henry politely bowed as they approached. “Dis is Susan, sir!” said Nancy, introducing her friend with bland simplicity. “How de do, sir!” saluted she, a modest and intelligent, very pretty young black girl, of good address. “Well, Susan!” replied Henry. “I don't want anything but to see you girls; but I will ask you this question: how many suits of clothes do they give you a year?” “One, sir.” “How many pieces make a suit?” “Jus' one frock,” and they simultaneously commenced drawing still closer before, the remnant of coarse garment, which hung in tatters about them. “Don't you have shoes and stockings in winter?” “We no call foh shoes, case 'taint cole much; on'y some time little fros'.” “How late in the evening do you work?” “Da fiel' han's dah,” pointing to those returning to the field, “da work till bedtime, but we gals heah, we work in de gin, and spell each other ev'ey twelve ouahs.” “You're at leisure now; who fills your places?” “Nutha set a' han's go to work, fo' you come.” “How much cotton do they pick for a task?” “Each one mus' pick big basket full, an' fetch it in f'om da fiel' to de gin, else da git thirty lashes.” “How much must the women pick as a task?” “De same as de men.” “That can't be possible!” said Henry, looking over the fence down upon their baskets. “How much do they hold?” “I dis membeh sir, but good 'eal.” 77 “I see on each basket marked 225 pounds; is that the quantity they hold?” “Yes, sir, dat's it.” “All mus' be in gin certain ouah else da git whipped; sometime de men help 'em.” “How can they do this when they have their own to carry?” “Da put derse on de head, an' ketch holt one side de women basket. Sometimes they leave part in de fiel', an' go back afteh it.” “Do you get plenty to eat?” “No, sir, da feeds us po'ly; sometime, we do'n have mo'n half nough!” “Did you girls ever work in the field?” “O yes, sir! all uv us, on'y we wan't strong nough to fetch in ouh cotton, den da put us in de gin.” “Where would you rather; in the gin or in the field?” “If 'twant foh carryin' cotton, we'a rather work in de fiel'.” “Why so, girls?” “Case den da would'n be so many ole wite plantehs come an' look at us, like we was show!” “Who sees that the tasks are all done in the field?” “Da Driveh.” “Is he a white man?” “No sir, black.” “Is he a free man?” “No, sir, slave.” “Have you no white overseer?” “Yes, sir, Mr. Dorman.” “Where is Dorman when you are at work.” “He out at de fiel too.” “What is he doing there?” “He watch Jesse, da drivah.” “Is Jesse a pretty good fellow?” “No, sir, he treat black folks like dog, he all de time beat 'em, when da no call to do it.” “How did he treat you girls when you worked in the field?” “He beat us if we jist git little behind de rest in pickin'! Da wite folks make 'im bad.” “Point him out to me and after tonight, he'll never whip another.” 78 “Now, girls, I see that you are smart intelligent young women, and I want you to tell me why it is, that your master keeps you all here at work in the gin, when he could get high prices for you, and supply your places with common cheap hands at half the money?” “Case we gals won' go! Da been mo'n a dozen plantehs heah lookin' at us, an' want to buy us foh house keepehs, an' we wont go; we die fus!” said Susan with a shudder. “Yes,” repeated Nancy, with equal emotion, “we die fus!” “How can you prevent it, girls; won't your master sell you against your will?” “Yes, sir, he would, but da plantehs da don't want us widout we willin' to go.” “I see! Well girls, I believe I'm done with you; but before leaving let me ask you, is there among your men, a real clever good trusty man? I don't care either old or young, though I prefer an old or middle-aged man.” “O yes, sir,” replied Nancy, “da is some mong 'em.” “Give me the name of one,” said Henry, at which request Nancy and Susan looked hesitatingly at each other. “Don't be backward,” admonished he, “as I shan't make a bad use of it.” But still they hesitated, when after another admonition Nancy said, “Dare's uncle Joe——” “No, uncle Moses, uncle Moses!” in a suppressed tone interrupted the other girls. “Who is uncle Moses?” enquired Henry. “He' my fatha,” replied Susan, “an——” “My uncle!” interrupted Nancy. “Then you two are cousins?” “Yes, sir, huh fatha an my motha is brotha an sisteh,” replied Nancy. “Is he a religious man, girls?” “Yes, sir, he used to preach but'e do'n preach now,” explained Susan. “Why?” “Case da 'ligions people wo'n heah im now.” “Who, colored people?” “Yes, sir.” 79 “When did they stop hearing him preach?” “Good while ago.” “Where at?” “Down in da bush meetin', at da Baptism.” “He's a Baptist then—what did he do?” Again became Susan and Nancy more perplexed than before, the other girls in this instance failing to come to their relief. “What did he do girls? Let me know it quick, as I must be off!” “Da say—da say—I do'n want tell you!” replied Susan hesitating, with much feeling. “What is it girls, can't some of you tell me?” earnestly enquired Henry. “Da say befo' 'e come heah way down in Fagina, he kill a man, ole po' wite ovehseeah!” “Is that it, girls?” enquired he. “Yes, sir!” they simultaneously replied. “Then he's the very man I want to see!” said Henry. “Now don't forget what I say to you; tell him that a man will meet him tonight below here on the river side, just where the carcass of an ox lies in the verge of the thicket. Tell him to listen and when I'm ready, I'll give the signal of a runaway—the screech of the panther*—when he must immediately obey the summons. One word more, and I'll leave you. Every one of you as you have so praiseworthily concluded, die before surrendering to such base purposes as that for which this man who holds you wishes to dispose of you. Girls, you will see me no more. Fare——” “Yo' name sir, yo' name!” they all exclaimed. “My name is—Farewell, girls, farewell!”——when Henry darted in the thickest of the forest, leaving the squad of young maiden slaves in a state of bewildering inquiry concerning the singular black man. The next day Jesse the driver was missed, and never after heard of. On inquiry being made of the old man Moses concerning the stranger, all that could be elicited was, “Stan' still child'en, and see da salvation uv da Laud!” CHAPTER 19 Come What Will Leaving the plantation of Crane with high hopes and great confidence in the integrity of uncle Moses and the maiden gang of cotton girls, Henry turned his course in a retrograde direction so as again to take the stream of Red River, Little River, where he then was, being but a branch of that water. Just below its confluence with the larger stream, at the moment when he reached the junction, a steam cotton trader hove in view. There was no alternative but to stand like a freeman, or suddenly escape into the forest, thus creating suspicions and fears, as but a few days previous a French planter of the neighborhood lost a desperate slave, who became a terror to the country around. The master was compelled to go continually armed, as also other white neighbors, and all were afraid after nightfall to pass out the threshold of their own doors. Permission was given to every white man to shoot him if ever seen within rifle shot, which facts having learned the evening before, Henry was armed with this precaution. His dress being that of a racegroom—small leather cap with long front piece, neat fitting roundabout, high boots drawn over the pantaloon legs, with blanket, girth, halter, whip and bridle—Henry stood upon the shore awaiting the vessel. “Well boy!” hailed the captain as the line was thrown out, which he caught, making fast at the root of a tree. “Do you wish to come aboard?” “Good man!” approvingly cried the mate, at the expert manner which he caught the line and tied the sailor knot. “Have you ever steamboated, my man?” continued the captain. “Yes, sir,” replied Henry. “Where?” “On the Upper and Lower Mississippi, sir.” “Whom do you know as masters of steamers on the Upper Mississippi?” “Captains Thogmorton, Price, Swan, and ——” “Stop, stop! That'll do,” interrupted the captain, “you know the master of every steamer in the trade, I believe. Now who in the Lower trade?” 81 “Captains Scott, Hart, and——” “What's Captain Hart's Christian name?” interrupted the captain. “Jesse, sir.” “That'll do, by George you know everybody! Do you want to ship?” “No, sir.” “What are you doing here?” “I'm hunting master's stray racehorse.” “Your master's race horse! Are you a slave boy?” “Yes, sir.” “How did you come to be on the Mississippi River?” “I hired my time, sir.” “Yes, yes, boy, I see!” “Who is your master?” “Colonel Sheldon; I used to belong to Major Gilmore.” “Are you the boy Nepp, the great horse trainer the Major used to own?” “No, sir, I'm his son.” “Are you as good at training horses as the old chap?” “They call me better, sir.” “Then you're worth your weight in gold. Will your master sell you?” “I don't know, sir.” “How did your horse come to get away?” “He was bought from the Major by Colonel Sheldon to run at the great Green Wood Races, Texas, and while training he managed to get away, leaping the fences, and taking to the forest.” “Then you're Major Tom's race rider Gilbert! You're a valuable boy; I wonder the Major parted with you.” The bell having rung for dinner, the captain left, Henry going to the deck. Among those on deck was a bright mulatto young man, who immediately recognized Henry as having seen him on the Upper Mississippi, he being a free man. On going up to him, Henry observed that he was laden with heavy manacles. “Have I not seen you somewhere before?” enquired he. “Yes; my name is Lewis Grimes, you saw me on the Upper Mississippi,” replied the young man. “Your name is Henry Holland!” 82 “What have you been doing?” enquired Henry, on seeing the handcuffs. “Nothing at all!” replied he with eyes flashing resentment and suffused with tears. “What does this mean?” continued he, pointing at the handcuffs. “I am stolen and now being taken to Texas, where I am to be enslaved for life!” replied Lewis sobbing aloud. “Who did this vile deed?” continued Henry in a low tone of voice, pressing his lips to suppress his feelings. “One Dr. Johns of Texas, now a passenger on this boat!” “Was that the person who placed a glass to your lips which you refused, just as I came aboard?” “Yes, that's the man.” “Why don't you leave him instantly?” said Henry, his breast heaving with emotion. “Because he always handcuffs me before the boat lands, keeping me so during the time she lies ashore.” “Why don't you jump overboard when the boat is under way?” “Because he guards me with a heavy loaded rifle, and I can't get a chance.” “He 'guards' you! 'You can't get a chance!' Are there no nights, and does he never sleep?” “Yes, but he makes me sleep in the stateroom with him, keeping his rifle at his bedside.” “Are you never awake when he's asleep?” “Often, but I'm afraid to stir lest he wakens.” “Well don't you submit, die first if thereby you must take another into eternity with you! Were it my case and he ever went to sleep where I was, he'd never waken in this world!” “I never thought of that before, I shall take your advice the first opportunity. Good-bye sir!” hastily said the young man, as the bell tapped a signal to start, and Henry stepped on shore. “Let go that line!” sternly commanded the captain, Henry obeying orders on the shore, when the boat glided steadily up the stream, seemingly in unison with the lively though rude and sorrowful song of the black firemen— I'm a-goin' to Texas—O! O-O-O! I'm a-goin' to Texas—O! O-O-O! 83 Having in consequence of the scarcity of spring houses and larders along his way in so level and thinly settled country, Henry took in his pouch from the cook of the boat an ample supply of provisions for the suceeding four or five days. Thus provided for, standing upon the bank for a few minutes, with steady gaze listening to the sad song of his oppressed brethren as they left the spot, and reflecting still more on the miserable fate of the young mulatto freeman Lewis Grimes held by the slave-holder Dr. Johns of Texas, he, with renewed energy, determined that nothing short of an interference by Divine Providence should stop his plans and progress. In soliloquy said Henry, “Yes! If every foe stood martialed in the van, I'd fight them single combat, man to man!” and again he started with a manly will, as fixed and determined in his purpose as though no obstructions lay in his pathway. From plantation to plantation did he go, sowing the seeds of future devastation and ruin to the master and redemption to the slave, an antecedent more terrible in its anticipation than the warning voice of the destroying Angel in commanding the slaughter of the firstborn of Egypt. Himself careworn, distressed and hungry, who just being supplied with nourishment for the system, Henry went forth a welcome messenger, casting his bread upon the turbid waters of oppression, in hopes of finding it after many days. Holding but one seclusion on each plantation, his progress was consequently very rapid, in whatever direction he went. With a bold stride from Louisiana, he went into Texas. Here he soon met with the man of his wishes. This presented in the person of Sampson, on the cotton place of proprietor Richardson. The master here, though represented wealthy, with an accomplished and handsome young daughter, was a silly, stupid old dolt, an inordinate blabber and wine bibber. The number of his slaves was said to be great and he the owner of three plantations, one in Alabama, and the others in Texas. Sampson was a black, tall, stoutly built, and manly, possessing much general intelligence, and a good-looking person. His wife a neat, intelligent, handsome little woman, the complexion of himself, was the mother of a most interesting family of five pretty children, three boys 84 and two girls. This family entered at once into the soul of his mission, seeming to have anticipated it. With an amply supply of means,* buried in a convenient well-marked spot, he only awaited a favorable opportunity to effect his escape from slavery. With what anxiety did that wife gaze smilingly in his face, and a boy and girl cling tightly each to a knee, as this husband and father in whispers recounted his plans and determination of carrying them out. The scheme of Henry was at once committed to his confidence, and he requested to impart them wherever he went. Richardson was a sportsman and Sampson his body servant, they traveled through every part of the country, thus affording the greatest opportunity for propagating the measures of the secret organization. From Portland in Maine to Galveston in Texas, Sampson was as familiar as a civil engineer. “Sampson, Sampson, stand by me! Stand by me, my man; stand at your master's back!” was the language of this sottish old imbecile he kept continually reveling at a gambling table, and who from excessive fatigue would sometimes squat or sit down upon the floor behind him. “Sampson, Sampson! are you there? Stand by your master, Sampson!” again would he exclaim, so soon as the tall commanding form of his black protector was missed from his sight. Sampson and his wife were both pious people, believing much in the Providence of God, he, as he said, having recently had it “shown to” him—meaning a presentiment—that a messenger would come to him and reveal the plan of deliverance. “I am glad to see that you have money,” said Henry, “you are thereby well qualified for your mission. With money you may effect your escape almost at any time. Your most difficult point is an elevated obstruction, a mighty hill, a mountain; but through that hill there is a gap, and money is your passport through that White Gap to freedom. Mark that! It is the great range of White mountains and White river which are before you, and the White Gap that you must pass through to reach the haven of safety. Money alone will carry you through the White mountains or across the White river to liberty.” “Brother, my eyes is open, and my way clear!” responded Sampson to this advice. 85 “Then,” said Henry, “you are ready to 'rise and shine' for——” “My light has come!—” interrupted Sampson. “But——” “The glory of God is not yet shed abroad!”* concluded Henry, who fell upon Sampson's neck with tears of joy in meeting unexpectedly one of his race so intelligent in that region of country. Sampson and wife Dursie, taking Henry by the hand wept aloud, looking upon him as the messenger of deliverance foreshown to them. Kneeling down a fervent prayer was offered by Sampson for Henry's protection by the way, and final success in his “mighty plans,” with many Amens and “God grants,” by Dursie. Partaking of a sumptuous fare on 'ash cake and sweet milk—a dainty diet with many slaves—and bidding with a trembling voice and tearful eye a final “Farewell!” in six hours he had left the state of Texas to the consequences of a deep-laid scheme for a terrible insurrection. CHAPTER 20 Advent Among the Indians From Texas Henry went into the Indian Nation near Fort Towson, Arkansas. “Make yourself at home, sir,” invited Mr. Culver, the intelligent old Chief of the United Nation, “and Josephus will attend to you,” referring to his nephew Josephus Braser, an educated young chief and counselor among his people. “You are slaveholders, I see, Mr. Culver!” said Henry. “We are, sir, but not like the white men,” he replied. “How many do you hold?” “About two hundred on my two plantations.” “I can't well understand how a man like you can reconcile your principles with the holding of slaves and——” “We have had enough of that!” exclaimed Dr. Donald, with a tone of threatening authority. “Hold your breath, sir, else I'll stop it!” in a rage replied the young chief. “Sir,” responded the Doctor, “I was not speaking to you, but only speaking to that Negro!” 86 “You're a fool!” roared Braser, springing to his feet. “Come, come, gentlemen!” admonished the old Chief. “I think you are both going mad! I hope you'll behave something better.” “Well, uncle, I can't endure him! he assumes so much authority!” replied he. “He'll make the Indians slaves just now, then Negroes will have no friends.” Donald was a white man, married among the Indians a sister of the old Chief and aunt to the young, for the sake of her wealth and a home. A physician without talents, he was unable to make a business and unwilling to work. “Mr. Bras——” “I want nothing more of you,” interrupted Braser, “and don't——” “Josephus, Josephus!” interrupted the old chief. “You will surely let the Doctor speak!” Donald stood pale and trembling before the young Choctaw born to command, when receiving no favor he left the company muttering “nigger!” “Now you see,” said Mr. Culver as the Doctor left the room, “the difference between a white man and Indian holding slaves. Indian work side by side with black man, eat with him, drink with him, rest with him and both lay down in shade together; white man even won't let you talk! In our Nation Indian and black all marry together. Indian like black man very much, ony he don't fight 'nough. Black man in Florida fight much, and Indian like 'im heap!” “You make, sir, a slight mistake about my people. They would fight if in their own country they were united as the Indians here, and not scattered thousands of miles apart as they are. You should also remember that the Africans have never permitted a subjugation of their country by foreigners as the Indians have theirs, and Africa today is still peopled by Africans, whilst America, the home of the Indian—who is fast passing away—is now possessed and ruled by foreigners.” “True, true!” said the old Chief, looking down reflectingly. “Too true! I had not thought that way before. Do you think the white man couldn't take Africa if he wanted?” “He might by a combination, and I still am doubtful whether then he could if the Africans were determined as formerly to keep him out. You will also remember, that the whites came in small numbers to 87 America, and then drove the Indians from their own soil, whilst the blacks got in Africa as slaves, are taken by their own native conquerors, and sold to white men as prisoners of war.” “That is true, sir, true!” sighed the old Chief. “The Indian, like game before the bow, is passing away before the gun of the white man!” “What I now most wish to learn is, whether in case that the blacks should rise, they may have hope or fear from the Indian?” asked Henry. “I'm an old mouthpiece, been puffing out smoke and talk many seasons for the entertainment of the young and benefit of all who come among us. The squaws of the great men among the Indians in Florida were black women, and the squaws of the black men were Indian women. You see the vine that winds around and holds us together. Don't cut it, but let it grow till bimeby, it git so stout and strong, with many, very many little branches attached, that you can't separate them. I now reach to you the pipe of peace and hold out the olive-branch of hope! Go on young man, go on. If you want white man to love you, you must fight im!” concluded the intelligent old Choctaw. “Then, sir, I shall rest contented, and impart to you the object of my mission,” replied Henry. “Ah hah!” exclaimed the old chief after an hour's seclusion with him. “Ah hah! Indian have something like that long-go. I wonder your people ain't got it before! That what make Indian strong; that what make Indian and black man in Florida hold together. Go on young man, go on! may the Great Spirit make you brave!” exhorted Mr. Culver, when the parties retired for the evening, Henry rooming with the young warrior Braser. By the aid of the young Chief and kindness of his uncle the venerable old brave, Henry was conducted quite through the nation on a pony placed at his service, affording to him an ample opportunity of examining into the condition of things. He left the settlement with the regrets of the people, being the only instance in which his seclusions were held with the master instead of the slave. CHAPTER 21 What Not Leaving the United Nation of Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians, Henry continued his travel in this the roughest, apparently, of all the states. Armed with bowie knives and revolvers openly carried belted around the person, he who displays the greatest number of deadly weapons seems to be considered the greatest man. The most fearful incivility and absence of refinement was apparent throughout this region. Neither the robes of state nor gown of authority is sufficient to check the vengeance of awakened wrath in Arkansas. Law is but a fable, its ministration a farce, and the pillars of justice but as stubble before the approach of these legal invaders. Hurriedly passing on in the darkness of the night, Henry suddenly came upon a procession in the wilderness, slowly and silently marching on, the cortege consisting principally of horsemen, there being but one vehicle, advanced by four men on horseback. Their conversation seemed at intervals of low, muttering, awestricken voices. The vehicle was closely covered, and of a sad, heavy sound by the rattling of the wheels upon the unfinished path of the great Arkansas road. Here he sat in silence listening, waiting for the passage of the solemn procession, but a short distance from whence in the thicket stood the hut of the slave to whom he was sent. “Ole umin! done yeh heah some 'un trampin' round de house? Hush! evedroppehs 'bout!” admonished Uncle Jerry. “Who dat?” enquired Aunt Rachel, as Henry softly rapped at the back window. “A friend!” was the reply. “What saut frien' dat go sneak roun' people back windah stid comin' to de doh!” “Hush, ole umin, yeh too fas'! how yeh know who 'tis? Frien', come roun' to de doh,” said the old man. Passing quickly around, the door was opened, a blazing hot fire shining full in his face, the old man holding in his hand a heavy iron poker in the attitude of defence. “Is dis you, my frien'?” enquired Uncle Jerry, to whom Henry was an entire stranger. “Yes, uncle, this is me,” replied he. 89 “God bless yeh, honey! come in; we didn know 'twos you, chile! God bless de baby!” added Aunt Rachel. “Ole man, heah yeh comin' an' we been lookin' all day long. Dis evenin' I git some suppeh, an' I don'o if yeh come uh no.” “How did you know I was coming, aunty?” “O! honey, da tell us,” replied she. “Who told you?” “De folks up dah.” “Up where?” “Up dah, 'mong de Injins, chile.” “Indians told you?” “No, honey; some de black folks, da all'as gwine back and for'ard, and da lahn heap from dem up dah; an' da make 'ase an' tell us.” “Can you get word from each other so far apart, that easy?” “Yes 'ndeed, honey! some on 'em all de time gwine; wite folks know nothin' 'bout it. Some time some on 'em gone two-three day, an' ain miss; white folks tink da in the woods choppin'.” “Why, that's the very thing! you're ahead of all the other states. You folks in Arkansas must be pretty well organized already.” “Wat dat yeh mean, chile, dat 'organ' so?” “I mean by that, aunty, a good general secret understanding among yourselves.” “Ah, chile! dat da is. Da comin' all de time, ole man hardly time to eat mou'full wen 'e come in de hut night.” “Tell me, aunty, why people like you and uncle here, who seem to be at the head of these secrets, are not more cautious with me, a stranger?” “Ole umin, I lisenin at yeh!” said Uncle Jerry, after enough had been told to betray them; but the old people well understood each other, Aunt Rachel by mutual consent being the mouthpiece. “How we knows you!” rejoined the old woman. “Wy, chile, yeh got mahk dat so soon as we put eye on yeh, we knows yeh. Huccum yeh tink we gwine tell yeh so much wen we don'o who yeh is? Sho, chile, we ain't dat big fool!” “Then you know my errand among you, aunty?” “Yes, meh son, dat we does, an' we long been waitin' foh some sich like you to come 'mong us. We thang God dis night in ouh soul! We long been lookin' foh ye, chile!” replied Uncle Jerry. “You are closely watched in this state, I should think, uncle.” 90 “Yes, chile, de patrolas da all de time out an' gwine in de quahtehs an' huntin' up black folks wid der 'nigga-dogs' as da call 'em.” “I suppose you people scarcely ever get a chance to go anywhere, then?” “God bless yeh, honey, da blacks do'n mine dem noh der 'niggadogs' nutha. Patrolas feahd uh de black folks, an' da black folks charm de dogs, so da cahn heht 'em,” said Aunt Rachel. “I see you understand yourselves! Now, what is my best way to get along through the state?” “Keep in de thicket, chile, as da patrolas feahd to go in de woods, da feahd runaway ketch 'em! Keep in da woods, chile, an' da ain' goin' dah bit! Da talk big, and sen' der dog, but da ain' goin' honey!” continued the old woman. “Ah spose, meh son, yeh know how to chaum dogs?” enquired Uncle Jerry. “I understand the mixed bull, but not the full-bred Cuba dog,” replied Henry. “Well, chile, da keep boph kine heah, de bull dog an' bloodhoun' an' fo' yeh go, I lahn yeh how to fix 'em all! Da come sneakin' up to yeh! da cahn bite yeh!” “Thank you, Uncle Jerry! I'll try and do as much for you in some way.” “Yeh no call foh dat, meh son; it ain' nothin' mo' nah onh——” “Hush! ole man; ain' dat dem?” admonished Aunt Rachel, in a whisper, as she went to the door, thrusting out her head in the dark. “Who? Patrols?” with anxiety enquired Henry. “No, chile, de man da kill down yondah; all day long da been lookin' foh 'em to come.” “A procession passed just before I came to your door, which I took for a funeral.” “Yes, chile, dat's it, da kill im down dah.' On enquiry, it appeared that in the senate a misunderstanding on the rules of order and parliamentary usage occurred, when the Speaker, conceiving himself insulted by the senator who had the floor, deliberately arose from his chair, when approaching the senator, drove a bowie knife through his body from the chest, which laid him a corpse upon the senate floor. “There he is! There he is!” stormed the assassin, pointing with 91 defiance at the lifeless body, his hand still reeking with blood. “I did it!” slapping his hand upon his own breast in triumph of his victory. They had just returned with the body of the assassinated statesman to the wretched home of his distracted family, some ten miles beyond the hut of Uncle Jerry. “Is this the way they treat each other, aunty?” “Yes, chile, wus den dat! da kill one-notha in cole blood, sometime at de table eatin'. Da all'as choppin' up some on 'em.” “Then you black people must have a poor chance among them, if this is the way they do each other!” “Mighty po', honey; mighty po' indeed!” replied Uncle Jerry. “Well, uncle, it's now time I was doing something; I've been here some time resting. Aunty, see to your windows and door; are there any cracks in the walls!” “No, honey, da dob good!” whispered the old woman as a wellpatched, covering quilt to shield the door was hung, covering nearly one side of the hut, and a thickly-patched linsey gown fully shielded the only window of four eight-by-ten lights. These precautions taken, they drew together in a corner between the head of the bed and well-daubed wall to hold their seclusion. “Laud!” exclaimed Uncle Jerry, after the secrets were fully imparted to them. “Make beah dine all-conquering ahm! strike off de chains dat dy people may go free! Come, Laud, a little nigh, eh!” “Honah to 'is name!” concorded Aunt Rachel. “Wuthy all praise! Tang God fah wat I seen an' heahn dis night! dis night long to be membed! Meh soul feels it! It is heah!” pressing her hand upon her breast, exclaimed she. “Amen! Laud heah de cry uh dy children! Anseh prah!” responded the old man, in tears; when Aunt Rachel in a grain of sorrowful pathos, sung to the expressive words in the slaves' lament: “In eighteen hundred and twenty-three They said their people should be free! It is wrote in Jeremiah, Come and go along with me! It is wrote in Jeremiah, Go sound the Jubilee!” 92 At the conclusion of the last line, a sudden sharp rap at the door startled them, when the old woman, hastening, took down the quilt, enquiring, “Who dat?” “Open the door, Rachel!” was the reply, in an authoritative tone from a posse of patrols, who on going their evening rounds were attracted to the place by the old people's devotion, and stood sometime listening around the hut. “You seem to be happy here, Jerry,” said Ralph Jordon, the head of the party. “What boy is this you have here?” “Major Morgan's sir,” replied Henry, referring to the proprietor of the next plantation above. “I don't remember seeing you before, boy,” continued Jordon. “No, sir; lately got me,” explained Henry. “Aye, aye, boy; a preacher, I suppose.” “No, sir.” “No, Maus Rafe, dis brotheh no preacheh; but 'e is 'logious, and come to gib us little comfit, an' bless God I feels it now; dat I does, blessed be God!” said the old woman. “Well, Rachel, that's all right enough; but, my boy, its high time that you were getting towards home. You've not yet learned our rules here; where are you from?” “Louisiana, sir.” “Yes, yes, that explains it. Louisiana Negroes are permitted to go out at a much later hour than our Negroes.” “Maus Rafe, ah hope yah let de brotheh eat a mouph'l wid us fo' go?” “O yes, Rachel! give the boy something to eat before he goes; I suppose the 'laborer is worthy of his hire,' ” looking with a smile at his comrades. “Yes 'ndeed, seh, dat he is!” replied the old woman with emphasis. “Rachel, I smell something good! What have you here, spare rib?” enquired Ralph Jordon, walking to the table and lifting up a clean check apron which the old woman had hurriedly thrown over it to screen her homely food from the view of the gentlemen patrols. “Good! spare rib and ash cake, gentlemen! What's better? Rachel, give us some seats here!” continued Ralph. Hurrying about, the old woman made out to seat the uninvited 93 guests with a half barrel tub, an old split bottom chair, and a short slab bench, which accommodated two. “By gum! This is fine,” said Ralph Jordon, smacking his mouth, and tearing at a rib. “Gentlemen, help yourselves to some spirits,” setting on the table a large flask of Jamaica rum, just taken from his lips. “Nothing better,” replied Tom Hammond; “give me at any time the cooking in the Negro quarters before your great-house dainties.” “So say I,” sanctioned Zack Hite, champing like a hungry man. “The Negroes live a great deal better than we do.” “Much better, sir, much better,” replied Ralph. “Rachel, don't you nor Jerry ever take any spirits?” “No, Maus Rafe, not any,” replied the old woman. “May be your friend there will take a little.” “I don't drink, sir,” said Henry. Rising from the homely meal at the humble board of Aunt Rachel and Uncle Jerry, they emptied their pockets of crackers, cold biscuits and cheese, giving the old man a plug of honey-cured tobacco, to be divided between himself and wife, in lieu of what they had, without invitation, taken the liberty of eating. The patrol this evening were composed of the better class of persons, principally business men, two of whom, being lawyers who went out that evening for a mere “frolic among the Negroes.” Receiving the parting hand, accompanied with a “good bye, honey!” and “God bless yeh, meh son!” from the old people, Henry left the hut to continue his course through the forest. Hearing persons approaching, he stepped aside from the road to conceal himself, when two parties at the junction of two roads met each other, coming to a stand. “What's up tonight, Colonel?” enquired one. “Nothing but the raffle.” “Are you going?” “Yes, the whole party here; won't you go?” “I dun'o; what's the chances?” “Five dollars only.” “Five dollars a chance! What the deuce is the prize!” “Oh, there's several for the same money.” “What are they?” 94 “That fine horse and buggy of Colonel Sprout, a mare and colt, a little Negro girl ten years of age, and a trail of four of the finest Negro-dogs in the state.” “Hallo! all them; why, how many chances, in the name of gracious, are there?” “Only a hundred and fifty.” “Seven hundred and fifty dollars for the whole; that's cheap. But, then, all can't win, and it must be a loss to somebody.” “Will you go, Cap'n?” “Well, I don't care—go it is!” when the parties started in the direction of the sport, Henry following to reconnoiter them. On approaching the tavern, the rafflers, who waited the rest of the company to gather, could be seen and heard through the uncurtained windows and the door, which was frequently opened, standing around a blazing hot fire, and in groups over the barroom floor, amusing themselves with jests and laughter. Henry stood in the verge of the forest in a position to view the whole of their proceedings. Presently there was a rush out of doors with glee and merriment. Old Colonel Sprout was bringing out his dogs, to test their quality previous to the raffle. “Now, gentlemen!” exclaimed he, “them is the best trained dogs in this part of the state. Be dad, they's the bes' dogs in the country. When you say 'nigger,' you needn't fear they'll ever go after anything but a nigger.” “Come, Colonel, give them a trial; we must have something going on to kill time,” suggested one of the party. “But what will he try 'em on?” said another; “there's no niggers to hunt.” “Send them out, and let them find one, be George; what else would you have them do?” replied a third. “Where the deuce will they get one?” rejoined a fourth. “Just as a hunting dog finds any other game,” answered a fifth; “where else?” “O, by golly, gentlemen, you need's give yourselves no uneasiness about the game. They'll find a nigger, once started if they have to break into some Negro quarter and drag 'm out o' bed. No mistake 'bout them, I tell you, gentlemen,” boasted Sprout. 95 “But won't a nigger hurt 'em when he knows he's not a runaway?” enquired Richard Rester Rutherford. “What, a nigger hurt a bloodhound! By, gracious, they're fearder of a bloodhound than they is of the devil himself! Them dogs is dogs, gentlemen, an' no mistake; they is by gracious!” declared Sprout. “Well, let them loose, Colonel, and let's have a little sport, at any rate!” said Ralph Jordon, the patrol, who had just arrived; “we're in for a spree tonight, anyhow.” “Here, Caesar, Major, Jowler, here Pup! Niggers about! Seek out!” hissed the Colonel, with a snap of the finger, pointing toward the thicket, in the direction of which was Henry. With a yelp which sent a shudder through the crowd, the dogs started in full chase for the forest. “By George, Colonel, that's too bad! Call them back!” said Ralph Jordon, as the savage brutes bounded in search of a victim. “By thunder, gentlemen, it's too late! they'll have a nigger before they stop. They'll taste the blood of some poor black devil before they git back!” declared Sprout. Having heard every word that passed between them, in breathless silence Henry waited the approach of the animals. The yelping now became more anxious and eager, until at last it was heard as a short, impatient, fretful whining, indicating a near approach to their prey, when growing less and less, they ceased entirely to be heard. “What the Harry does it mean! the dogs has ceased to bay!” remarked Colonel Sprout. “Maybe they caught a nigger,” replied John Spangler. “It might be a Tartar!” rejoined Ralph Jordon. “Maybe a nigger caught them!” said the Sheriff of the county, who was present to superintend the raffle, and receive the proceeds of the hazard. “What!” exclaimed the old gentleman, to enhance the value of the prizes. “What! My Caesar, Major, Jowler, and Pup, the best dogs in all Arkansas!—A nigger kill them! No, gentlemen, once let loose an' on their trail, an' they's not a gang o' niggers to be found out at night they couldn't devour! Them dogs! Hanged if they didn't eat a nigger quicker as they'd swaller a piece o' meat!” “Then they're the dogs for me!” replied the Sheriff. 96 “And me,” added Spangle, a noted agent for catching runaway slaves. “The raffle, the raffle!” exclaimed several voices eager for a chance, estimating at once the value of the dogs above the aggregate amount of the stakes. “But the dogs, the dogs, gentlemen! They're not here! Give us the dogs first,” suggested an eager candidate for competition in the prizes. “No matter, gentlemen; be sartin,” said the Colonel, “when they's done they'll come back agin.” “But how will they be managed in attacking strange Negroes?” enquired Ralph Jordon. “O, the command of any white man is sufficient to call 'em off, an' they's plenty o' them all'as wherever you find niggers.” “Then, Colonel, we're to understand you to mean, that white men can't live without niggers.” “I'll be hanged, gentlemen, if it don't seem so, for wherever you find one you'll all'as find tother, they's so fully mixed up with us in all our relations!” peals of laughter following the explanation. “Come, Colonel, I'll be hanged if we stand that, except you stand treat!” said Ralph. “Stand what? Let us understand you; what'd I say?” “What did you say? why, by George, you tell us flatly that we are related to niggers!” “Then, gentlemen, I'll stand treat; for on that question I'll be consarned if some of us don't have to knock under!” at which there were deafening roars of laughter, the crowd rushing into the barroom, crying, “Treat! Treat!! That's too good to be lost!” Next day after the raffle, the winners having presented the prizes back to their former owner, it was whispered about that the dogs had been found dead in the woods, the mare and colt were astray, the little slave girl was in a pulmonary decline, the buggy had been upset and badly worsted the day before the raffle, and the horse had the distemper; upon which information the whole party met at a convenient place on a fixed day, going out to his house in a body, who ate, drank, and caroused at his expense during the day and evening. “Sprout,” said Ralph Jordon, “with your uniform benevolence, generosity and candor, how did you ever manage to depart so far from your old principles and rule of doing things? I can't understand it.” 97 “How so? Explain yourself,” replied Sprout. “Why you always give rather than take advantage, your house and means always being open to the needy, even those with whom you are unacquainted.” “I'm sure I ain't departed one whit from my old rule,” said Sprout; “I saw you was all strangers to the thing, an' I took you in; I'm blamed if I didn't!” the crowd shouting with laughter. “One word, Sprout,” said Jordon. “When the dogs ceased baying, didn't you suspect something wrong?” “I know'd at once when they stopped that they was defeated; but I thought they'd pitched headlong into a old wellhole some sixty foot deep, where the walls has tumbled in, an' made it some twenty foot wide at the top. I lis'ened every minute 'spectin' to hear a devil of a whinin' 'mong 'em' but I was disapinted.” “Well, its a blamed pity, anyhow, that such fine animals were killed; and no clue as yet, I believe, to the perpetration of the deed,” said the Sheriff. “They was, indeed,” replied Sprout, “as good a breed o' dogs as ever was, an' if they'd a been trained right, nothin' could a come up with them; but consarn their picters, it serves 'em right, as they wos the cussedest cowards I ever seed! 'Sarn them, if a nigger ony done so— jis' made a pass at 'em, an' I'll be hanged if they didn't yelp like wild cats, an almost kill 'emselves runin' away!” at which explanation the peals of laughter were deafening. “Let's stay a week, stay a week, gentlemen!” exclaimed Ralph Jordon, in a convulsion of laughter. “Be gracious, gentlemen!” concluded Sprout. “If you stay till eternity it won't alter the case one whit; case, the mare an' colt's lost, the black gal's no use to anybody, the buggy's all smashed up, the hos' is got the distemper, and the dogs is dead as thunder!” With a boisterous roar, the party, already nearly exhausted with laughter, commenced gathering their hats and cloaks, and left the premises declaring never again to be caught at a raffling wherein was interested Colonel Joel Sprout. The dogs were the best animals of the kind, and quickly trailed out their game; but Henry, with a well-aimed weapon, slew each ferocious beast as it approached him, leaving them weltering in their own blood instead of feasting on his, as would have been the case had he not 98 overpowered them. The rest of the prizes were also valuable and in good order, and the story which found currency depreciating them, had its origin in the brain and interest of Colonel Sprout, which resulted, as designed, entirely in his favor. Hastening on to the Fulton landing Henry reached it at half-past two o'clock in the morning, just in time to board a steamer on the downward trip, which barely touched the shore to pick up a package. Knowing him by reputation as a great horse master, the captain received him cheerfully, believing him to have been, from what he had learned, to the Texas races with horses for his master. Being now at ease, and faring upon the best the vessel could afford, after a little delay along the cotton trading coast, Henry was safely landed in the portentous city of New Orleans. CHAPTER 22 New Orleans The season is the holidays, it is evening, and the night is beautiful. The moon, which in Louisiana is always an object of impressive interest, even to the slave as well as those of enlightened and scientific intelligence, the influence of whose soft and mellow light seems ever like the enchanting effect of some invisible being, to impart inspiration—now being shed from the crescent of the first day of the last quarter, appeared more interesting and charming than ever. Though the cannon at the old fort in the Lower Faubourg had fired the significant warning, admonishing the slaves as well as free blacks to limit their movement, still there were passing to and fro with seeming indifference Negroes, both free and slaves, as well as the whites and Creole quadroons, fearlessly along the public highways, in seeming defiance of the established usage of Negro limitation. This was the evening of the day of Mardi Gras, and from long-established and time-honored custom, the celebration which commenced in the morning was now being consummated by games, shows, exhibitions, theatrical performances, festivals, masquerade balls, and numerous entertainments and gatherings in the evening. It 99 was on this account that the Negroes had been allowed such unlimited privileges this evening. Nor were they remiss to the utmost extent of its advantages. The city which always at this season of the year is lively, and Chartier street gay and fashionable, at this time appeared more lively, gay and fashionable than usual. This fashionable thoroughfare, the pride of the city, was thronged with people, presenting complexions of every shade and color. Now could be seen and realized the expressive description in the popular song of the vocalist Cargill: I suppose you've heard how New Orleans Is famed for wealth and beauty; There's girls of every hue, it seems, From snowy white to sooty. The extensive shops and fancy stores presented the presence behind their counters as saleswomen in attendance of numerous females, black, white, mulatto and quadroon, politely bowing, curtsying, and rubbing their hands, in accents of broken English inviting to purchase all who enter the threshold, or even look in at the door: “Wat fa you want something? Walk in, sire, I vill sell you one nice present fa one young lady.” And so with many who stood or sat along the streets and at the store doors, curtsying and smiling they give the civil banter: “Come, sire, I sell you one pretty ting.” The fancy stores and toy shops on this occasion were crowded seemingly to their greatest capacity. Here might be seen the fashionable young white lady of French or American extraction, and there the handsome, and frequently beautiful maiden of African origin, mulatto, quadroon, or sterling black, all fondly interchanging civilities, and receiving some memento or keepsake from the hand of an acquaintance. Many lively jests and impressive flings of delicate civility noted the greetings of the passersby. Freedom seemed as though for once enshielded by her sacred robes and crowned with cap and wand in hand, to go forth untrammeled through the highways of the town. Along the private streets, sitting under the verandas, in the doors with half-closed jalousies, or promenading unconcernedly the public ways, mournfully humming in solace or chanting in lively 100 glee, could be seen and heard many a Creole, male or female, black, white or mixed race, sometimes in reverential praise of Father, Son and Holy Ghost— Madonna, and the Heavenly Host! in sentimental reflection on some pleasant social relations, or the sad reminiscence of ill-treatment or loss by death of some loved one, or worse than death, the relentless and insatiable demands of slavery. In the distance, on the levee or in the harbor among the steamers, the songs of the boatmen were incessant. Every few hours landing, loading and unloading, the glee of these men of sorrow was touchingly appropriate and impressive. Men of sorrow they are in reality; for if there be a class of men anywhere to be found, whose sentiments of song and words of lament are made to reach the sympathies of others, the black slave-boatmen of the Mississippi river is that class. Placed in positions the most favorable to witness the pleasures enjoyed by others, the tendency is only to augment their own wretchedness. Fastened by the unyielding links of the iron cable of despotism, reconciling themselves to a lifelong misery, they are seemingly contented by soothing their sorrows with songs and sentiments of apparently cheerful but in reality wailing lamentations. The most attracting lament of the evening was sung to words, a stanza of which is presented in pathos of delicate tenderness, which is but a spray from the stream which gushed out in insuppressible jets from the agitated fountains of their souls, as if in unison with the restless current of the great river upon which they were compelled to toil, their troubled waters could not be quieted. In the capacity of leader, as is their custom, one poor fellow in pitiful tones led off the song of the evening: Way down upon the Mobile river, Close to Mobile bay; There's where my thoughts is running ever, All through the livelong day: There I've a good and fond old mother, Though she is a slave; 101 There I've a sister and a brother, Lying in their peaceful graves. Then in chorus joined the whole company— O, could I somehow a'nother, Drive these tears way; When I think about my poor old mother, Down upon the Mobile bay. Standing in the midst of and contemplating such scenes as these, it was that Henry determined to finish his mission in the city and leave it by the earliest conveyance over Pontchartrain for Alabama—Mobile being the point at which he aimed. Swiftly as the current of the fleeting Mississippi was time passing by, and many states lay in expanse before him, all of which, by the admonishing impulses of the dearest relations, he was compelled to pass over as a messenger of light and destruction. Light, of necessity, had to be imparted to the darkened region of the obscure intellects of the slaves, to arouse them from their benighted condition to one of moral responsibility, to make them sensible that liberty was legitimately and essentially theirs, without which there was no distinction between them and the brute. Following as a necessary consequence would be the destruction of oppression and ignorance. Alone and friendless, without a home, a fugitive from slavery, a child of misfortune and outcast upon the world, floating on the cold surface of chance, now in the midst of a great city of opulence, surrounded by the most despotic restrictions upon his race, with renewed determination Henry declared that nothing short of an unforeseen Providence should impede his progress in the spread of secret organization among the slaves. So aroused, he immediately started for a house in the Lower Faubourg. “My frien', who yeh lookin' foh?” kindly enquired a cautious black man, standing concealed in the shrubbery near the door of a low, tile-covered house standing back in the yard. “A friend,” replied Henry. 102 “Wat's 'is name?” continued the man. “I do not rightly know.” “Would yeh know it ef yeh heahed it, my fren'?” “I think I would.” “Is it Seth?” “That's the very name!” said Henry. “Wat yeh want wid 'im, my fren'?” “I want to see him.” “I spose yeh do, fren'; but dat ain' answer my questin' yet. Wat yeh want wid 'em?” “I would rather see him, then I'll be better able to answer.” “My fren',” replied the man, meaningly, “ah see da is somethin' in yeh; come in!” giving a significant cough before placing his finger on the latchstring. On entering, from the number and arrangement of the seats, there was evidence of an anticipated gathering; but the evening being that of the Mardi Gras, there was nothing remarkable in this. Out from another room came a sharp, observing, shrewd little dark brown-skin woman, called in that community a griffe. Bowing, sidling and curtsying, she smilingly came forward. “Wat brotha dis, Seth?” enquired she. “Ah don'o,” carelessly replied he with a signal of caution, which was not required in her case. “Ah!” exclaimed Henry. “This is Mr. Seth! I'm glad to see you.” After a little conversation, in which freely participated Mrs. Seth, who evidently was deservingly the leading spirit of the evening, they soon became reconciled to the character and mission of their unexpected and self-invited guest. “Phebe, go tell 'em,” said Seth; when lightly tripping away she entered the door of the other room, which after a few moments' delay was partially opened, and by a singular and peculiar signal, Seth and the stranger were invited in. Here sat in one of the most secret and romantic-looking rooms, a party of fifteen, the representatives of the heads of that many plantations, who that night had gathered for the portentious purpose of a final decision on the hour to strike the first blow. On entering, Henry stood a little in check. “Trus' 'em!” said Seth. “Yeh fine 'em da right saut uh boys—true to deh own color! Da come fom fifteen diffent plantation.” 103 “They're the men for me!” replied Henry, looking around the room. “Is the house all safe?” “Yes brotha, all safe an' soun', an' a big dog in da yahd, so dat no one can come neah widout ouah knowin' it.” “First, then, to prayer, and next to seclusion,” said Henry, looking at Seth to lead in prayer. “Brotha, gib us wud a' prah,” said Seth to Henry, as the party on their knees bowed low their heads to the floor. “I am not fit, brother, for a spiritual leader; my warfare is not Heavenly, but earthly; I have not to do with angels, but with men; not with righteousness, but wickedness. Call upon some brother who has more of the grace of God than I. If I ever were a Christian, slavery has made me a sinner; if I had been an angel, it would have made me a devil! I feel more like cursing than praying—may God forgive me! Pray for me, brethren!” “Brotha Kits, gib us wud a prah, my brotha!” said Seth to an athletic, powerful black man. “Its not fah ouah many wuds, noah long prah—ouah 'pinion uh ouah self, nah sich like, dat Dou anseh us; but de 'cerity ob ouah hahts an ouah 'tentions. Bless de young man dat come 'mong us; make 'im fit fah 'is day, time, an' genration! Dou knows, Laud, dat fah wat we 'semble; anseh dis ouah 'tition, an' gib us token ob Dine 'probation!” petitioned Kits, slapping his hand at the conclusion down upon and splitting open a pine table before him. “Amen,” responded the gathering. “Let da wud run an' be glorify!” exclaimed Nathan Seth. The splitting of the table was regarded as ominous, but of doubtful signification, the major part considering it as rather unfavorable. Making no delay, lest a despondency ensue through fear and superstition, Henry at once entered into seclusion, completing an organization. “God sen' yeh had come along dis way befo'!” exclaimed Phebe Seth. “God grant 'e had!” responded Nathan. “My Laud! I feels like a Sampson! ah feels like gwine up to take de city mehself!” cried out Kits, standing erect in the floor with fists clenched, muscles braced, eyes shut, and head thrown back. “Yes, yes!” exclaimed Phebe. “Blessed be God, brotha Kits, da King is in da camp!” 104 “Powah, powah!” responded Seth. “Da King is heah!” “Praise 'is name!” shouted Phebe clapping and rubbing her hands. “Fah wat I feels an' da knowledge I has receive dis night! I been all my days in darkness till now! I feels we shall be a people yit! Thang' God, thang God!” when she skidded over the floor from side to side, keeping time with a tune sung to the words— “We'll honor our Lord and Master; We'll honor our Lord and King; We'll honor our Lord and Master, And bow at His command! O! brothers, did you hear the news? Lovely Jesus is coming! If ever I get to the house of the Lord, I'll never come back any more.” “It's good to be heah!” shouted Seth. “Ah! dat it is, brotha Seth!” responded Kits. “Da Laud is nigh, dat 'e is! 'e promise whahsomeveh two-three 'semble, to be in da mids' and dat to bless 'em, an' 'is promise not in vain, case 'e heah tonight!” At the moment which Phebe took her seat, nearly exhausted with exercise, a loud rap at the door, preceded by the signal for the evening, alarmed the party. “Come in, brotha Tib—come quick, if yeh comin!” bade Seth, in a low voice hastily, as he partially opened the door, peeping out into the other room. “O, pshaw!” exclaimed Phebe, as she and her husband yet whispered; “I wish he stay away. I sho nobody want 'em! he all'as half drunk anyhow. Good ev'nin', brotha Tib. How yeh been sense we see yeh early paut da night?” “Reasable, sistah—reasable, thang God. Well, what yeh all 'cided on? I say dis night now au neveh!” said Tib, evidently bent on mischief. “Foolishness, foolishness!” replied Phebe. “It make me mad see people make fool uh demself! I wish 'e stay home an' not bothen heah!” “Ah, 'spose I got right to speak as well as da rest on yeh! Yeh all ain' dat high yit to keep body fom talkin', ah 'spose. Betta wait tell yeh git free fo' ye 'temp' scrow oveh people dat way! I kin go out yeh 105 house!” retorted the mischievous man, determined on distracting their plans. “Nobody odeh yeh out, but I like see people have sense, specially befo' strangehs! an' know how behave demself!” “I is gwine out yeh house,” gruffly replied the man. “My friend,” said Henry, “listen a moment to me. You are not yet ready for a strike; you are not yet ready to do anything effective. You have barely taken the first step in the matter, and ——” “Strangeh!” interrupted the distracter. “Ah don'o yeh name, yeh strangeh to me—I see yeh talk 'bout 'step'; how many step man got take fo' 'e kin walk? I likes to know dat! Tell me that fus, den yeh may ax me what yeh choose!” “You must have all the necessary means, my brother,” persuasively resumed Henry, “for the accomplishment of your ends. Intelligence among yourself on everything pertaining to your designs and project. You must know what, how, and when to do. Have all the instrumentalities necessary for an effective effort, before making the attempt. Without this, you will fail, utterly fail!” “Den ef we got wait all dat time, we neveh be free!” gruffly replied he. “I goes in foh dis night! I say dis night! Who goes——” “Shet yo' big mouth! Sit down! Now make a fool o' yo'self!” exclaimed several voices with impatience, which evidently only tended to increase the mischief. “Dis night, dis night au neveh!” boisterously yelled the now infuriated man at the top of his voice. “Now's da time!” when he commenced shuffling about over the floor, stamping and singing at the top of his voice— Come all my brethren, let us take a rest, While the moon shines bright and clear; Old master died and left us all at last, And has gone at the bar to appear! Old master's dead and lying in his grave; And our blood will now cease to flow; He will no more tramp on the neck of the slave, For he's gone where slaveholders go! Hang up the shovel and the hoe—o—o—o! I don't care whether I work or no! 106 Old master's gone to the slaveholders rest— He's gone where they all ought to go! pointing down and concluding with an expression which indicated anything but a religious feeling. “Shame so it is dat he's lowed to do so! I wish I was man foh 'im, I'd make 'im fly!” said Phebe much alarmed, as she heard the great dog in the yard, which had been so trained as to know the family visitors, whining and manifesting an uneasiness unusual with him. On going to the back door, a person suddenly retreated into the shrubbery, jumping the fence, and disappearing. Soon, however, there was an angry low heavy growling of the dog, with suppressed efforts to bark, apparently prevented by fear on the part of the animal. This was succeeded by cracking in the bushes, dull heavy footsteps, cautious whispering, and stillness. “Hush! Listen!” admonished Phebe. “What is dat? Wy don't Tyger bark? I don't understan' it! Seth, go out and see, will you? Wy don't some you men make dat fool stop? I wish I was man, I'd break 'is neck, so I would!” during which the betrayer was shuffling, dancing, and singing at such a pitch as to attract attention from without. Seth seizing him from behind by a firm grasp of the collar with both hands, Tib sprang forward, slipping easily out of it, leaving the overcoat suspended in his assailant's hands, displaying studded around his waist a formidable array of deathly weapons, when rushing out of the front door, he in terrible accents exclaimed— “Insurrection! Insurrection! Death to every white!” With a sudden spring of their rattles, the gendarmes, who in cloisters had surrounded the house, and by constant menacing gestures with their maces kept the great dog, which stood back in a corner, in a snarling position in fear, arrested the miscreant, taking him directly to the old fort calaboose. In the midst of the confusion which necessarily ensued, Henry, Seth, and Phebe, Kits and fellow-leaders from the fifteen plantations, immediately fled, all having passes for the day and evening, which fully protected them in any part of the city away from the scene of disturbance. Intelligence soon reached all parts of the city, that an extensive plot for rebellion of the slaves had been timely detected. The place was at once thrown into a state of intense excitement, the military called 107 into requisition, dragoons flying in every direction, cannon from the old fort sending forth hourly through the night, thundering peals to give assurance of their sufficiency, and the infantry on duty traversing the streets, stimulating with martial air with voluntary vocalists, who readily joined in chorus to the memorable citing words in the Southern States of— Go tell Jack Coleman, The Negroes are arising! Alarm and consternation succeeded pleasure and repose, sleep for the time seemed to have departed from the eyes of the inhabitants, men, women and children ran every direction through the streets, seeming determined if they were to be massacred, that it should be done in the open highways rather than secretly in their own houses. The commotion thus continued till the morning; meanwhile editors, journalists, reporters, and correspondents, all were busily on the alert, digesting such information as would form an item of news for the press, or a standing reminiscence for historical reference in the future. CHAPTER 23 The Rebel Blacks For the remainder of the night secreting themselves in Conti and Burgundi streets, the rebel proprietors of the house in which was laid the plot for the destruction of the city were safe until the morning, their insurrectionary companions having effected a safe retreat to the respective plantations to which they belonged that evening. Jason and Phebe Seth were the hired slaves of their own time from a widower master, a wealthy retired attorney at Baton Rouge, whose only concern about them was to call every ninety days at the counter of the Canal Bank of New Orleans, and receive the price of their hire, which was there safely deposited to his credit by the industrious and faithful servants. The house in which the rebels met had been hired for the occasion, being furnished rooms kept for transient accommodation. 108 On the earliest conveyance destined for the City of Mobile, Henry left, who, before he fled, admonished as his parting counsel, to “stand still and see the salvation”; the next day being noted by General Ransom, as an incident in his history, to receive a formal visit of a fortnight's sojourn, in the person of his slaves Jason and Phebe Seth. The inquisition held in the case of the betrayer Tib developed fearful antecedents of extensive arrangements for the destruction of the city by fire and water, thereby compelling the white inhabitants to take refuge in the swamps, whilst the blacks marched up the coast, sweeping the plantations as they went. Suspicions were fixed upon many, among whom was an unfortunate English schoolteacher, who was arrested and imprisoned, when he died, to the last protesting his innocence. Mr. Farland was a good and bravehearted man, disdaining to appeal for redress to his country, lest it might be regarded as the result of cowardice. Taking fresh alarm at this incident, the municipal regulations have been most rigid in a system of restriction and espionage toward Negroes and mulattoes, almost destroying their self-respect and manhood, and certainly impairing their usefulness. CHAPTER 24 A Flying Cloud Safely in Mobile Henry landed without a question, having on the way purchased of a passenger who was deficient of means to bear expenses, a horse by which he made a daring entry into the place. Mounting the animal which was fully caparisoned, he boldly rode to the principal livery establishment, ordering for it the greatest care until his master's arrival. Hastening into the country he readily found a friend and seclusion in the hut of Uncle Cesar, on the plantation of Gen. Audly. Making no delay, early next morning he returned to the city to effect a special object. Passing by the stable where the horse had been left, a voice loudly cried out: “There's that Negro boy, now! Hallo, there, boy! didn't you leave a horse here?” Heeding not the interrogation, but speedily turning the first corner, Henry hastened away and was soon lost among the inhabitants. 109 “How yeh do, me frien'?” saluted a black man whom he met in a by-street. “Ar' yeh strangeh?” “Why?” enquired Henry. “O, nothin'! On'y I hearn some wite men talkin'j's now, an' da say some strange nigga lef' a hoss dar, an' da blev 'e stole 'em, an' da gwine ketch an' put 'em in de jail.” “If that's all, I live here. Good morning!” rejoined he who soon was making rapid strides in the direction of Georgia. Every evening found him among the quarters of some plantations, safely secreted in the hut of some faithful, trustworthy slave, with attentive, anxious listeners, ready for an issue. So, on he went with flying haste, from plantation to plantation, till Alabama was left behind him. In Georgia, though the laws were strict, the Negroes were equally hopeful. Like the old stock of Maryland and Virginia blacks from whom they were descended, they manifested a high degree of intelligence for slaves. Receiving their messenger with open arms, the aim of his advent among them spread like fire in a stubble. Everywhere seclusions were held and organizations completed, till Georgia stands like a city at the base of a burning mountain, threatened with destruction by an overflow of the first outburst of lava from above. Clearing the state without an obstruction, he entered that which of all he most dreaded, the haughty South Carolina. Here the most relentless hatred appears to exist against the Negro, who seems to be regarded but as an animated thing of convenience or a domesticated animal, reared for the service of his master. The studied policy of the whites evidently is to keep the blacks in subjection and their spirits below a sentiment of self-respect. To impress the Negro with a sense of his own inferiority is a leading precept of their social system; to be white is the only evidence necessary to establish a claim to superiority. To be a “master” in South Carolina is to hold a position of rank and title, and he who approaches this the nearest is heightened at least in his own estimation. These feelings engendered by the whites have been extensively incorporated with the elements of society among the colored people, giving rise to the “Brown Society” an organized association of mulattos, created by the influence of the whites, for the purpose of preventing pure-blooded Negroes from entering the social circle, or holding intercourse with them. 110 Here intelligence and virtue are discarded and ignored, when not in conformity with these regulations. A man with the prowess of Memnon, or a woman with the purity of the “black doves” of Ethiopia and charms of the “black virgin” of Solomon, avails them nothing, if the blood of the oppressor, engendered by wrong, predominates not in their veins. Oppression is the author of all this, and upon the heads of the white masters let the terrible responsibility of this miserable stupidity and ignorance of their mulatto children rest; since to them was left the plan of their social salvation, let upon their consciences rest the penalties of their social damnation. The transit of the runaway through this state was exceedingly difficult, as no fabrication of which he was capable could save him from the penalties of arrest. To assume freedom would be at once to consign himself to endless bondage, and to acknowledge himself a slave was at once to advertise for a master. His only course of safety was to sleep through the day and travel by night, always keeping to the woods. At a time just at the peep of day when making rapid strides the baying of hounds and soundings of horns were heard at a distance. Understanding it to be the sport of the chase, Henry made a hasty retreat to the nearest hiding place which presented, in the hollow of a log. On attempting to creep in a snarl startled him, when out leaped the fox, having counterrun his track several times, and sheltered in a fallen sycamore. Using his remedy for distracting dogs, he succeeded the fox in the sycamore, resting in safety during the day without molestation, though the dogs bayed within thirty yards of him, taking a contrary course by the distraction of their scent. For every night of sojourn in the state he had a gathering, not one of which was within a hut, so closely were the slaves watched by patrol, and sometimes by mulatto and black overseers. These gatherings were always held in the forest. Many of the confidants of the seclusions were the much-dreaded runaways of the woods, a class of outlawed slaves, who continually seek the lives of their masters. One day having again sought retreat in a hollow log where he lay sound asleep, the day being chilly, he was awakened by a cold application to his face and neck, which proved to have been made by a rattlesnake of the largest size, having sought the warmth of his bosom. 111 Henry made a hasty retreat, ever after declining the hollow of a tree. With rapid movements and hasty action, he like a wind cloud flew through the State of South Carolina, who like “a thief in the night” came when least expected. Henry now entered Charleston, the metropolis, and head of the “Brown Society,” the bane and dread of the blacks in the state, an organization formed through the instrumentality of the whites to keep the blacks and mulattos at variance. To such an extent is the error carried, that the members of the association, rather than their freedom would prefer to see the blacks remain in bondage. But many most excellent mulattos and quadroons condemn with execration this auxiliary of oppression. The eye of the intelligent world is on this “Brown Society”; and its members when and wherever seen are scanned with suspicion and distrust. May they not be forgiven for their ignorance when proving by repentance their conviction of wrong? Lying by till late next morning, he entered the city in daylight, having determined boldly to pass through the street, as he might not be known from any common Negro. Coming to an extensive wood-yard he learned by an old black man who sat at the gate that the proprietors were two colored men, one of whom he pointed out, saying: “Dat is my mausta.” Approaching a respectable-looking mulatto gentleman standing in conversation with a white, his foot resting on a log: “Do you wish to hire help, sir?” enquired Henry respectfully touching his cap. “Take off your hat, boy!” ordered the mulatto gentleman. Obeying the order, he repeated the question. “Who do you belong to?” enquired the gentleman. “I am free, sir!” replied he. “You are a free boy? Are you not a stranger here?” “Yes, sir.” “Then you lie, sir,” replied the mulatto gentleman, “as you know that no free Negro is permitted to enter this state. You are a runaway, and I'll have you taken up!” at the same time walking through his office looking out at the front door as if for an officer. Making a hasty retreat, in less than an hour he had left the city, 112 having but a few minutes tarried in the hut of an old black family on the suburb, one of the remaining confidentials and adherents of the memorable South Carolina insurrection, when and to whom he imparted his fearful scheme. “Ah!” said the old man, throwing his head in the lap of his old wife, with his hands around her neck, both of whom sat near the chimney with the tears coursing down their furrowed cheeks. “Dis many a day I been prayin' dat de Laud sen' a nudder Denmark 'mong us! De Laud now anseh my prar in dis young man! Go on, my son—go on—an' may God A'mighty bress yeh!” North Carolina was traversed mainly in the night. When approaching the region of the Dismal Swamp, a number of the old confederates of the noted Nat Turner were met with, who hailed the daring young runaway as the harbinger of better days. Many of these are still long-suffering, hard-laboring slaves on the plantations; and some bold, courageous, and fearless adventurers, denizens of the mystical, antiquated, and almost fabulous Dismal Swamp, where for many years they have defied the approach of their pursuers. Here Henry found himself surrounded by a different atmosphere, an entirely new element. Finding ample scope for undisturbed action through the entire region of the Swamp, he continued to go scattering to the winds and sowing the seeds of a future crop, only to take root in the thick black waters which cover it, to be grown in devastation and reaped in a whirlwind of ruin. “I been lookin' fah yeh dis many years,” said old Gamby Gholar, a noted high conjurer and compeer of Nat Turner, who for more than thirty years has been secluded in the Swamp, “an' been tellin' on 'em dat yeh 'ood come long, but da 'ooden' heah dat I tole 'em! Now da see! Dis many years I been seein' on yeh! Yes, 'ndeed, chile, dat I has!” and he took from a gourd of antiquated appearance which hung against the wall in his hut, many articles of a mysterious character, some resembling bits of woollen yarn, onionskins, oystershells, finger and toenails, eggshells, and scales which he declared to be from very dangerous serpents, but which closely resembled, and were believed to be those of innocent and harmless fish, with broken iron nails. These he turned over and over again in his hands, closely inspecting them through a fragment of green bottle glass, which he claimed to be a mysterious and precious “blue stone” got at a peculiar and unknown 113 spot in the Swamp, whither by a special faith he was led—and ever after unable to find the same spot—putting them again into the gourd, the end of the neck being cut off so as to form a bottle, he rattled the “goombah,” as he termed it, as if endeavoring to frighten his guest. This process ended, he whispered, then sighted into the neck, first with one eye, then with the other, then shook, and so alternately whispering, sighting and shaking, until apparently getting tired, again pouring them out, fumbling among them until finding a forked breast-bone of a small bird, which, muttering to himself, he called the “charm bone of a treefrog.” “Ah,” exclaimed Gamby as he selected out the mystic symbol handing it to Henry, “got yeh at las'. Take dis, meh son, an' so long as yeh keep it, da can' haum yeh, dat da can't. Dis woth money, meh son; da ain't many sich like dat in de Swamp! Yeh never want for nothin' so long as yeh keep dat!” In this fearful abode for years of some of Virginia and North Carolina's boldest black rebels, the names of Nat Turner, Denmark Veezie, and General Gabriel were held by them in sacred reverence; that of Gabriel as a talisman. With delight they recounted the many exploits of whom they conceived to be the greatest men who ever lived, the pretended deeds of whom were fabulous, some of the narrators claiming to have been patriots in the American Revolution. “Yeh offen hearn on Maudy Ghamus,” said an old man stooped with age, having the appearance of a centenarian. “Dat am me—me heah!” continued he, touching himself on the breast. “I's de frien' on Gamby Gholar; an' I an' Gennel Gabel fit in de Malution wah, an' da want no sich fightin' dare as dat in Gabel wah!” “You were then a soldier in the Revolutionary War for American independence, father?” enquired Henry. “Gau bress yeh, hunny. Yes, 'ndeed, chile, long 'for yeh baun; dat I did many long day go! Yes, chile, yes!” “And General Gabriel, too, a soldier of the American Revolution?” replied Henry. “Ah, chile, dat 'e did fit in de Molution wah, Gabel so, an' 'e fit like mad dog! Wen 'e sturt, chile, da can't stop 'im; da may as well let 'im go long, da can't do nuffin' wid 'im.” Henry subscribed to his eminent qualifications as a warrior, assuring him that those were the kind of fighting men they then needed among 114 the blacks. Maudy Ghamus to this assented, stating that the Swamp contained them in sufficient number to take the whole United States; the only difficulty in the way being that the slaves in the different states could not be convinced of their strength. He had himself for years been an emissary; also, Gamby Gholar, who had gone out among them with sufficient charms to accomplish all they desired, but could not induce the slaves to a general rising. “Take plenty goomba an' fongosa 'long wid us, an' plant mocasa all along, an' da got nuffin' fah do but come, an' da 'ooden come!” despairingly declared Maudy Ghamus. Gamby Gholar, Maudy Ghamus, and others were High Conjurors, who as ambassadors from the Swamp, were regularly sent out to create new conjurers, lay charms, take off “spells” that could not be reached by Low Conjurors, and renew the art of all conjurors of seven years existence, at the expiration of which period the virtue was supposed to run out; holding their official position by fourteen years appointments. Through this means the revenue is obtained for keeping up an organized existence in this much-dreaded morass—the Dismal Swamp. Before Henry left they insisted upon, and anointed him a priest of the order of High Conjurors, and amusing enough it was to him who consented to satisfy the aged devotees of a time-honored superstition among them. Their supreme executive body called the “Head” consists in number of seven aged men, noted for their superior experience and wisdom. Their place of official meeting must be entirely secluded, either in the forest, a gully, secluded hut, an underground room, or a cave. The seven old men who, with heightened spirits, hailed his advent among them, led Henry to the door of an ample cave—their hollow—at the door of which they were met by a large sluggish, lazily-moving serpent, but so entirely tame and petted that it wagged its tail with fondness toward Maudy as he led the party. The old men, suddenly stopping at the approach of the reptile, stepping back a pace, looked at each other mysteriously shaking their heads: “Go back!” exclaimed Maudy waving his hand. “Go back, my chile! 'e in terrible rage! 'e got seben long toof, any on 'em kill yeh like flash!” tapping it slightly on the head with a twig of grapevine which he carried in his hand. 115 Looking at the ugly beast, Henry had determined did it approach to harm, to slay it; but instead, it quietly coiled up and lay at the door as if asleep, which reminded him of queer and unmeaning sounds as they approached, uttered by Gholar, which explained that the animal had been trained to approach when called as any other pet. The “Head” once in session, they created him conjuror of the highest degree known to their art.* With this qualification he was licensed with unlimited power—a power before given no one—to go forth and do wonders. The “Head” seemed, by the unlimited power given him, to place greater reliance in the efforts of Henry for their deliverance than in their own seven heads together. “Go, my son,” said they, “an' may God A'mighty hole up yo' han's an' grant us speedy 'liverence!” Being now well refreshed—having rested without the fear of detection—and in the estimation of Gholar, Ghamus and the rest of the “Heads,” well qualified to prosecute his project amidst the prayers, blessings, wishes, hopes, fears, pow-wows and promises of a never failing conjuration, and tears of the cloudy inhabitants of this great seclusion, among whom were the frosty-headed, bowed-down old men of the Cave, Henry left that region by his usual stealthy process, reaching Richmond, Virginia, in safety. CHAPTER 25 Like Father, Like Son With his usual adroitness, early in the morning, Henry entered Richmond boldly walking through the streets. This place in its municipal regulations, the customs and usages of society, the tastes and assumptious pride of the inhabitants, much resembles Charleston, South Carolina, the latter being a modified model of the former. The restrictions here concerning Negroes and mulattos are less rigid, as they may be permitted to continue in social or religious gatherings after nine o'clock at night provided a white person be present to 116 inspect their conduct; and may ride in a carriage, smoke a cigar in daylight, or walk with a staff at night. According to an old-existing custom said to have originated by law, a mulatto or quadroon who proved a white mother were themselves regarded as white: and many availing themselves of the fact, took advantage of it by leaving their connections with the blacks and turning entirely over to the whites. Their children take further advantage of this by intermarrying with the whites, by which their identity becomes extinct, and they enter every position in society both social and political. Some of the proudest American statesmen in either House of the Capital, receive their poetic vigor of imagination from the current of Negro blood flowing in their veins. Like those of Charleston, some of the light mixed bloods of Richmond hold against the blacks and pure-blooded Negroes the strongest prejudice and hatred, all engendered by the teachings of their Negro-fearing master-fathers. All of the terms and epithets of disparagement commonly used by the whites toward the blacks are as readily applied to them by this class of the mixed bloods. Shy of the blacks and fearful of the whites, they go sneaking about with the countenance of a criminal, of one conscious of having done wrong to his fellows. Spurned by the one and despised by the other, they are the least happy of all the classes. Of this class was Mrs. Pierce, whose daughter stood in the hall door, quite early enjoying the cool air this morning. “Miss,” enquired Henry of the young quadroon lady, “can you inform me where I'll find the house of Mr. Norton, a colored family in this city?” politely raising his cap as he approached her. With a screech she retreated into the house, exclaiming, that a black Negro at the door had given her impudence. Startled at this alarm so unexpected to him—though somewhat prepared for such from his recent experience in Charleston—Henry made good a most hasty retreat before the father, with a long red “hide” in his hand, could reach the door. The man grimaced, declaring, could he have his way, every black in the country would be sold away to labor. Finding the house of his friend, he was safely secluded until evening, when developing his scheme, the old material extinguished and left to mould and rot after the demonstration at Southampton, was immediately rekindled, never again to be suppressed until the slaves stood up the equal of the masters. Southampton—the name of Southampton to them was like an electric shock. 117 “Ah, Laud!” replied Uncle Medly, an old man of ninety-four years, when asked whether or not he would help his brethren in a critical time of need. “Dat I would. Ef I do noffin' else, I pick up dirt an' tro' in der eye!” meaning in that of their masters. “Glory to God!” exclaimed his wife, an old woman of ninety years. “Hallelujah!” responded her daughter, the wife of Norton, the man of the house. “Blessed be God's eternal name!” concluded the man himself. “I've long been praying and looking, but God has answered me at last.” “None could answer it, but a prayer-hearing God!” replied the wife. “None would answer it, but a prayer-hearing God!” responded the husband. “None did answer it, but a prayer-hearing God!” exclaimed the woman. “Glory to God! Glory to God! 'Tis none but He can deliver!” They fell on their knees to pray, when fervent was their devotion; after which Henry left, but on account of a strict existing patrol regulation, was obliged for three days to be in the wood, so closely watched was he. The fourth evening he effected most adroitly an escape from his hiding place, passing through a strong guard of patrol all around him, entering the District of Columbia at early dawn, soon entering the City of Washington. The slave prison of Williams and Brien conspicuously stood among the edifices; high in the breeze from the flagstaff floated defiantly the National Colors, stars as the pride of the white man, and stripes as the emblem of power over the blacks. At this the fugitive gave a passing glance, but with hurried steps continued his course, not knowing whither he would tarry. He could only breathe in soliloquy, “How long, O Lord of the oppressed, how long shall this thing continue?” Passing quietly along, gazing in at every door, he came to a stop on the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Sixth Street. On entering, looking into the establishment, his eye unexpectedly caught that of a person who proved to be a mulatto gentleman, slowly advancing toward the door. His first impulse was to make a retreat, but fearing the effort would be fatal, bracing his nerves, he stood looking the person full in the face. “Do you want anything, young man?” enquired the mulatto gentleman, who proved to be the proprietor. “I am hungry, sir!” Henry quickly replied. 118 “You're a stranger, then, in the city?” “I am, sir.” “Never here before?” “Never before, sir.” “Have you no acquaintance in the place?” “None at all, sir.” “Then, sir, if you'll come in, I'll see if I can find as much as you can eat.” replied the goodhearted man. Setting him down to a comfortable breakfast, the wife and niece of the proprietor kindly attended upon him, filling his pouch afterwards with sufficient for the day's travel. Giving him a parting hand, Henry left with, “God Almighty bless the family!” clearing the city in a short time. “I understand it all,” replied the gentleman in response, “and may the same God guide and protect you by the way!” justly regarding him as a fugitive. The kindness received at the hands of this family* brought tears of gratitude to the eyes of the recipient, especially when remembering his treatment from the same class in Charleston and Richmond. About the same time that Henry left the city, the slave of a distinguished Southern statesman also left Washington and the comforts of home and kindness of his master forever. From Washington taking a retrograde course purposely to avoid Maryland, where he learned they were already well advised and holding gatherings, the margin of Virginia was cut in this hasty passage, so as to reach more important points for communication. Stealing through the neighborhood and swimming the river, a place was reached called Mud Fort, some four miles distant from Harper's Ferry, situated on the Potomac. Seeing a white man in a field near by, he passed on as if unconscious of his presence, when the person hailing him in broken English questioned his right to pass. “I am going to Charleston, sir.” replied Henry. “Vat fahr?” inquired the Dutchman. “On business,” replied he. 119 “You nagher, you! dat ish not anzer mine question! I does ax you vat fahr you go to Charleston, and you anzer me dat!” “I told you, sir, that I am going on business.” “You ish von zaucy nagher, andt I bleve you one runaway! Py ching, I vill take you pack!” said the man instantly climbing the fence to get into the road where the runaway stood. “That will do,” exclaimed Henry, “you are near enough—I can bring you down there,” at the same time presenting a well-charged six-barrel weapon of death; when the affrighted Dutchman fell on the opposite side of the fence unharmed, and Henry put down his weapon without a fire. Having lurked till evening in a thicket near by, Charleston was entered near the depot, just at the time when the last train was leaving for Washington. Though small, this place was one of the most difficult in which to promote his object, as the slaves were but comparatively few, difficult to be seen, and those about the depot and house servants, trained to be suspicious and mistrustful of strange blacks, and true and faithful to their masters. Still, he was not remiss in finding a friend and a place for the seclusion. This place was most admirably adapted for the gathering, being held up a run or little stream, in a bramble thicket on a marshy meadow of the old Brackenridge estate, but a few minutes walk from the town. This evening was that of a strict patrol watch, their headquarters for the night being in Worthington's old mills, from which ran the race, passing near which was the most convenient way to reach the place of gathering for the evening. While stealthily moving along in the dark, hearing a cracking in the weeds and a soft tramping of feet, Henry secreted himself in a thick high growth of Jamestown weeds along the fence, when he slightly discerned a small body of men as if reconnoitering the neighborhood. Sensible of the precariousness of his condition, the fugitive lie as still as death, lest by dint he might be discovered, as much fear and apprehension then prevaded the community. Charleston, at best, was a hard place for a Negro, and under the circumstances, had he been discovered, no plea would have saved him. Breathlessly crouched beneath the foliage and thorns of the fetid weed, he was startled by a voice suddenly exclaiming— “Hallo there! who's that?” which provided to be that of one of the patrol, the posse having just come down the bank of the race from the mill. 120 “Sahvant, mausta!” was the humble reply. “Who are you?” further enquired the voice. “Zack Parker, sir.” “Is that you, old Zack?” “Yes, mausta—honner bright.” “Come, Zack, you must go with us! Don't you know that Negroes are not allowed to be out at night alone, these times? Come along!” said Davy Hunter. “Honner bright, maus Davy—honner bright!” continued the old black slave of Colonel Davenport, quietly walking beside them along the mill race, the water of which being both swift and deep. “Maus Davy, I got some mighty good rum here in dis flas'—you gentmen hab some? Mighty good! Mine I tells you, maus Davy—mighty good!” “Well, Zack, we don't care to take a little,” replied Bob Flagg. “Have you had your black mouth to this flask?” “Honner bright, maus Bobby—honner bright!” replied the old man. Hunter raised the flask to his mouth, the others gathering around, each to take a draught in turn, when instantly a plunge in the water was heard, and the next moment old Zack Parker was swinging his hat in triumph on the opposite bank of the channel, exclaiming, “Honner bright, gentmen! Honner bright! Happy Jack an' no trouble!”—the last part of the sentence being a cant phrase commonly in use in that part of the country, to indicate a feeling free from all cares. In a rage the flask was thrown in the dark, and alighted near his feet upright in the tufts of grass, when the old man in turn seizing the vessel, exclaiming aloud, “Yo' heath, gentmen! Yo' good heath!” Then turning it up to his mouth, the sound heard across the stream gave evidence of his enjoyment of the remainder of the contents. “Thank'e, gentmen—good night!” when away went Zack to the disappointment and even amusement of the party. Taking advantage of this incident, Henry, under a guide, found a place of seclusion, and a small number of good willing spirits ready for the counsel. “Mine, my chile!” admonished old Aunt Lucy. “Mine hunny, how yeh go long case da all'as lookin' arter black folks.” Taking the nearest course through Worthington's woods, he reached in good time that night the slave quarters of Captain Jack Briscoe and 121 Major Brack Rutherford. The blacks here were united by the confidential leaders of Moore's people, and altogether they were rather a superior gathering of slaves to any yet met with in Virginia. His mission here soon being accomplished, he moved rapidly on to Slaughter's, Crane's and Washington's old plantations, where he caused a glimmer of light, which until then had never been thought of, much less seen, by them. The night rounds of the patrol of the immediate neighborhood, caused a hurried retreat from Washington's—the last place at which he stopped—and daybreak the next morning found him in near proximity to Winchester, when he sought and obtained a hiding place in the woods of General Bell. The people here he found ripe and ready for anything that favored their redemption. Taylor's, Logan's, Whiting's and Tidball's plantations all had crops ready for the harvest. “An' is dis de young man,” asked Uncle Talton, stooped with the age of eighty-nine years, “dat we hearn so much ob, dat's gwine all tru de country 'mong de black folks? Tang God a'mighty for wat I lib to see!” and the old man straightened himself up to his greatest height, resting on his staff, and swinging himself around as if whirling on the heel as children sometimes do, exclaimed in the gladness of his heart and the bouyancy of his spirits at the prospect of freedom before him: “I dont disagard none on 'em,” referring to the whites. “We have only 'regarded' them too long, father,” replied Henry with a sigh of sorrow, when he looked upon the poor old time and care-worn slave, whose only hope for freedom rested in his efforts. “I neber 'spected to see dis! God bless yeh, my son! May God 'long yeh life!” continued the old man, the tears streaming down his cheeks. “Amen!” sanctioned Uncle Ek. “God grant it!” replied Uncle Duk. “May God go wid yeh, my son, wheresomeber yeh go!” exclaimed the old slaves present; when Henry, rising from the block of wood upon which he sat, being moved to tears, reaching out his hand, said, “Well, brethren, mothers, and fathers! My time with you is up, and I must leave you—farewell!” when this faithful messenger of his oppressed brethren, was soon in the woods, making rapid strides towards Western Virginia. 122 Wheeling, in the extreme Western part of Virginia, was reached by the fugitive, where the slaves, already restless and but few in number in consequence of their close proximity to a free state—Ohio being on the opposite side of the river, on the bank of which the town is situated—could never thereafter become contented. The “Buckeye State” steamer here passed along on a downward trip, when boarding her as a black passenger, Cincinnati in due season was reached, when the passengers were transferred to the “Telegraph No. 2,” destined for Louisville, Kentucky. Here crowding in with the passengers, he went directly to Shippenport, a small place but two miles below—the rapids or falls preventing the large class of steamers from going thence except at the time of high water—the “Crystal Palace,” a beautiful packet, was boarded, which swiftly took him to Smithland, at the confluence of the Cumberland and Ohio rivers. From this point access up the Cumberland was a comparatively easy task, and his advent into Nashville, Tennessee, was as unexpected at this time to the slaves, as it was portentous and ominous to the masters. There was no difficulty here in finding a seclusion, and the introduction of his subject was like the application of fire to a drought-seasoned stubble field. The harvest was ripe and ready for the scythe, long before the reaper and time for gathering came. In both town and country the disappointment was sad, when told by Henry that the time to strike had not yet come; that they for the present must “Stand still and see the salvation!” “How long, me son, how long we got wait dis way?” asked Daddy Luu, a good old man and member of a Christian church for upwards of forty years. “I can't tell exactly, father, but I suppose in this, as in all other good works, the Lord's own annointed time!” replied he. “An' how long dat gwine be, honey? case I's mighty ti'ed waitin' dis way!” earnestly responded the old man. “I can't tell you how long, father; God knows best.” “An' how we gwine know w'en 'E is ready?” “When we are ready, He is ready, and not till then is His time.” “God sen we was ready, now den!” concluded the old man, blinded with tears, and who, from the reverence they had for his age and former good counsel among them, this night was placed at the head of the Gathering. 123 Carrying with him the prayers and blessings of his people here, Henry made rapid strides throughout this state, sowing in every direction seeds of the crop of a future harvest. From Tennessee Henry boldly strode into Kentucky, and though there seemed to be a universal desire for freedom, there were few who were willing to strike. To run away, with them, seemed to be the highest conceived idea of their right to liberty. This they were doing, and would continue to do on every favorable opportunity, but their right to freedom by self-resistance, to them was forbidden by the Word of God. Their hopes were based on the long-talked-of promised emancipation in the state. “What was your dependence,” inquired he of an old man verging on the icy surface of ninety winters' slippery pathways, “before you had this promise of emancipation?” “Wy, dar war Guvneh Metcalf, I sho 'e good to black folks,” replied Uncle Winson. “Well, uncle, tell me, supposing he had not been so, what would you have then done?” “Wy, chile, I sho 'e raise up dat time 'sides dem maus Henry and maus John.” “But what good have they ever done you? I don't see that you are any better off than had they never lived.” “Ah, chile! Da good to we black folks,” continued the old man, with a fixed belief that they were emancipationists and the day of freedom, to the slaves drew near. Satisfied that self-reliance was the furthest from their thoughts, but impressing them with new ideas concerning their rights, the great-hearted runaway bid them “Good bye, and may God open your eyes to see your own condition!” when in a few minutes Lexington was relieved of an enemy, more potent than the hostile bands of red men who once defied the military powers of Kentucky. In a few days this astonishing slave was again on the smooth waters of the beautiful Ohio, making speed as fast as the steamer “Queen of the West” could carry him down stream towards Grand Gulf on the great river of the Southwest. CHAPTER 26 Return to Mississippi The evening, for the season, was very fine; the sky beautiful; the stars shining unusually bright; while Henry, alone on the hurricane deck of the “Queen of the West,” stood in silence abaft the wheel-house, gazing intently at the golden orbs of Heaven. Now shoots a meteor, then seemingly shot a comet, again glistened a brilliant planet which almost startled the gazer; and while he yet stood motionless in wonder looking into the heavens, a blazing star whose scintillations dazzled the sight, and for the moment bewildered the mind, was seen apparently to vibrate in a manner never before observed by him. At these things Henry was filled with amazement, and disposed to attach more than ordinary importance to them, as having an especial bearing in his case; but the mystery finds interpretation in the fact that the emotions were located in his own brain, and not exhibited by the orbs of Heaven. Through the water plowed the steamer, the passengers lively and mirthful, sometimes amusingly noisy, whilst the adventurous and heart-stricken fugitive, without a companion or friend with whom to share his grief and sorrows, and aid in untangling his then deranged mind, threw himself in tribulation upon the humble pallet assigned him, there to pour out his spirit in communion with the Comforter of souls on high. The early rising of the passengers aroused him from apparently an abridged night of intermitting sleep, when creeping away into a by-place, he spent the remainder of the day. Thus by sleeping through the day, and watching in the night—induced by the proximity to his old home—did the runaway spend the time during the first two days of his homeward journey. Falling into a deep sleep early on the evening of the third day, he was suddenly aroused about eleven o'clock by the harsh singing of the black firemen on the steamer: Natchez under the Hill! Natchez under the Hill! sung to an air with which they ever on the approach of a steamer, 125 greet the place, as seemingly a sorrowful reminiscence of their ill-fated brethren continually sold there; when springing to his feet and hurrying upon deck, he found the vessel full upon the wharf boat stationed at the Natchez landing. Taking advantage of the moment—passing from the wheelhouse down the ladder to the lower deck—thought by many to have gone forever from the place, Henry effected without detection an easy transit to the wharf, and from thence up the Hill, where again he found himself amid the scenes of his saddest experience, and the origination and organization of the measures upon which were based his brightest hopes and expectations for the redemption of his race in the South. CHAPTER 27 A Night of Anxiety On Saturday evening, about half past seven, was it that Henry dared again to approach the residence of Colonel Franks. The family had not yet retired, as the lights still burned brilliantly in the great house, when, secreted in the shrubbery contiguous to the hut of Mammy Judy and Daddy Joe, he lay patiently awaiting the withdrawal in the mansion. “There's no use in talkin,' Andy, he's gittin' suspicious of us all,” said Charles, “as he threatens us all with the traders; an' if Henry don't come soon, I'll have to leave anyhow! But the old people, Andy, I can't think of leavin' them!” “Do you think da would go if da had a chance, Charles?” “Go? yes 'ndeed, Andy, they'd go this night if they could git off. Since the sellin' of Maggie, and Henry's talkin' to 'em, and his goin' an' takin' little Joe, and Ailcey, an' Cloe, an' Polly an' all clearin' out, they altered their notion about stayin' with ole Franks.” “Wish we could know when Henry's comin' back. Wonder what 'e is,” said Andy. “Here!” was the reply in a voice so cautiously suppressed, and so familiarly distinct that they at once recognized it to be that of their long-absent and most anxiously looked-for friend. Rushing upon him, they mutually embraced, with tears of joy and anxiety. 126 “How have you been anyhow, Henry?” exclaimed Charles in a suppressed tone. “I's so glad to see yeh, dat I ain't agwine to speak to yeh, so I ain't!” added Andy. “Come, brethren, to the woods!” said Henry; when the three went directly to the forest, two and half miles from the city. “Well now, Henry, tell us all about yourself. What you been doin'?” inquired Charles. “I know of nothing about myself worth telling,” replied he. “Oh, pshaw! wot saut a way is dat, Henry; yeh wont tell a body nothin'. Pshaw, dats no way,” grumbled Andy. “Yes, Andy, I've much to tell you; but not of myself; 'tis about our poor oppressed people everywhere I've been! But we have not now time for that.” “Why, can't you tell us nothin'?” “Well, Andy, since you must have something, I'll tell you this much: I've been in the Dismal Swamp among the High Conjurors, and saw the heads, old Maudy Ghamus and Gamby Gholar.” “Hoop! now 'e's a talkin'! Ef 'e wasn't I wouldn't tell yeh so! An' wat da sa to yeh, Henry?” “They welcomed me as the messenger of their deliverance; and as a test of their gratitude, made me a High Conjuror after their own order.” “O pshaw, Henry! Da done what? Wy, ole feller, yeh is high sho 'nough!” “What good does it do, Henry, to be a conjuror?” inquired Charles. “It makes the more ignorant slaves have greater confidence in, and more respect for, their headmen and leaders.” “Oh yes, I see now! Because I couldn't see why you would submit to become a conjuror if it done no good.” “That's it, Charles! As you know, I'll do anything not morally wrong, to gain our freedom; and to effect this, we must take the slaves, not as we wish them to be, but as we really find them to be.” “You say it gives power, Henry; is there any reality in the art of conjunction?” “It only makes the slaves afraid of you if you are called a conjuror, that's all!” “Oh, I understand it well enough now!” concluded Charles. “I undehstood well 'nough fuss, but I want to know all I could, dat's all!” added Andy. “Ole Maudy's a high feller, aint 'e, Henry?” 127 “Oh yes! he's the Head,” replied Charles. “No,” explained Henry, “he's not now Head, but Gamby Gholar, who has for several years held that important position among them. Their Council consists of Seven, called the 'Heads,' and their Chief is called 'the Head.' Everything among them, in religion, medicine, laws, or politics, of a public character, is carried before the Head in Council to be settled and disposed of.” “Now we understan',” said Andy, “but tell us, Henry, how yeh get 'long 'mong de folks whar yeh bin all dis time?” “Very well; everywhere except Kentucky, and there you can't move them toward a strike!” “Kentucky!” rejoined Andy. “I all'as thought dat de slaves in dat state was de bes' treated uv any, an' dat da bin all 'long spectin' to be free.” “That's the very mischief of it, Andy! 'Tis this confounded 'good treatment' and expectation of getting freed by their oppressors, that has been the curse of the slave. All shrewd masters, to keep their slaves in check, promise them their freedom at their, the master's death, as though they were certain to die first. This contents the slave, and makes him obedient and willing to serve and toil on, looking forward to the promised redemption. This is just the case precisely now in Kentucky. It was my case. While Franks treated me well, and made promises of freedom to my wife”—and he gave a deep sigh—“I would doubtless have been with him yet; but his bad treatment—his inhuman treatment of my wife—my poor, poor wife!—poor Maggie! was that which gave me courage, and made me determined to throw off the yoke, let it cost me what it would. Talk to me of a good master! A 'good master' is the very worst of masters. Were they all cruel and inhuman, or could the slaves be made to see their treatment aright, they would not endure their oppression for a single hour!” “I sees it, I sees it!” replied Andy. “An' so do I,” added Charles, “who couldn't see that?” “I tells yeh, Henry, it was mighty haud for me to make up my mine to leave ole Potteh; but even sence you an' Chaules an' me made de vow togedder, I got mo' an' mo' to hate 'im. I could chop 'is head off sometime, I get so mad. I bleve I could chop off Miss Mary' head; an' I likes hur; she mighty good to we black folks.” “Pshaw! yes 'ndeed' ole Frank's head would be nothin' for me to 128 chop off; I could chop off mistess head, an' you know she's a good woman; but I mus' be mighty mad fus'!” said Charles. “That's it, you see. There is no danger that a 'good' master or mistress will ever be harmed by the slaves. There's neither of you, Andy, could muster up courage enough to injure a 'good master' or mistress. And even I now could not have the heart to injure Mrs. Franks,” said Henry. “Now me,” replied Charles. “Yes, 'ndeed, dats a fac', case I knows I couldn' hurt Miss Mary Potteh. I bleve I'd almos' chop off anybody's head if I see 'em 'tempt to hurt 'e!” added Andy; when they heartily laughed at each other. “Just so!” said Henry. “A slave has no just conception of his own wrongs. Had I dealt with Franks as he deserved, for doing that for which he would have taken the life of any man had it been his case—tearing my wife from my bosom!—the most I could take courage directly to do, was to leave him, and take as many from him as I could induce to go. But maturer reflection drove me to the expedient of avenging the general wrongs of our people, by inducing the slave, in his might, to scatter red ruin throughout the region of the South. But still, I cannot find it in my heart to injure an individual, except in personal conflict.” “An has yeh done it, Henry?” earnestly inquired Andy. “Yes, Andy; yes, I have done it! and I thank God for it! I have taught the slave that mighty lesson: to strike for Liberty. 'Rather to die as freemen, than live as slaves!' ” “Thang God!” exclaimed Charles. “Amen!” responded Andy. “Now, boys, to the most important event of your lives!” said Henry. “Wat's dat?” asked Andy. “Why, get ready immediately to leave your oppressors tonight!” replied he. “Glory to God!” cried Andy. “Hallelujah!” responded Charles. “Quietly! Softly! Easy, boys, easy!” admonished Henry, when the party in breathless silence, on tiptoe moved off from the thicket in which they were then seated, toward the city. It was now one o'clock in the night, and Natchez shrouded in 129 darkness and quiet, when the daring and fearless runaway with his companions, entered the enclosure of the great house grounds, and approaced the door of the hut of Daddy Joe and Mammy Judy. “Who dat! Who dat, I say? Ole man, don' yeh hear some un knockin' at de doh?” with fright said Mammy Judy in a smothered tone, hustling and nudging the old man, who was in a deep sleep, when Henry rapped softly at the door. “Wat a mautta, ole umin?” after a while inquired the old man, rubbing his eyes. “Some un at de doh!” she replied. “Who dar?” inquired Daddy Joe. “A friend!” replied Henry with suppressed voice. “Ole man, open de doh quick! I bleve in me soul dat Henry! Open de doh!” said mammy. On the door being opened, the surprise and joy of the old woman was only equalled by the emotion of her utterance. “Dar! dar now, ole man! I tole 'em so, but da 'uden bleve me! I tole 'em 'e comin', but da 'uden lis'en to me! Did yeh git 'er, me son? Little Joe cum too? O Laud! whar's my po' chile! What's Margot?” To evade further inquiry, Henry replied that they were all safe, and hoping to see her and the old man. “How yeh bin, my chile? I'se glad to see yeh, but mighty sorry eh cum back; case de wite folks say, da once git der hands on yeh da neber let yeh go 'g'in! Potteh, Craig, Denny, and all on 'em, da tryin' to fine whar yeh is, hunny!” “I am well, mammy, and come now to see what is to be done with you old people,” said Henry. “We 'ont to be hear long, chile; de gwine sell us all to de traders!” replied mammy with a deep sigh. “Yes chile,” added Daddy Joe, “we all gwine to de soul-driveh!” “You'll go to no soul-drivers!” replied Henry, the flash of whose eyes startled Mammy Judy. “How yeh gwine help it, chile?” kindly asked Daddy Joe. “I'll show you. Come, come, mammy! You and daddy get ready, as I've come to take you away, and must be at the river before two o'clock,” said Henry, who with a single jerk of a board in the floor of the hut, had reached the hidden treasure of the old people. “Who gwine wid us, chile?” inquired Mammy Judy. 130 “Charles, Andy, and his female friend, besides some we shall pick up by the way!” replied Henry. “Now he's a-talkin'!” jocosely said Charles, looking at Andy with a smile, at the mention of his female friend. “'E ain' doin' nothin' else!” replied Andy. “Wat become o' po' little Tony! 'E sleep here tonight case he not berry well. Po' chile!” sighed the old woman. “We'll take him too, of course; and I would that I could take every slave in Natchez!” replied Henry. “It is now half-past one,” said he, looking at his watch, “and against two we must be at the river. Go Andy, and get your friend, and meet us at the old burnt sycamore stump above the ferry. Come mammy and daddy, not a word for your lives!” admonished Henry, when taking their package on his back, and little Tony by the hand, they left forever the great house premises of Colonel Stephen Franks in Natchez. On approaching the river a group was seen, which proved to consist of Andy, Clara (to whom his integrity was plighted), and the faithful old stump, their guidepost for the evening. Greeting each other with tears of joy and fearful hearts, they passed down to the water's edge, but a few hundred feet below. The ferry boat in this instance was a lightly built yawl, commanded by a white man; the ferry one of many such selected along the shore, expressly for such occasions. “Have you a pass?” demanded the boatman as a ruse, lest he might be watched by a concealed party. “Let me see it!” “Here, sir,” said Henry, presenting to him by the light of a match which he held in his hand for the purpose, the face of a half eagle. “Here is seven of you, an' I can't do it for that!” in an humble undertone supplicating manner, said the man. “I axes that for one!” The weight of seven half eagles dropped into his hand, caused him eagerly to seize the oars, making the quickest possible time to the opposite side of the river. CHAPTER 28 Studying Head Work “Now Henry,” said Andy, after finding themselves in a safe place some distance from the landing, “you promise' w'en we stauted to show us de Noth Star—which is it?” On looking up the sky was too much obscured with clouds. “I can't show it to you now, but when we stop to refresh, I'll then explain it to you,” replied he. “It high time now, chil'en, we had a mou'full to eat ef we got travel dis way!” suggested Mammy Judy, breaking silence for the first time since they left the great house. “Yes,” replied Andy, “Clara and little Tony mus' wan' to eat, an' I knows wat dis chile wants!” touching himself on the breast. The runaways stopped in the midst of an almost impenetrable thicket, kindled a fire to give them light, where to take their fare of cold meat, bread and butter, and cheese, of which the cellar and pantry of Franks, to which Mammy Judy and Charles had access, afforded an ample supply. Whilst the others were engaged in refreshing, Henry, aside of a stump, was busily engaged with pencil and paper. “Whar's Henry, dat 'e ain't hear eatin?” inquired Mammy Judy, looking about among the group. “I sho, ole umin, 'e's oveh dar by de stump,” replied Daddy Joe. “Wat dat boy doin' dar? Henry, wat yeh doin'? Mus' be studyin' headwuck, I reckon! Sho boy! betteh come 'long an' git a mou'full to eat. Yeh ain' hungry I reckon,” said the old woman. “Henry, we dun eatin' now. You mos' ready to tell us 'bout de Noth Star?” said Andy. “Yes, I will show you,” said Henry, walking forward and setting himself in the center of the group. “You see these seven stars which I've drawn on this piece of paper—numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? From the peculiarity of the shape of their relative position to each other, the group is called the 'Dipper,' because to look at them they look like a dipper or a vessel with a long handle. “I see it; don't you see dat, Chaules?” said Andy. “Certainly, anybody could see that,” replied Charles. 132 “Ole umin,” said Daddy Joe, “don' yeh see it?” “Sho', ole man! Ain't I lookin!” replied the old woman. “You all see it then, do you?” inquired Henry. “Yes, yes!” was the response. “Now then,” continued Henry; “for an explanation by which you can tell the North Star, when or from whatever place you may see it. The two stars of the Dipper, numbered 6 and 7, are called the pointers, because they point directly to the North Star, a very small, bright star, far off from the pointers, generally seeming by itself, especially when the other stars are not very bright. “The star numbered 8, above the pointer, a little to the left, is a dim, small star, which at first sight would seem to be in a direct line with it; but by drawing a line through 7 to 8, leaves a space as you see between the star 6 and lower part of the line; or forms an angle (as the 'book men' call it, Andy) of ten degrees. The star number 9 in the distance, and a little to the right, would also seem to be directly opposite the pointers; but by drawing a line through 7 to 9, there is still a space left between the lower end of the line and 6. Now trace the dotted line from 6 through the center of 7, and it leads directly to 10. This is the North Star, the slave's great Guide to Freedom! Do you all now understand it?” “See it!” replied Andy. “Anybody can't see dat, ain' got sense' 'nuff to run away, an' no call to be free, dat's all! I knows all about it. I reckon I a'mos' know it betteh dan you, Henry!” “Dar, dar, I tole yeh so! I tole yeh dat boy studyin' head wuck, an yeh 'uden bleve me! 'E run about yendeh so much an' kick up 'e heel dat'e talk so much gramma an' wot not, dat body haudly undehstan'! I knows dat 'e bin 'splainin do. Ole man, yeh understan' im?” said Mammy Judy. “Ah, ole umin, dat I does! An' I' been gone forty years 'ago, I' know'd dis much 'bout it!” replied Daddy Joe. “Above number 2 the second star of the handle of the Dipper, close to it, you will see by steadily looking, a very small star, which I call the knob or thumb-holt of the handle. You may always tell the Dipper by the knob of the handle; and the North star by the Dipper. The Dipper, during the night you will remember, continues to change its position in relation to the earth, so that it sometimes seems quite upside down.” 133 “See here, Henry, does you know all——” “Stop, Andy, I've not done yet!” interrupted he. “Uh, heh!” said Andy. “When the North star cannot be seen,” continued Henry, “you must depend alone upon nature for your guide. Feel, in the dark, around the trunks or bodies of trees, especially oak, and whenever you feel moss on the bark, that side on which the moss grows is always to the north. One more explanation and then we'll go. Do you see this little round metallic box? This is called a——” “Wat dat you call 'talic, Henry? Sho, boy! yeh head so full ob gramma an' sich like dat yeh don' know how to talk!” interrupted Mammy Judy. “That only means iron or brass, or some hard thing like that, mammy,” explained he. “The little box of which I was speaking has in it what is called a compass. It has a face almost like a clock or watch, with one straight hand which reaches entirely across the face, and turns or shakes whenever you move the box. This hand or finger is a piece of metal called 'loadstone' or 'magnet,' and termed the needle of the compass; and this end with the little cross on it, always points in one direction, and that is to the north. See; it makes no difference which way it is moved, this point of the needle turns back and points that way.” “An mus' ye al'as go de way it pints, Henry?” inquired Andy. “No; not except you are running away from the South to Canada, or the free States; because both of these places are in the north. But when you know which way the north is, you can easily find any other direction you wish. Notice this, all of you.” “When your face is to the north, your back is to the south; your right hand to the east, and your left to the west. Can you remember this?” “O yes, easy!” replied Andy. “Then you will always know which way to go, by the compass showing you which is north,” explained Henry. “What does dese letters roun' hear mean, Henry?” further inquired Andy. “Only what I have already explained; meaning north, east, west, and south, with their intermediate——” “Dar!” interrupted Mammy Judy. “'E gone into big talk g'in! Sho!” 134 “Intermediate means between, mammy,” explained Henry. “Den ef dat's it, I lis'en at yeh; case I want gwine bautheh my head wid you' jography an' big talk like dat!” replied the old woman. “What does a compass cost?” inquired Charles, who had been listening with intense interest and breathless silence at the information given by their much-loved fellow bondman. “One-half a dollar, or four bits, as we call it, so that every slave who will, may get one. Now, I've told you all that's necessary to guide you from a land of slavery and long suffering, to a land of liberty and future happiness. Are you now all satisfied with what you have learned?” “Chauls, aint 'e high! See here, Henry, does yeh know all dat yeh tell us? Wy, ole feller, you is way up in de hoobanahs! Wy, you is conjure sho'nuff. Ef I only know'd dis befo', ole Potteh neven keep me a day. O, pshaw! I bin gone long 'go!” “He'll do!” replied Charles. “Well, well, well!” apostrophized Mammy Judy. “Dat beats all! Sence I was baun, I nebber hear de like. All along I been tellen on yeh, dat 'e got 'is head chuck cleanfull ob cumbustable, an' all dat, but yeh 'ud'n bleve me! Now yeh see!” “Ole umin, I 'fess dat's all head wuck! Dat beats Punton! dat boy's nigh up to Maudy Ghamus! Dat boy's gwine to be mighty!” with a deep sigh replied Daddy Joe. “Come, now, let's go!” said Henry. On rising from where they had all been sitting with fixed attention upon their leader and his instruction, the sky was observed through the only break in the thicket above their heads, when suddenly they simultaneously exclaimed: “There's the Dipper! there's the North Star!” all pointing directly to the Godlike beacon of liberty to the American slave. Leaving Mammy Judy and Daddy Joe, Clara and little Tony, who had quite recovered from his indisposition the early part of the night, in charge of a friend who designedly met them on the Louisiana side of the river, with heightened spirits and a new impulse, Henry, Charles and Andy, started on their journey in the direction of their newly described guide, the North Star. 135 Star of the North thou art not bigger, Than the diamond in my ring; Yet every black star-gazing nigger, Looks up to thee as some great thing! was the apostrophe of an American writer to the sacred orb of Heaven, which in this case was fully verified. During the remainder of the night and next day, being Sabbath, they continued their travel, only resting when overcome wth fatigue. Continuing in Louisiana by night, and resting by day, Wednesday morning, before daybreak, brought them to the Arkansas river. At first they intended to ford, but like the rivers generally of the South, its depth and other contingencies made it necessary to seek some other means. After consultation in a canebreak, day beginning to dawn, walking boldly up to a man just loosening a skiff from its fastenings, they demanded a passage across the river. This the skiffman refused peremptorily on any pretext, rejecting the sight of a written pass. “I want none of yer nigger passes!” angrily said he. “They ain't none uv 'em good 'or nothin', no how! It's no use to show it to me, ye's can't git over!” First looking meaningly and determinedly at Charles and Andy—biting his lips—then addressing himself to the man, Henry said: “Then I have one that will pass us!” presenting the unmistaking evidence of a shining gold eagle, at the sight of which emblem of his country's liberty, the skiffman's patriotism was at once awakened, and their right to pass as American freemen indisputable. A few energetic muscular exertions with the oars, and the sturdy boatman promptly landed his passengers on the other side of the river. “Now, gentlm'n, I done the clean thing, didn't I, by jingo! Show me but half a chance an' I'll ack the man clean out. I dont go in for this slaveholding o' people in these Newnited States uv the South, nohow, so I don't. Dog gone it, let every feller have a fair shake!” Dropping into his hand the ten-dollar gold piece, the man bowed earnestly, uttering— “I hope ye's good luck, gent'men! Ye'll al'as fine me ready when ye's come 'long this way!” CHAPTER 29 The Fugitives With much apprehension, Henry and comrades passed hastily through the State of Arkansas, he having previously traversed it partly, had learned sufficient to put him on his guard. Traveling in the night, to avoid the day, the progress was not equal to the emergency. Though Henry carried a pocket compass, they kept in sight of the Mississippi river, to take their chance of the first steamer passing by. The third night out, being Monday, at daybreak in the morning, their rest for the day was made at a convenient point within the verge of a forest. Suddenly Charles gave vent to hearty laughter, at a time when all were supposed to be serious, having the evening past, been beset by a train of three Negro-dogs, which, having first been charmed, they slew at the instant; the dogs probably not having been sent on trail of them, but, after the custom of the state, baying on a general round to intimidate the slaves from clandestinely venturing out, and to attack such runaways as might by chance be found in their track. “Wat's da mauttah, Chauls?” enquired Andy. “I was just thinking,” replied he, “of the sight of three High Conjurers, who if Ghamus and Gholar be true, can do anything they please, having to escape by night, and travel in the wild woods, to evade the pursuit of white men, who do not pretend to know anything about such things.” “Dat's a fack,” added Andy, “an' little, scronny triflin' weak, white men at dat—any one uv us heah, ought to whip two or three uv 'em at once. Dares Hugh's a little bit a feller, I could take 'im in one han' an' throw 'im oveh my head, an' ole Pottah, for his pant, he so ole an' good foh nothin, I could whip wid one hand half a dozen like 'im.” “Now you see, boys,” said Henry, “how much conjuration and such foolishness and stupidity is worth to the slaves in the South. All that it does, is to put money into the pockets of the pretended conjurer, give him power over others by making them afraid of him; and even old Gamby Gholar and Maudy Ghamus and the rest of the Seven Heads, with all of the High Conjurors in the Dismal Swamp, are 137 depending more upon me to deliver them from their confinement as prisoners in the Swamp and runaway slaves, than all their combined efforts together. I made it a special part of my mission, wherever I went, to enlighten them on this subject.” “I wandah you didn't fend 'em,” replied Andy. “No danger of that, since having so long, to no purpose, depended upon such persons and nonsense, they are sick at heart of them, and waiting willing and ready, for anything which may present for their aid, even to the destruction of their long cherished, silly nonsense of conjuration.” “Thang God foh dat!” concluded Andy. Charles having fallen asleep, Andy became the sentinel of the party, as it was the arrangement for each one alternately, every two hours during rest, to watch while the other two slept. Henry having next fallen into a doze, Andy heard a cracking among the bushes, when on looking around, two men approached them. Being fatigued, drowsy, and giddy, he became much alarmed, arousing his comrades, all springing to their feet. The men advanced, who, to their gratification proved to be Eli and Ambrose, two Arkansas slaves, who having promised to meet Henry on his return, had effected their escape immediately after first meeting him, lurking in the forest in the direction which he had laid out to take. Eli was so fair as to be taken, when first seen, to be a white man. Throwing their arms about Henry, they bestowed upon him their blessing and thanks, for his advent into the state as the means of their escape. While thus exchanging congratulations, the approach upstream of a steamer was heard, and at once Henry devised the expedient, and determined boldly to hail her and demand a passage. Putting Eli forward as the master, Ambrose carrying the portmanteaus which belonged to the two, and the others with bundles in their hands, all rushed to the bank of the river on the verge of the thicket; Eli held up a handkerchief as a signal. The bell tolled, and the yawl immediately lowered, made for the shore. It was agreed that Eli should be known as Major Ely, of Arkansas. Seeing that blacks were of the company, when the yawl approached, the mate stood upon her forecastle. “What's the faction here?” cried out the sturdy mate. 138 “Where are you bound?” enquired Eli. “For St. Louis.” “Can I get a passage for myself and four Negroes?” “What's the name, sir?” “Major Ely, of Arkansas,” was the reply. “Aye, aye, sir, come aboard,” said the mate; when, pulling away, the steamer was soon reached, the slaves going to the deck, and the master to the cabin. On application for a stateroom, the clerk, on learning the name, desired to know his destination. “The State of Missouri, sir,” said Eli, “between the points of the mouth of the Ohio and St. Genevieve.” “Ely,” repeated the clerk, “I've heard that name before—it's a Missouri name—any relation to Dr. Ely, Major?” “Yes, a brother's son,” was the prompt reply. “Yes, yes, I thought I knew the name,” replied the clerk. “But the old fellow wasn't quite of your way of thinking concerning Negroes, I believe?” “No, he is one man, and I'm another, and he may go his way, and I'll go mine,” replied Eli. “That's the right feeling, Major,” replied the clerk, “and we would have a much healthier state of politics in the country, if men generally would only agree to act on that principle.” “It has ever been my course,” said Eli. “Peopling a new farm I reckon, Major?” “Yes, sir.” The master, keeping a close watch upon the slaves, was frequently upon deck among them, and requested that they might be supplied with more than common fare for slaves, he sparing no expense to make them comfortable. The slaves, on their part, appeared to be particularly attached to him, always smiling when he approached, apparently regretting when he left for the cabin. Meanwhile, the steamer gracefully plowing up the current, making great headway, reached the point desired, when the master and slaves were safely transferred from the steamer to the shore of Missouri. CHAPTER 30 The Pursuit The absence of Mammy Judy, Daddy Joe, Charles, and little Tony, on the return early Monday morning of Colonel Franks and lady from the country, unmistakably proved the escape of their slaves, and the further proof of the exit of 'squire Potter's Andy and Beckwith's Clara, with the remembrance of the stampede a few months previously, required no further confirmation of the fact, when the neighborhood again was excited to ferment. The advisory committee was called into immediate council, and ways and means devised for the arrest of the recreant slaves recently left, and to prevent among them the recurrence of such things; a pursuit was at once commenced, which for the three succeeding days was carried in the wrong direction—towards Jackson, whither, it was supposed in the neighborhood, Henry had been lurking previous to the last sally upon their premises, as he had certainly been seen on Saturday evening, coming from the landing. No traces being found in that direction, the course was changed, the swiftest steamer boarded in pursuit for the Ohio river. This point being reached but a few hours subsequent to that of the fugitives, when learning of their course, the pursuers proceeded toward the place of their destination, on the Mississippi river. This point being the southern part of Missouri but a short distance above the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, the last named river had, of necessity, to be passed, being to the fugitives only practicable by means of a ferry. The ferryman in this instance commanded a horse-boat, he residing on the opposite side of the river. Stepping up to him—a tall, raw-boned athletic, rough looking, bearded fellow—Eli saluted: “We want to cross the river, sir!” “Am yers free?” enquired the ferryman. “Am I free! Are you free?” rejoined Eli. “Yes, I be's a white man!” replied the boatman. “And so am I!” retorted Eli. “And you dare not tell me I'm not.” “I'll swong, stranger, yer mus' 'scuse me, as I did n' take notice on yez! But I like to know if them air black folks ye got wey yer am free, cause if they arn't, I be 'sponsible for 'em 'cording to the new law, 140 called, I 'bleve the Nebrasky Complimize Fugintive Slave Act, made down at Californy, last year,” apologized and explained the somewhat confused ferryman. “Yes,” replied Henry, “we are free, and if we were not, I do'nt think it any part of your business to know. I thought you were here to carry people across the river.” “But frien',” rejoined the man, “yer don't understan' it. This are a law made by the Newnited States of Ameriky, an' I be 'bliged to fulfill it by ketchin' every fugintive that goes to cross this way, or I mus' pay a thousand dollars, and go to jail till the black folks is got, if that be's never. Yer see yez can't blame me, as I mus' 'bey the laws of Congress I'll swong it be's hardly a fair shake nuther, but I be 'bliged to 'bey the laws, yer know.” “Well sir,” replied Henry, “we want to cross the river.” “Let me see yez papers frien'?” asked the ferryman. “My friend,” said Henry, “are you willing to make yourself a watch dog for slaveholders, and do for them that which they would not do for themselves, catch runaway slaves? Don't you know that this is the work which they boast on having the poor white men at the North do for them? Have you not yet learned to attend to your own interests instead of theirs? Here are our free papers,” holding out his open hand, in which lay five half eagle pieces. “Jump aboard!” cried the ferryman. “Quick, quick!” shouted he, as the swift feet of four hourses were heard dashing up the road. Scarcely had the boat moved from her fastenings, till they had arrived; the riders dismounted, who presenting revolvers, declared upon the boatman's life, instantly, if he did not change the direction of his boat and come back to the Missouri shore. Henry seized a well-charged rifle belonging to the boatman, his comrades each with a well-aimed six-barreled weapon. “Shoot if you dare!” exclaimed Henry, the slaveholders declining their arms—when, turning to the awestricken ferryman, handing him the twenty-five dollars, said, “your cause is a just one, and your reward is sure; take this money, proceed and you are safe—refuse, and you instantly die!” “Then I be to do right,” declared the boatman, “if I die by it,” when applying the whip to the horses, in a few moments landed them on the Illinois shore. 141 This being the only ferry in the neighborhood, and fearing a bribe or coercion by the people on the Illinois side, or the temptation of a high reward from the slave-catchers, Henry determined on eluding, if possible, every means of pursuit. “What are your horses worth?” enquired he. “They can't be no use to your frien' case they is both on 'em bline, an' couldn't travel twenty miles a day, on a stretch!” “Have you any other horses?” “They be all the horses I got; I gineraly feed a spell this side. I lives over here—this are my feedin' trip,” drawled the boatman. “What will you take for them?” “Well, frien', they arn't wuth much to buy, no how, but wuth good lock to me for drawin' the boat over, yer see.” “What did they cost you in buying them?” “Well, I o'ny giv six-seven dollars apiece, or sich a maiter for 'em' when I got 'em, an' they cos me some two-three dollars, or sich a matter, more to get 'em in pullin' order, yer see.” “Will you sell them to me?” “I hadn't ort to part wey 'em frien', as I do good lock o' bisness hereabouts wey them air nags, bline as they be.” “Here are thirty dollars for your horses,” said Henry, putting into his hand the money in gold pieces, when, unhitching them from their station, leading them out to the side of the boat, he shot them, pushing them over into the river. “Farewell, my friend,” saluted Henry, he and comrades leaving the astonished ferryman gazing after them, whilst the slaveholders on the other shore stood grinding their teeth, grimacing their faces, shaking their fists, with various gesticulations of threat, none of which were either heard, heeded or cared for by the fleeting party, or determined ferryman. Taking a northeasterly course of Indiana, Andy being an accustomed singer, commenced, in lively glee and cheerful strains, singing to the expressive words: We are like a band of pilgrims, In a strange and foreign land, With our knapsacks on our shoulders, And our cudgels in our hands, 142 We have many miles before us. But it lessens not our joys, We will sing a merry chorus, For we are the tramping boys. Then joined in chorus the whole party— We are all jogging, Jog, jog, jogging, And we're all jogging, We are going to the North! The Wabash river becoming the next point of obstruction, a ferry, as in the last case, had also to be crossed, the boatman residing on the Indiana side. “Are you free?” enquired the boatman, as the party of blacks approached. “We are,” was the reply of Henry. “Where are you from?” continued he. “We are from home, sir,” replied Charles, “and the sooner you take us across the river, just so much sooner will we reach it.” Still doubting their right to pass he asked for their papers, but having by this time become so conversant with the patriotism and fidelity of these men to their country, Charles handing the Indianan a five dollar piece, who on seeing the outstretched wings of the eagle, desired no further evidence of their right to pass, conveying them into the state, contrary to the statutes of the Commonwealth. On went the happy travelers without hinderance, or molestation, until the middle of the week next ensuing. CHAPTER 31 The Attack, Resistance, Arrest The travel for the last ten days had been pleasant, save the necessity in the more southern part of the state, of lying-by through the day and traveling at night—the fugitives cheerful and full of hope, nothing transpiring to mar their happiness, until approaching a village in the center of northern Indiana. 143 Supposing their proximity to the British Provinces made them safe, with an imprudence not before committed by the discreet runaways, when nearing a blacksmith's shop a mile and a half from the village, Andy in his usual manner, with stentorian voice, commenced the following song: I'm on my way to Canada, That cold and dreary land: The dire effects of slavery, I can no longer stand. My soul is vexed within me so, To think that I'm a slave, I've now resolved to strike the blow, For Freedom or the grave. All uniting in the chorus, O, righteous Father Wilt thou not pity me; And aid me on to Canada, Where fugitives are free? I heard old England plainly say, If we would all forsake, Our native land of Slavery, And come across the lake. “There, Ad'line! I golly, don't you hear that?” said Dave Starkweather, the blacksmith, to his wife, both of whom on hearing the unusual noise of singing, thrust their heads out of the door of a little log hut, stood patiently listening to the song, every word of which they distinctly caught. “Them's fugertive slaves, an' I'll have 'em tuck up; they might have passed, but for their singin' praise to that darned Queen! I can't stan' that no how!” “No,” replied Adaline, “I'm sure I don't see what they sing to her for; she's no 'Merican. We ain't under her now, as we Dave?” “No we ain't, Ad'line, not sence the battle o' Waterloo, an' I golly, we wouldn't be if we was. The 'Mericans could whip her a darned sight easier now than what they done when they fit her at Waterloo.” 144 “Lah me, Dave, you could whip 'er yourself, she ai'nt bigger nor tother wimin is she?” said Mrs. Starkweather. “No she ain't, not a darn' bit!” replied he. “Dave, ask em in the shop to rest,” suggested the wife in a hurried whisper, elbowing her husband as the party advanced, having ceased singing so soon as they saw the faces of white persons. “Travlin', I reckon?” interrogated the blacksmith. “Little tired, I spose?” “Yes sir, a little so,” replied Henry. “Didn't come far, I 'spect?” continued he. “Not very,” carelessly replied Henry. “Take seat there, and rest ye little,” pointing to a smoothly-worn log, used by the visitors of the shop. “Thank you,” said Henry, “we will,” all seating themselves in a row. “Take little somethin?” asked he; stepping back to a corner, taking out a caddy in the wall, a rather corpulent green bottle, turning it up to his mouth, drenching himself almost to strangulation. “We don't drink, sir,” replied the fugitives. “Temperance, I reckon?” enquired the smith. “Rather so,” replied Henry. “Kind o' think we'll have a spell o' weather?” “Yes,” said Andy, “dat's certain; we'll have a spell a weatheh!” On entering the shop, the person at the bellows, a tall, able-bodied young man, was observed to pass out at the back door, a number of persons of both sexes to come frequently look in, and depart, succeeded by others; no import being attached to this, supposing themselves to be an attraction, partly from their singing, and mainly from their color being a novelty in the neighborhood. During conversation with the blacksmith, he after eyeing very closely the five strangers, was observed to walk behind the door, stand for some minutes looking as if reading, when resuming his place at the anvil, after which he went out the back door. Curiosity now, with some anxiety induced Henry to look for the cause of it, when with no little alarm, he discovered a handbill fully descriptive of himself and comrades, having been issued in the town of St. Genevieve, offering a heavy reward, particularizing the scene at the Mississippi ferry, the killing of the horses as an aggravated offense, because depriving a poor man of his only means of livelihood, being designed to strengthen inducements to apprehend them, the bill being signed “John Harris.” 145 Evening now ensuing, Henry and comrades, the more easily to pass through the village without attraction, had remained until this hour, resting in the blacksmith shop. Enquiring for some black family in the neighborhood, they were cited to one consisting of an old man and woman, Devan by name, residing on the other side, a short distance from the village. “Ye'll fine ole Bill of the right stripe,” said the blacksmith knowingly. “Ye needn' be feard o' him. Ye'll fine him and ole Sally just what they say they is; I'll go bail for that. The first log hut ye come to after ye leave the village is thern; jist knock at the door, an' ye'll fine ole Bill an' Sally all right blame if ye don't. Jis name me; tell 'em Dave Starkweather sent ye there, an' blamed if ye don't fine things at high water mark; I'm tellin' ye so, blamed if I ain't!” was the recommendation of the blacksmith. “Thank you for your kindness,” replied Henry, politely bowing as they rose from the log. “Goodbye, sir!” “Devilish decent lookin' black fellers,” said the man of the anvil, complimenting designedly for them to hear. “Blamed if they ain't as free as we is—I golly they is!” Without, as they thought, attracting attention, passing through the village a half mile or more, they came to a log hut on the right side of the way. “How yeh do fren? How yeh come on?” saluted a short, rather corpulent, wheezing old black man. “Come in. Hi! Dahs good many on yeh; ole 'omin come, heah's some frens!” calling his wife Sally, an old woman, shorter in stature, but not less corpulent than he, sitting by a comfortable dry-stump fire. “How is yeh, frens? How yeh do? come to da fiah, mighty cole!” said the old woman. “Quite cool,” replied Andy, rubbing his hands, spreading them out, protecting his face from the heat. “Yeh is travelin, I reckon, there is good many go' long heah; we no call t'ask 'em whah da gwine, we knows who da is, case we come from dah. I an, ole man once slave in Faginny; mighty good country fah black folks.” Sally set immediately about preparing something to give her guests a good meal. Henry admonished them against extra trouble, but they insisted on giving them a good supper. Deeming it more prudent, the hut being on the highway, Henry 146 requested to retire until summoned to supper, being shown to the loft attained by a ladder and simple hatchway, the door of which was shut down, and fastened on the lower side. The floor consisting of rough, unjointed board, containing great cracks through which the light and heat from below passed up, all could be both seen and heard, which transpired below. Seeing the old man so frequently open and look out at the door, and being suspicious from the movements of the blacksmith and others, Henry affecting to be sleepy, requested Billy and his wife when ready, to awaken them, when after a few minutes, all were snoring as if fast asleep, Henry lying in such a position as through a knothole in the floor, to see every movement in all parts of the room. Directly above him in the rafter within his reach, hung a mowing scythe. “Now's yeh time, ole man; da all fas' asleep, da snorin' good!” said old Sally, urging Billy to hasten, who immediately left the hut. The hearts of the fugitives were at once “in their mouths,” and with difficulty it was by silently reaching over and heavily pressing upon each of them, Henry succeeded in admonishing each to entire quietness and submission. Presently entered a white man, who whispering with Sally left the room. Immediately in came old Bill, at the instant of which, Henry found his right hand above him, involuntarily grasped firmly on the snath of the scythe. “Whah's da?” enquired old Bill, on entering the hut. “Sho da whah yeh lef' em!” replied the old woman. “Spose I kin bring 'em in now?” continued old Bill. “Bring in who?” “Da white folks: who else I gwine fetch in yeh 'spose?” “Bettah let em 'tay whah da is, an' let de po' men lone, git sumpen t' eat, an' go 'long whah da gwine!” replied Sally, deceptively. “Huccum yeh talk dat way? Sho yeh tole me go!” replied Billy. “Didn' reckon yeh gwine bring 'em on da po' cretahs dis way, fo' da git moufful t' eat an' git way so.” “How I gwine let 'em go now de white folks all out dah? Say Sally? Dat jis what make I tell yeh so!” “Bettah let white folks 'lone, Willum! dat jis what I been tellin' on yeh. Keep foolin' 'long wid white folks, bym'by da show yeh! I no 147 trus' white man, no how. Sho! da no fren' o' black folks. Bus spose body 'blige keep da right side on 'em long so.” “Ole 'omin,” said Bill, “yeh knows we make our livin' by da white folks, an' mus' do what da tell us, so whah's da use talkin' long so. 'Spose da come in now?” “Sho, I tole yeh de man sleep? gwine bring white folks on 'em so? give po' cretahs no chance? Go long, do what yeh gwine do; yeh fine out one dese days!” concluded Sally. Having stealthily risen to their feet standing in a favorable position, Henry in whispers declared to his comrades that with that scythe he intended mowing his way into Canada. Impatient for their entrance, throwing wide open the door of the hut, which being the signal, in rushed eleven white men, headed by Jud Shirly, constable, Dave Starkweather the blacksmith, and Tom Overton as deputies; George Grove, a respectable well-dressed villager, stood giving general orders. With light and pistol in hand, Franey, mounting the stairway commanded a surrender. Eli, standing behind the hatchway, struck the candle from his hand, when with a swing of the scythe there was a screech, fall, and groan heard, then with a shout and leap, Henry in the lead, they cleared the stairs to the lower floor, the white men flying in consternation before them, making their way to the village, alarming the inhabitants. The fugitives fled in great haste continuing their flight for several miles, when becoming worn down and fatigued, retired under cover of a thicket a mile from a stage tavern kept by old Isaac Slusher of German descent. The villagers following in quick pursuit, every horse which could be readily obtained being put on the chase, the slaves were overtaken, fired upon—a ball lodging in Charles' thigh—overpowered, and arrested. Deeming it, from the number of idlers about the place, and the condition of the stables, much the safest imprisonment, the captives were taken to the tavern of Slusher, to quarter for the night. On arriving at this place, a shout of triumph rent the air, and a general cry “take them into the barroom for inspection! Hang them! Burn them!” and much more. Here the captives were derided, scoffed at and ridiculed, turned around, limbs examined, shoved about from side to side, then ordered 148 to sit down on the floor, a noncompliance with which, having arranged themselves for the purpose, at a given signal, a single trip by an equal number of whites, brought the four poor prisoners suddenly to the floor on the broad of their back, their heads striking with great force. At this abuse of helpless men, the shouts of laughter became deafening. It caused them to shun the risk of standing, and keep seated on the floor. Charles having been wounded, affected inability to stand, but the injury being a flesh wound, was not serious. “We'll show ye yer places, ye black devils!” said Ned Bradly, a rowdy, drawing back his foot to kick Henry in the face, as he sat upon the floor against the wall, giving him a slight kick in the side as he passed by him. “Don't do that again, sir!” sternly said Henry, with an expression full of meaning, looking him in the face. Several feet in an instant were drawn back to kick, when Slusher interfering, said, “Shendlemans! tem black mans ish prishners! You tuz pring tem into mine housh, ant you shandt puse tem dare!” when the rowdies ceased abusing them. “Well, gentlemen,” said Tom Overton, a burly, bullying barroom person, “we'd best git these blacks out of the way, if they's any fun up tonight.” “I cot plendy peds, shendlemans, I ondly vants to know who ish to bay me,” replied Slusher. “I golly,” retorted Starkweather, “you needn't give yourself no uneasiness about that Slusher. I think me, and Shirly, and Grove is good for a night's lodging for five niggers, anyhow!” “I'm in that snap, too!” hallooed out Overton. “Golly! Yes, Tom, there's you we like to forgot, blamed if we didn't!” responded Starkweather. “Dat ish all right nough zo far as te plack man's ish gonzern, put ten dare ish to housh vull o' peoples, vot vare must I gheep tem?” “We four,” replied Grove, “will see you paid, who else? Slusher, we want it understood, that we four stand responsible for all expenses incurred this night, in the taking of these Negroes,” evidently expecting to receive as they claimed, the reward offered in the advertisement. “Dat vill too, ten,” replied Slusher. “Vell, I ish ready to lite tese black mans to ped.” 149 “No Slusher,” interrupted Grove, “that's not the understanding, we don't pay for beds for niggers to sleep in!” “No, by Molly!” replied Overton. “Dogged if that ain't going a leetle too far! Slusher, you can't choke that down, no how you can fix in. If you do as you please with your own house, these niggers is in our custody, and we'll do as we please with them. We want you to know that we are white men, as well as you are, and can't pay for niggers to sleep in the same house with ourselves.” “Gents,” said Ned Bradly, “do you hear that?” “What?” enquired several voices. “Why, old Slusher wants to give the niggers a room upstairs with us!” “With who?” shouted they. “With us white men.” “No, blamed if he does!” replied Starkweather. “We won't stand that!” exclaimed several voices. “Where's Slusher?” enquired Ben West, a discharged stage driver, who hung about the premises, and now figured prominently. “Here ish me, shendlemans!” answered Slusher, coming from the back part of the house. “Andt you may do as you please midt tem black mans, pud iv you dempt puse me, I vill pudt you all out mine housh!” “The stable, the stable!” they all cried out. “Put the niggers in the stable, and we'll be satisfied!” “Tare ish mine staple—you may pud tem vare you blease,” replied the old man, “budt you shandt puse me!” Securely binding them with cords, they were placed in a strongly built log stable closely weather-boarded, having but a door and window below, the latter being closely secured, and the door locked on the outside with a staple and padlock. The upper windows being well secured, the blacks thus locked in, were left to their fate, whilst their captors comfortably housed, were rioting in triumph through the night over the misfortune, and blasted prospects for liberty. CHAPTER 32 The Escape This night the inmates of the tavern revelled with intoxication; all within the building, save the exemplary family of the stern old German, Slusher, who peremptorily refused from first to last, to take any part whatever with them, doubtless, being for the evening the victims of excessive indulgence in the beverage of ardent spirits. Now and again one and another of the numerous crowd gathered from the surrounding neighborhood, increasing as the intelligence spread, went alone to the stable to examine the door, reconnoiter the premises, and ascertain that the prisoners were secure. The company getting in such high glee that, fearing a neglect of duty, it became advisable to appoint for the evening a corps of sentinels whose special duty, according to their own arrangements, should be to watch and guard the captives. This special commission being one of pecuniary consideration, Jim Franey, the township constable, the rowdy Ned Bradly, and Ben West the discharged stage driver, who being about the premises, readily accepted the office, entering immediately on the line of duty. The guard each alternately every fifteen minutes went out to examine the premises, when one and a half of the clock again brought around the period of Ben West's duty. Familiar with the premises and the arrangement of the stables, taking a lantern, West designed closely to inspect their pinions, that no lack of duty on his part might forfeit his claim to the promised compensation. When placing them in the stable, lights then being in requisition, Henry discovered in a crevice between the wall an the end of the feed-trough a common butcher knife used for the purpose of repairing harness. So soon as the parties left the stable, the captives lying with their heads resting on their bundles, Henry arising, took the knife, cutting loose himself and companions, but leaving the pinions still about their limbs as though fastened, resumed his position upon the bundle of straw. The scythe had been carelessly hung on a section of the worm fence adjoining the barn, near the door of the prison department, their weapons having been taken from them. “Well, boys,” enquired West, holding up the lantern, “you're all 151 here, I see: do you want anything? Take some whiskey!” holding in his hand a quart bottle. “The rope's too tight around my ankle!” complained Charles. “Its took all the feeling out of my leg.” Dropping upon his knees to loosen the cord, at this moment, Henry standing erect brandishing the keen glistening blade of the knife before him—his companions having sprung to their feet—“Don't you breathe,” exclaimed the intrepid unfettered slave, “or I'll bury the blade deep in your bosom! One hour I'll give you for silence, a breach of which will cost your life.” Taking a tin cup which West brought into the stable, pouring it full to the brim, “Drink this!” said Henry, compelling the man who was already partially intoxicated, to drink as much as possible, which soon rendered him entirely insensible. “Come, boys!” exclaimed he, locking the stable, putting the key into his pocket, leaving the intoxicated sentinel prostrated upon the bed of straw intended for them, and leaving the tavern house of the old German Slusher forever behind them. The next period of watch, West being missed, Ned Bradly, on going to the stable, finding the door locked, reported favorably, supposing it to be still secure. Overton in turn did the same. When drawing near daylight—West still being missed—Franey advised that a search be made for him. The bedrooms, and such places into which he might most probably have retired, were repeatedly searched in vain, as calling at the stable elicited no answer, either from him nor the captives. The sun was now more than two hours high, and word was received from the village to hasten the criminals in for examination before the magistrate. Determining to break open the door, which being done, Ben West was found outstretched upon the bed of straw, who, with difficulty, was aroused from his stupor. The surprise of the searchers on discovering his condition, was heightened on finding the escape of the fugitives. Disappointment and chagrin now succeeded high hopes and merriment, when a general reaction ran throughout the neighborhood; for the sensation at the escape even became greater than on the instance of the deed of resistance and success of the capture. Of all the disappointments connected with this affair, there was none to be regretted save that of the old German tavern keeper, Isaac Slusher, who, being the only pecuniary sufferer, the entire crowd revelling at his expense. 152 “Gonvound dish bishnesh!” exclaimed Slusher with vexation. “Id alwaysh cosht more dan de ding ish wordt. Mine Got! afder dish I'll mindt mine own bishnesh. Iv tem Soudt Amerigans vill gheep niggersh de musht gedch dem demzelve. Mine ligger ish ghon, I losht mine resht, te niggersh rhun avay, an' I nod magk von zent!” Immediate pursuit was sent out in search of the runaways but without success; for, dashing on, scythe in hand, with daring though peaceable strides through the remainder of the state and that of Michigan, the fugitives reached Detroit without further molestation or question from any source on the right of transit, the inhabitants mistaking them for resident blacks out from their homes in search of employment. CHAPTER 33 Happy Greeting After their fortunate escape from the stables of Isaac Slusher in Indiana, Henry and comrades safely landed across the river in Windsor, Essex County, Canada West, being accompanied by a mulatto gentleman resident of Detroit, who from the abundance of his generous heart, with others there, ever stands ready and has proven himself an uncompromising, true and tried friend of his race, and every weary traveler-on a fugitive slave pilgrimage, passing that way. “Is dis Canada? Is dis de good ole British soil we hear so much 'bout way down in Missierppi?” exclaimed Andy. “Is dis free groun'? De lan' whar black folks is free! Thang God a'mighty for dis privilege!” When he fell upon his hands and knees and kissed the earth. Poor fellow! he little knew the unnatural feelings and course pursued toward his race by many Canadians, those too pretending to be Englishmen by birth, with some of whom the blacks had fought side by side in the memorable crusade made upon that fairest portion of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, by Americans in disguise, calling themselves “Patriots.” He little knew that while according to fundamental British Law and constitutional rights, all persons are equal in the realm, yet by a systematic course of policy and artifice, his race with few exceptions in some parts, excepting the Eastern 153 Province, is excluded from the enjoyment and practical exercise of every right, except mere suffrage-voting—even to those of sitting on a jury as its own peer, and the exercise of military duty. He little knew the facts, and as little expected to find such a state of things in the long-talked of and much-loved Canada by the slaves. He knew not that some of high intelligence and educational attainments of his race residing in many parts of the Provinces, were really excluded from and practically denied their rights, and that there was no authority known to the colony to give redress and make restitution on the petition or application of these representative men of his race, which had frequently been done with the reply from the Canadian functionaries that they had no power to reach their case. It had never entered the mind of poor Andy, that in going to Canada in search of freedom, he was then in a country where privileges were denied him which are common to the slave in every Southern state—the right of going into the gallery of a public building—that a few of the most respectable colored ladies of a town in Kent County, desirous through reverence and respect, to see a British Lord Chief Justice on the Bench of Queen's Court, taking seats in the gallery of the court house assigned to females and other visitors, were ruthlessly taken hold of and shown down the stairway by a man and “officer” of the Court of Queen's Bench for that place. Sad would be to him the fact when he heard that the construction given by authority to these grievances, when requested to remedy or remove them, was, that they were “local contingencies to be reached alone by those who inflicted the injuries.” An emotion of unutterable indignation would swell the heart of the determined slave, and almost compel him to curse the country of his adoption. But Andy was free—being on British soil—from the bribes of slaveholding influences; where the unhallowed foot of the slavecatcher dare not tread; where no decrees of an American Congress sanctioned by a president born and bred in a free state and himself once a poor apprentice boy in a village, could reach. Thus far, Andy was happy; happy in the success of their escape, the enlarged hopes of future prospects in the industrial pursuits of life; and happy in the contemplation of meeting and seeing Clara. There were other joys than those of Andy, and other hopes and anticipations to be realised. Charles, Ambrose, and Eli, who, though with hearts overflowing with gratitude, were silent in holy praise to 154 heaven, claiming to have emotions equal to his, and conjugal expectations quite as sacred if not yet as binding. “The first thing now to be done is to find our people!” said Henry with emotion, after the excess of Andy had ceased. “Where are they?” inquired the mulatto gentleman. “And what are their names?” “Their names at home were Frank's Ailcey, Craig's Polly, and Little Joe, who left several months ago; and an old man and woman called Daddy Joe and Mammy Judy; a young woman called Clara Beckwith, and a little boy named Tony, who came on but a few days before us.” “Come with me, and I'll lead you directly to him!” replied the mulatto gentlemen; when taking a vehicle, he drove them to the country a few miles from Windsor, where the parties under feelings such as never had been experienced by them before, fell into the embrace of each other. “Dar now, dar! wat I tell you? Bless de laud, ef dar ain' Chaules an' Henry!” exclaimed Mammy Judy, clapping her hands, giving vent to tears which stole in drops from the eyes of all. “My po' chile! My po' Margot!” continued she in piteous tones as the bold and manly leader pressed closely to his bosom his boy, who now was the image of his mother. “My son, did'n yeh hear nothing bout er? did'n yeh not bring my po' Margot?” “No, mammy, no! I have not seen and did not bring her! No, mammy, no! But——!” When Henry became choked with grief which found an audible response from the heart of every child of sorrow present. Clara commenced, seconded by Andy and followed by all except him the pierce to whose manly heart had caused it, in tones the most affecting: O, when shall my sorrow subside! And when shall my troubles be ended; And when to the bosom of Christ be conveyed, To the mansions of joy and bliss! To the mansions of joy and bliss! Falling upon their knees, Andy uttered a most fervent prayer, invoking Heaven's blessing and aid. 155 “Amen!” responded Charles. “Hallelujah!” cried Clara, clapping her hands. “Glory, glory, glory!” shouted Ailcey. “O laud! W'en shall I get home!” mourned Mammy Judy. “Tis good to be here, chilen! 'Tis good to be here!” said Daddy Joe, rubbing his hands quite wet with tears—when all rising to their feet met each other in the mutual embraces of Christian affection, with heaving hearts of sadness. “We have reason, sir,” said Henry addressing himself to the mulatto gentleman who stood a tearful eye witness to the scenes, “we have reason to thank God from the recesses of our hearts for the providential escape we've made from slavery!” which expression was answered only by trickles down the gentleman's cheeks. The first care of Henry was to invest a portion of the old people's money by the purchase of fifty acres of land with improvements suitable, and provide for the schooling of the children until he should otherwise order. Charles by appointment in which Henry took part, was chosen leader of the runaway party, Andy being the second, Ambrose and Eli respectively the keepers of their money and accounts, Eli being a good penman. “Now,” said Henry, after two days rest, “the time has come and I must leave you! Polly, as you came as the mistress, you must now become the mother and nurse of my poor boy! Take good care of him—mammy will attend to you. Charles, as you have all secured land close to, I want you to stand by the old people; Andy, you, Ambrose, and Eli, stand by Charles and the girls, and you must succeed, as nothing can separate you; your strength depending upon your remaining together.” “Henry, is yeh guine sho' nuff?” earnestly enquired Andy. “Yes, I must go!” “Wait little!” replied Andy, when after speaking aside with Eli and Ambrose, calling the girls they all whispered for sometime together; occasional evidence of seriousness, anxiety, and joy marking their expressions of countenance. The Provincial regulations requiring a license, or three weeks report to a public congregation, and that many sabbaths from the altar of a place of worship to legalise a marriage, and there being now no time for either of these, the mulatto gentleman who was still with them 156 being a clergyman, declared, that in this case no such restrictions were binding; being originally intended for the whites and the free, and not for the panting runaway slave. “Thank God for that! That's good talk!” said Charles. “Ef it aint dat, 'taint nothin! Dat's wat I calls good black talk!” replied Andy, causing the clergyman and all to look at each other with a smile. The party gathered standing in a semicircle, the clergyman in the center, a hymn being sung and prayer offered—rising to their feet, and an exhortation of comfort and encouragement being given, with the fatherly advice and instructions of their domestic guidance in after life by the aged man of God; the sacred and impressively novel words: “I join you together in the bonds of matrimony!” gave Henry the pleasure before leaving of seeing upon the floor together, Charles and Polly, Andy and Clara, Eli and Ailcey, “as man and wife forever.” “Praise God!” exclaimed poor old mammy, whose heart was most tenderly touched by the scene before her, contrasting it by reflection with the sad reminiscence of her own sorrowful and hopeless union with Daddy Joe, with whom she had lived fifty years as happily as was possible for slaves to do. “Bless de laud!” responded the old man. The young wives all gave vent to sobs of sympathy and joy, when the parson as a solace sung in touching sentiments: Daughters of Zion! awake from thy sadness! Awake for they foes shall oppress thee no more. Bright o'er the hills shines the day star of gladness Arise! for the night of they sorrow is o'er; Daughters of Zion, awake from thy sadness! Awake for they foes shall oppress thee no more! “O glory!” exclaimed Mammy Judy, when the scene becoming most affecting; hugging his boy closely to his bosom, upon whose little cheek and lips he impressed kisses long and affectionate, when laying him in the old woman's lap and kissing little Tony, turning to his friends with a voice the tone of which sent through them a thrill, he said: “By the instincts of a husband, I'll have her if living! If dead, by 157 impulses of a Heaven-inspired soul, I'll avenge her loss unto death! Farewell, farewell!” the tears streaming as he turned from his child and its grandparents; when but a few minutes found the runaway leader seated in a car at the Windsor depot, from whence he reached the Suspension Bridge at Niagara en route for the Atlantic. CHAPTER 34 A Novel Adventure From the Suspension Bridge through the great New York Central Railway to Albany, and thence by the Hudson River, Henry reached the city on the steamer “Hendrick Hudson,” in the middle of an afternoon. First securing a boarding house—a new thing to him—he proceeded by direction to an intelligence office, which he found kept by a mulatto gentleman. Here inquiring for a situation as page or valet on a voyage to Cuba, he deposited the required sum, leaving his address as “Gilbert Hopewell, 168 Church St.”—changing the name to prevent all traces of himself out of Canada, whither he was known to have gone, to the free states of America, and especially to Cuba whence he was going, the theater of his future actions. In the evening Henry took a stroll through the great thoroughfare, everything being to him so very novel, that eleven o'clock brought him directly in front of doubtless the handsomest saloon of the kind in the world, situated on the corner of Broadway and Franklin street. Gazing in at the luxurious and fashionable throng and gaieties displayed among the many in groups at the tables, there was one which more than all others attracted his attention, though unconscious at the time of its doing so. The party consisted of four; a handsome and attractive young lady, accompanied by three gentlemen, all fine looking, attractive persons, wearing the undress uniforms of United States naval officers. The elder of these was a robust, commanding person in appearance, black hair, well mixed with white, seemingly some sixty years of age. One of the young gentlemen was tall, handsome, with raven-black hair, moustache, and eyes; the other, medium height, fair complexion, hair, moustache and whiskers, with blue eyes; while the young lady ranked 158 of medium proportions in height and size, drab hair, fair complexion, plump cheeks and hazel eyes, and neatly dressed in a maroon silk habit, broadly faced in front and cuffed with orange satin, the collar being the same, neatly bound with crimson. While thus musing over the throng continually passing in and out, unconsciously Henry had his attention so fixed on this group, who were passing out and up Broadway, involuntarily leaving the window through which he had been gazing, he found himself following them in the crowd which throng the street closely, foot to foot. Detecting himself and about to turn aside, he overheard the elderly gentleman in reply to a question by the lady concerning the great metropolis, say, that in Cuba where in a few days they would be, recreation and pleasure were quite equal to that of New York. Now drawing more closely he learned that the company were destined for Havana, to sail in a few days. His heart beat with joy, when turning and making his way back, he found his boarding house without difficulty. Henry once more spent a sleepless night, noted by restless anxiety; and the approach of morning seemed to be regulated by the extent of the city. If thoughts could have done it, the great Metropolis would have been reduced to a single block of houses, reducing in like manner the night to a few fleeting moments. Early in the morning he had risen, and impatiently pacing the floor, imagined that the people of that city were behind the age in rising. Presently the summons came for breakfast, and ere he was seated a note was handed him reading thus: Intelligence Office—Leonard St., New York, March 5th, 1853 Gilbert Hopewell: There is now an opportunity offered to go to Cuba, to attend on a party of four—a lady and three gentlemen—who sail for Havana direct (see Tribune of this morning). Be at my office at half past ten o'clock, and you will learn particulars, which, by that time I will have obtained. Respectfully, B.A.P. 159 Though the delay was but an hour, Henry was restless, and when the time came was punctually in his place. The gentleman who called to meet him at the Intelligence office Henry recognized as one of the party seen the previous evening at the great saloon in Broadway. Arrangements having been completed concerning his attendance and going with them, “Meet me in an hour at the St. Nicholas, and commence your duties immediately,” said the gentleman, when politely bowing, Henry turned away with a heart of joy, and full of hope. Promptly to the time he was at the hotel, arranging for a start; when he found that his duties consisted in attendance particularly on the young lady and one of the young gentlemen, and the other two as occasion might require. The company was composed of Captain Richard Paul, the elderly gentleman; Lieutenant Augustus Seeley, the black-haired; passed Midshipman Lawrence Spencer, the light-haired gentleman, and Miss Cornelia Woodward. Miss Woodward was modest and retiring, though affable, conversant and easy in manner. In her countenance were pictured an expression of definite anxiety and decisive purpose, which commanded for her the regard and esteem of all whom she approached. Proud without vanity, and graceful without affectation, she gained the esteem of everyone; a lady making the remark that she was one of the most perfect of American young ladies. After breakfast the next morning they embarked on the steam packet “Isabella,” to sail that day at eleven o'clock. Of the gentlemen, Augustus Seeley gave to Miss Woodward the most attention, though nothing in her manner betrayed attachment except an occasional sigh. Henry, for the time, appeared to be her main dependence; as shortly after sailing she manifested a disposition to keep in retirement as much as possible. Though a girl of tender affections, delicate sentiments, and elevated Christian graces, Cornelia was evidently inexperienced and unprepared for the deceptious impositions practiced in society. Hence, with the highest hopes and expectations, innocently unaware of the contingencies in life's dangerous pathway, hazarding her destiny on the simple promise of an irresponsible young man, but little more than passed midshipman, she reached the quay at Moro Castle in less than six days from the Port of New York. URL https://utc.iath.virginia.edu/africam/blakehp.html From URL Like Douglass' "Heroic Slave," Martin Delany's Blake is the story of an African American who chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation. Blake repeatedly dismisses Christianity as his "oppressors' religion," and in this text "stand still and see the salvation" means wait and plot in secret until the signal for the insurrection comes. Delany was one of the most out-spoken black critics of Stowe's novel, but there is much about Blake that remains unknown, including how soon after the appearance of Uncle Tom's Cabin Delany began writing it, and whether he ever finished it. Included in this archive is Part One, or just about exactly the first half, of the novel. Most of Part One (chapters 1-23 and 29-31) originally appeared serially in The Anglo-African Magazine, January to July, 1859. The rest of Part One was first published when Delany reprinted the story in The Weekly Anglo-African, November, 1861, to May, 1862. It was not published in book form until 1970, when Floyd J. Miller prepared an edition of Part One and the first 40 chapters of Part Two (all that have been recovered) for the Beacon Press. Both Parts use quatrains from a poem by Stowe as epigraphs, although Delany's vision is of armed slave rebellion rather than Christian submission. Referral https://africanbloodsiblings.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/part-1-of-martin-delanys-blake-or-the-huts-of-america-with-notes/ From Referral “I wake up each morning and say, thank God I am a man, whereas Delany wakes up and says thank God I am a black man.” — Frederick Douglass speaking of Martin Delany Delany as Major, U. S. Army (c. 1865) Portrait sold by Weekly Anglo-African

Vertner Woodson Tandy designed St Phillips Church, financed and designed and utilized by Blacks[ st Phillips black church congregation] Villa Lewaro financed and designed and utilized by Blacks[madam cj walker and her daughter] Madame CJ Walker's Townhouse in Harlem - financed and designed and utilized by Blacks[madame cj walker] ST Phillips Church The present church building designed by Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first African American registered architect in New York, was dedicated on March 25, 1911 and was granted landmark status on July 15, 1991. St. Philip's Episcopal Church (Harlem, New York) (1910), 204 West 134th Street https://www.stphilipsharlem.org/history-continued Villa Lewaro, the $250,000 mansion for the daughter of the Harlem millionairess Madam C. J. Walker, in Irvington on Hudson, New York. The Italianate-style mansion was completed in 1918. was owned by Harold Doley and now is owned by Richelieu Dennis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Lewaro Madam CJ Walker Townhouse sometimes called the Dark Tower Old photos Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.10838 The exterior of the townhouse at 108 and 110 West 136th Street, circa 1916. Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.10840 The reception room at Walker Hair Parlor and Lelia College of Beauty Culture, circa 1916. Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.10842 The tearoom at Walker Hair Parlor and Lelia College of Beauty Culture, circa 1916. Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.10836 The music room at the townhouse, circa 1916. Byron Company (New York, N.Y.) Museum of the City of New York. 93.1.1.10835 A'Lelia Walker's bedroom at the townhouse, circa 1916. URL https://savingplaces.org/stories/how-alelia-walker-and-the-dark-tower-shaped-the-harlem-renaissance#.YMYHJFUpCUA The Dark Tower was a townhouse on 108 West 136th Street in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Tower_(building) what became of it But in 1941, the mansion, which by then belonged to the city, was torn down and became the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library. https://www.thecuriousuptowner.com/post/here-s-what-became-of-madam-c-j-walker-s-grand-harlem-mansion He also designed the Ivey Delph Apartments which were for NY City made through his architectural firm of Tandy & Foster. The Ivey Delph Apartments, designed in 1948, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

The Renaissance Theatre Building, as it was originally named, opened January 1921. It was built and owned, until 1931, by African Americans. exterior old NEWSPAPER NOTICES New York Age, 22 January 1921, p. 6. Chronicling America. New York Age, 5 February 1921, p. 5. Chronicling America. New York Age, 19 February 1921, p. 1. Chronicling America. article source https://www.ny1920.com/1921feb-3 The African-American owned and operated firm, The Sarco Realty & Holding Company, Inc., raised the funds for the project by selling shares to the public, initially, in February 1920, at 10¢ a share. Sarco's executive directors were William H. Roach, president and general manager; Cleo Charity (1889–1964), vice-president and treasurer; Cornelius Charity, second vice-president; and Joseph Henry Sweeney (1889–1932), secretary. The other directors were John Blake, Edmund Osborne, Shervington Lee, and Edward B. Lynch. Sarco Realty and the R. Holding Company, of which Roach was also President, purchased the land. Sarco contracted Isaac A. Hopper's Sons to erect the Renaissance Theatre building, at a cost of $175,000. Sarco Realty owned and managed the building until 1931; Sarco Realty also owned and operated the Renaissance Casino and Theatre until 1931. The Renaissance was designed by Harry Creighton Ingalls, who also designed the Henry Miller and Little Theatres in the Theater District. The design was Moorish with glazed tile and palladian windows. The complex had a ballroom, a billiard parlor, stores, and a restaurant called China House. There was a basketball team known as Harlem Rens. The theater had 900-seats and featured movies by Oscar Micheaux, the first African American to produce feature-length films. It was used by the NAACP for an Anti-lynching movement meeting in 1923. LETTER FROM WILLIAM ROACH TO WEB DUBOIS Title: Letter from William H. Roach to W. E. B. Du Bois Description: Inviting Du Bois to a meeting at the Renaissance Casino Building to select directors for the Harlem State Bank. Typewritten on stationery from the Sarco Realty & Holding Company and signed by Roach, President. Creator: Roach, William H. Addressee: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 Date: August 9, 1923 Format: Letters/Correspondence Manuscripts Location: Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Box 023 (shelf locator) Collection (local): W. E. B. Du Bois Papers Series: Series 1. Correspondence Subjects: African American banks Extent: 1 p. Link to Item: https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b023-i160 Terms of Use: All rights for this document are held by the David Graham Du Bois Trust. Requests to publish, redistribute, or replicate this material should be addressed to Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Contact host institution for more information. URL https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:h128q5597 RENS Robert ‘Bob’ Douglas was born in the British West Indies on Nov. 4, 1882. According to Naismith Hall of Famer John Isaacs, Douglas’ first sport was soccer and after playing soccer one day, he was invited to watch a basketball game. That day would not only change Bob’s life, but the game of basketball overall. Douglas’ passion for basketball manifested itself into him wanting to be involved with the sport in any way possible. He eventually found and managed a team named the Spartan Braves, named after the Spartan Field Club. Bob knew his team would need a venue to play in and that’s when he’d meet with William Roach. William ‘Willie’ Roach was one of the owners and operators of the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino. The venue was fully owned and operated by the Sarco Realty and Holdings Company, Inc., an all African American company. The ‘Renny’ as it was nicknamed, would open its doors in 1921 at the corner of 138th Street and 7th Avenue in Harlem. The ballroom was the only club open to African Americans, even the famous Cotton Club didn’t hold that distinction due to the Jim Crow laws of the time. “Black Mecca” would host jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. It would even host plays, dances, prize fights, film screenings, and organization rallies. The Renaissance Ballroom was the epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance (known then as the New Negro Movement) of the 1920s and 30s. In October of 1923, the Spartan Braves would become the Renaissance Big R Five or “Rens” for short, after an agreement between Roach and Douglas to use the venue as their home court. That agreement would eventually be the blueprint for the licensing you see in modern professional sports today. They played (and won) their first game on Nov. 3, 1923 against the Collegiate Five, an all-white team. The Rens’ first rivals were the Original Celtics, not to be confused with the NBA’s Boston Celtics, out of West New York. They would defeat the Original Celtics on Dec. 20,1925, their first win in five meets. Bob Douglas would eventually start taking the Rens barnstorming, or traveling with the team across the country, for a chance to make more money. The team traveled sometimes 200 miles to face opponents, Black or white, while sleeping on the bus and eating cold meals due to the lack of facilities that barred them from being occupants due to the discriminatory laws that were in place at the time. These obstacles didn’t stop them from being dominant and in their 1932-33 season, they would have a regular season record of 120-8. They also won 88 consecutive games that season, a feat that hasn’t been matched by any professional sports team. In 1939, the Rens would win their first (and only) professional championship against the all-white Oshkosh All-Star 34-25 in the World Professional Basketball Tournament. The team compiled a record of 2588-529 from their inaugural season in 1923 until their move to Dayton, Ohio in 1948. The Dayton Rens would be short-lived as they disbanded in 1949 when the National Basketball League merged with the all-white Basketball Association of America to become the then-segregated National Basketball Association. Many former Renaissance players went to be enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, including Pop Gates, who with William ‘Dolly’ King helped integrate the NBL, the predecessor to the NBA. The 1932-33 New York Renaissance were collectively inducted to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1963 in recognition of their historic 88 game win streak. Robert Douglas was enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor to the game of basketball on Feb. 5, 1972, the first African American ever to be individually enshrined. In the 21st century, the team’s history was the subject of the 2011 documentary, On the Shoulders of Giants: The Story of the Greatest Team You Never Heard Of, a film written and produced by six-time NBA champion and legendary center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Rens are also the inspiration behind the EYBL team of the same name, ensuring that the legacy of what Bob Douglas started 101 years ago inspires generations to come. URL https://sacobserver.com/2024/03/the-father-of-black-professional-basketball/ PHOTOS BEFORE DEMOLITION

CITADEL from a distance Sans Souci from a distance Citadel and Sans Souci in relation to each other Sans Souci up clode part 3 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/489-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-3/ part 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/488-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-2/ part 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/474-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere/

Sans Souci Palace plans original tif files https://1drv.ms/f/c/ea9004809c2729bb/Eo7cHj86TtRKlDVRchyc29kBXTjegLplPS32rYRInvMVnQ?e=NLPBif part 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/488-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere-part-2/ part 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/474-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere/

citadelle la ferriere plans First part https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/474-architecture-sans-souci-palace-citadelle-la-ferriere/

First work published in the usa by a black person in 1865 , circa after the thirteenth amendment, by the only person to publish poetry while enslaved in the history of the U.S.A. is attributed to George M Horton. He published three works while planned four in total, to my knowledge through Wikipedia. The Hope of Liberty (1829) This was Horton's first true attempt to buy his freedom. Most of the poems in the collection were themed around antislavery either indirect or directly. One was a thank you poem towards his publisher. Three previously published poems of were reworked and put into other poems in the collection. The editorial "Explanation" that opens The Hope of Freedom speaks of Horton's desire to emigrate to the new colony of Liberia; the collection was published so as to encourage donations. TEXT The Hope of Liberty. Containing a Number of Poetical Pieces. Raleigh: J. Gales & Son, 1829. https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/horton/menu.html The Museum (never published) Professor William Green of UNC-Chapel Hill, was editing the manuscript but the collection as a whole as never published. Many poems instead were published elsewhere or in his following collections. Poetical Works (1845) Published in Raleigh, North Carolina, this collection consisted of 45 poems, none directly about being enslaved or slavery in general. The reason for this was Horton expressed he was no longer inspired to write about slavery. Also due to North Carolina being more actively pro-slavery nearing the Civil War, Horton believed a collection similar to his first would not be published. TEXT The poetical works of George M. Horton : the colored bard of North-Carolina : to which is prefixed The life of the author by Horton, George Moses, 1798?-ca. 1880; Heartt, Dennis, 1783-1870 Publication date 1845 https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofg00hort/page/24/mode/2up The Naked Genius: The Colored Bard of North-Carolina (1865) Horton wrote 132 poems between the years 1820 - 1865 which were compiled into this collection. Forty-three poems were reprinted from previous collections or those already published in newspapers, in large, the theme of the collection was to thank his sponsors and those helping to give him his freedom, including President Lincoln and Union Army Generals. Horton hoped this collection would set him apart from the title of Slave Poet and give him distinction from his poetry. As well as further prove the capability of Black men. TEXT I wasn't able to find. If anyone finds it, do tell. MY POEM in honor to George M Horton The Freeman's Complaint , a late response to the Slave's complaint Forever! was wrote by my forebear long ago a dreamy exaltation, to know to reach where our ancestors sew before unwanted immigrant woe However! I ponder unsure from where I lo no shackles , white heritage tow to embrace the easy Aquilow forlease my black blood 's coveto However! time give far more than the past can kno Black moderns have freedom to grow to other plus our old blood's mow Forever! is not for most one ro However! I can see a wisdom's cando my forebears want stars unsow to accept failed plans but trow and be past vowfree to any pro Nowever! I wish all skinkin good fortuno even if path's differ in glow or I doubt success while a said tow Now to happiness , Forever! so from Richard Murray NOTES: To my poem "forever" meaning for eternally "exaltation" meaning a rising "to know" meaning toward knowing "immigrant" meaning one who moved permanently away "however" meaning how eternally "ponder" meaning to think "unsure" meaning not safe "lo" meaning to look "heritage" meaning that which is carried "Aquilow" cognate meaning Aquila latin for eagle and low, ala low eagle, a referral to the USA "forelease" cognate meaning fore- before lease to loosen , to loosen before "coveto" meaning to a little while potent covet , covet meaning extreme passionate desire, -o postfix meaning smaller in size while same in value "kno" meaning know "modern" meaning of the now, the time of this publication "mow" meaning thing to be cut down "ro" meaning road "cando" meaning illumination, light from, short of candor [said can-dough] "stars" meaning descendents "unsow" meaning not sow, sow meaning put in a place, [ say sow like sew] "trow" meaning have belief or faith in "vowfree" meaning free of vows, vow is a verbal pledge, an attestation, "pro" meaning toward , a way forward "nowever" meaning now eternally "skinkin" meaning kin of the skin , phenotype "fortuno' meaning good fortune, in particular good luck or good fortune, fortune can be negative LAST LINES first line from the last line of The Hope Of Liberty, page 10 , THE SLAVE'S COMPLAINT.[ Forever! ] HOPE OF LIBERTY TEXT version THE HOPE OF LIBERTY. CONTAINING A NUMBER OF POETICAL PIECES. BY GEORGE M. HORTON. RALEIGH: Printed by J. Gales & Son. 1829. Page 3 EXPLANATION. GEORGE, who is the author of the following Poetical effusions, is a Slave, the property of Mr. James Horton, of Chatham County, North-Carolina. He has been in the habit, some years past, of producing Poetical Pieces, sometimes on suggested subjects, to such persons as would write them while he dictated. Several compositions of his have already appeared in the Raleigh Register. Some have made their way into the Boston newspapers, and have evoked expressions of approbation and surprise. Many persons have now become much interested in the promotion of his prospects, some of whom are elevated in office and literary attainments. They are solicitous that efforts at length be made to obtain by subscription, a sum sufficient for his emancipation, upon the condition of his going in the vessel which shall first afterwards sail for Liberia. It is his earnest and only wish to become a member of that Colony, to enjoy its privileges, and apply his industry and mental abilities to the promotion of its prospects and his own. It is upon these terms alone, that the efforts of those who befriend his views are intended to have a final effect. To put to trial the plan here urged in his behalf, the paper now exhibited is published. Several of his productions are contained in the succeeding pages. Many more might have been added, which would have swelled into a larger size. They would doubtless be interesting to many, but it is hoped that the specimens here inserted will be sufficient to accomplish the object of the publication. Expense will thus be avoided, and the money better employed in enlarging the sum applicable for his emancipation.--It is proposed, that in every town or vicinity where contributions are made, they may be put into the Page 4 hands of some person, who will humanely consent to receive them, and give notice to Mr. Weston R. Gales, in Raleigh, of the amount collected. As soon as it is ascertained that the collections will accomplish the object, it is expected that they will be transmitted without delay to Mr. Weston R. Gales. But should they ultimately prove insufficient, they will be returned to subscribers. None will imagine it possible that pieces produced as these have been, should be free from blemish in composition or taste. The author is now 32 years of age, and has always laboured in the field on his master's farm, promiscuously with the few others which Mr. Horton owns, in circumstances of the greatest possible simplicity. His master says he knew nothing of his poetry, but as he heard of it from others. GEORGE knows how to read, and is now learning to write. All his pieces are written down by others; and his reading, which is done at night, and at the usual intervals allowed to slaves, has been much employed on poetry, such as he could procure, this being the species of composition most interesting to him. It is thought best to print his productions without correction, that the mind of the reader may be in no uncertainty as to the originality and genuineness of every part. We shall conclude this account of GEORGE, with an assurance that he has been ever a faithful, honest and industrious slave. That his heart has felt deeply and sensitively in this lowest possible condition of human nature, will easily be believed, and is impressively confirmed by one of his stanzas, Come, melting Pity, from afar, And break this vast enormous bar Between a wretch and thee; Purchase a few short days of time, And bid a vassal soar sublime, On wings of Liberty. Raleigh;July 2, 1829. Page 5 PRAISE OF CREATION. Creation fires my tongue! Nature thy anthems raise; And spread the universal song Of thy Creator's praise! Heaven's chief delight was Man Before Creation's birth-- Ordained with joy to lead the van, And reign the lord of earth. When Sin was quite unknown, And all the woes it brought, He hailed the morn without a groan Or one corroding thought. When each revolving wheel Assumed its sphere sublime, Submissive Earth then heard the peal, And struck the march of time. The march in Heaven begun, And splendor filled the skies, When Wisdom bade the morning Sun With joy from chaos rise. The angels heard the tune Throughout creation ring: They seized their golden harps as soon And touched on every string. When time and space were young, And music rolled along-- The morning stars together sung, And Heaven was drown'd in song. Ye towering eagles soar, And fan Creation's blaze, And ye terrific lion's roar, To your Creator's praise. Responsive thunders roll, Loud acclamations sound, Page 6 And show your Maker's vast control O'er all the worlds around. Stupendous mountains smoke, And lift your summits high, To him who all your terrors woke, Dark'ning the sapphire sky. Now let my muse descend, To view the march below-- Ye subterraneous worlds attend And bid your chorus flow. Ye vast volcanoes yell, Whence fiery cliffs are hurled; And all ye liquid oceans swell Beneath the solid world. Ye cataracts combine, Nor let the pæan cease-- The universal concert join, Thou dismal precipice. But halt my feeble tongue, My weary muse delays: But, oh my soul, still float along Upon the flood of praise! ON THE SILENCE OF A YOUNG LADY, ON ACCOUNT OF THE IMAGINARY FLIGHT OF HER SUITOR. Oh, heartless dove! mount in the skies, Spread thy soft wing upon the gale, Or on thy sacred pinions rise, Nor brood with silence in the vale. Breathe on the air thy plaintive note, Which oft has filled the lonesome grove, And Iet thy melting ditty float-- The dirge of long lamented love. Coo softly to the silent ear, And make the floods of grief to roll; And cause by love the sleeping tear, To wake with sorrow from the soul Page 7 Is it the loss of pleasures past Which makes thee droop thy sounding wing? Does winter's rough, inclement blast Forbid thy tragic voice to sing? Is it because the Fragrant breeze Along the sky forbears to flow-- Nor whispers low amidst the trees, Whilst all the vallies frown below? Why should a frown thy soul alarm, And tear thy pleasures from thy breast? Or veil the smiles of every charm, And rob thee of thy peaceful rest. Perhaps thy sleeping love may wake, And hear thy penitential tone; And suffer not thy heart to break, Nor let a princess grieve alone. Perhaps his pity may return, With equal feeling from the heart, And breast with breast together burn, Never--no, never more to part. Never, till death's resistless blow, Whose call the dearest must obey-- In twain together then may go, And thus together dwell for aye. Say to the suitor, Come away, Nor break the knot which love has tied-- Nor to the world thy trust betray, And fly forever from thy bride. THE LOVER'S FAREWELL. And wilt thou, love, my soul display, And all my secret thoughts betray? I strove but could not hold thee fast, My heart flies off with thee at last. The favorite daughter of the dawn, On love's mild breeze will soon be gone: I strove but could not cease to love, Nor from my heart the weight remove. And wilt thou, love, my soul beguile, And gull thy fav'rite with a smile? Nay, soft affection answers, nay, And beauty wings my heart away. Page 8 I steal on tiptoe from these bowers, All spangled with a thousand flowers; I sigh, yet leave them all behind, To gain the object of my mind. And wilt thou, love, command my soul, And waft me with a light controul?-- Adieu to all the blooms of May, Farewell--I fly with love away! I leave my parents here behind, And all my friends--to love resigned-- 'Tis grief to go, but death to stay: Farewell--I'm gone with love away! ON LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. Alas! and am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain? Deprived of all created bliss, Through hardship, toil and pain! How long have I in bondage lain, And languished to be free! Alas! and must I still complain-- Deprived of liberty. Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief This side the silent grave-- To soothe the pain--to quell the grief And anguish of a slave? Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound, Roll through my ravished ears! Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, And drive away my fears. Say unto foul oppression, Cease: Ye tyrants rage no more, And let the joyful trump of peace, Now bid the vassal soar. Soar on the pinions of that dove Which long has cooed for thee, And breathed her notes from Afric's grove, The sound of Liberty. Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize, So often sought by blood-- We crave thy sacred sun to rise, The gift of nature's God: Page 9 Bid Slavery hide her haggard face, And barbarism fly: I scorn to see the sad disgrace In which enslaved I lie. Dear Liberty! upon thy breast, I languish to respire; And like the Swan unto her nest, I'd to thy smiles retire. Oh, blest asylum--heavenly balm! Unto thy boughs I flee-- And in thy shades the storm shall calm, With songs of Liberty! TO ELIZA. Eliza, tell thy lover why Or what induced thee to deceive me? Fare thee well--away I fly-- I shun the lass who thus will grieve me. Eliza, still thou art my song, Although by force I may forsake thee; Fare thee well, for I was wrong To woo thee while another take thee. Eliza, pause and think a while-- Sweet lass! I shall forget thee never: Fare thee well! although I smile, I grieve to give thee up forever. Eliza, I shall think of thee-- My heart shall ever twine about thee; Fare thee well--but think of me, Compell'd to live and die without thee. "Fare thee well!--and if forever, Still forever fare thee well!" LOVE. Whilst tracing thy visage I sink in emotion, For no other damsel so wond'rous I see; Thy looks are so pleasing, thy charms so amazing, I think of no other, my true-love, but thee. With heart-burning rapture I gaze on thy beauty, And fly like a bird to the boughs of a tree; Thy looks are so pleasing, thy charms so amazing, I fancy no other, my true-love, but thee. Page 10 Thus oft in the valley I think, and I wonder Why cannot a maid with her lover agree? Thy looks are so pleasing, thy charms so amazing, I pine for no other, my true-love, but thee. I'd fly from thy frowns with a heart full of sorrow-- Return, pretty damsel, and smile thou on me; By every endeavor, I'll try thee forever, And languish until I am fancied by thee. ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT. Blest Babe! it at length has withdrawn, The Seraphs have rock'd it to sleep; Away with an angelic smile it has gone, And left a sad parent to weep! It soars from the ocean of pain, On breezes of precious perfume; O be not discouraged when death is but gain-- The triumph of life from the tomb. With pleasure I thought it my own, And smil'd on its infantile charms; But some mystic bird, like an eagle, came down, And snatch'd it away from my arms. Blest Babe, it ascends into Heaven, It mounts with delight at the call; And flies to the bosom from whence it was given, The Parent and Patron of all. THE SLAVE'S COMPLAINT. Am I sadly cast aside, On misfortune's rugged tide? Will the world my pains deride Forever? Must I dwell in Slavery's night, And all pleasure take its flight, Far beyond my feeble sight, Forever? Worst of all, must Hope grow dim, And withhold her cheering beam? Rather let me sleep and dream Forever? Something still my heart surveys, Groping through this dreary maze; Is it Hope?--then burn and blaze Forever? Page 11 Leave me not a wretch confined, Altogether lame and blind-- Unto gross despair consigned, Forever! Heaven! in whom can I confide? Canst thou not for all provide? Condescend to be my guide Forever: And when this transient life shall end, Oh, may some kind eternal friend Bid me from servitude ascend, Forever! ON THE TRUTH OF THE SAVIOUR. E'en John the Baptist did not know Who Christ the Lord could be, And bade his own disciples go The strange event to see. They said, Art thou the one of whom 'Twas written long before? Is there another still to come, Who will all things restore? This is enough, without a name-- Go, tell him what is done; Behold the feeble, weak and lame, With strength rise up and run. This is enough--the blind now see, The dumb Hosannas sing; Devils far from his presence flee, As shades from morning's wing. See the distress'd, all bath'd in tears, Prostrate before him fall; Immanuel speaks, and Lazarus hears-- The dead obeys his call. This is enough--the fig-tree dies, And withers at his frown; Nature her God must recognize, And drop her flowery crown. At his command the fish increase, And loaves of barley swell-- Ye hungry eat, and hold your peace, And find a remnant still. Page 12 At his command the water blushed, And all was turned to wine, And in redundance flowed afresh, And owned its God divine. Behold the storms at his rebuke, All calm upon the sea-- How can we for another look, When none can work as he? This is enough--it must be God, From whom the plagues are driven; At whose command the mountains nod, And all the Host of Heaven! ON SPRING. Hail, thou auspicious vernal dawn! Ye birds, proclaim the winter's gone, Ye warbling minstrels sing; Pour forth your tribute as ye rise, And thus salute the fragrant skies The pleasing smiles of Spring. Coo sweetly, oh thou harmless Dove, And bid thy mate no longer rove, In cold, hybernal vales; Let music rise from every tongue, Whilst winter flies before the song, Which floats on gentle gales. Ye frozen streams dissolve and flow Along the valley, sweet and slow; Divested fields be gay: Ye drooping forests bloom on high, And raise your branches to the sky, And thus your charms display. Thou world of heat--thou vital source, The torpid insects feel thy force, Which all with life supplies; Gardens and orchards richly bloom, And send a gale of sweet perfume, To invite them as they rise. Near where the crystal waters glide, The male of birds escorts his bride, And twitters on the spray; He mounts upon his active wing, To hail the bounty of the Spring, The lavish pomp of May. Page 13 Inspiring month of youthful Love, How oft we in the peaceful grove, Survey the flowery plume; Or sit beneath the sylvan shade, Where branches wave above the head, And smile on every bloom. Exalted month, when thou art gone, May Virtue then begin the dawn Of an eternal Spring? May raptures kindle on my tongue, And start a new, eternal song, Which ne'er shall cease to ring! ON SUMMER. Esteville fire begins to burn; The auburn fields of harvest rise; The torrid flames again return, And thunders roll along the skies. Perspiring Cancer lifts his head, And roars terrific from on high; Whose voice the timid creatures dread, From which they strive with awe to fly. The night-hawk ventures from his cell, And starts his note in evening air; He feels the heat his bosom swell, Which drives away the gloom of fear. Thou noisy insect, start thy drum; Rise lamp-like bugs to light the train; And bid sweet Philomela come, And sound in front the nightly strain. The bee begins her ceaseless hum, And doth with sweet exertions rise; And with delight she stores her comb, And well her rising stock supplies. Let sportive children well beware, While sprightly frisking o'er the green; And carefully avoid the snare, Which lurks beneath the smiling scene. The mistress bird assumes her nest, And broods in silence on the tree, Her note to cease, her wings at rest, She patient waits her young to see. Page 14 The farmer hastens from the heat; The weary plough-horse droops his head; The cattle all at noon retreat, And ruminate beneath the shade. The burdened ox with dauntless rage, Flies heedless to the liquid flood, From which he quaffs, devoid of guage, Regardless of his driver's rod. Pomacious orchards now expand Their laden branches o'er the lea; And with their bounty fill the land, While plenty smiles on every tree. On fertile borders, near the stream, Now gaze with pleasure and delight; See loaded vines with melons teem-- 'Tis paradise to human sight. With rapture view the smiling fields, Adorn the mountain and the plain, Each, on the eve of Autumn, yields A large supply of golden grain. ON WINTER. When smiling Summer's charms are past, The voice of music dies; Then Winter pours his chilling blast From rough inclement skies. The pensive dove shuts up her throat, The larks forbear to soar, Or raise one sweet, delightful note, Which charm'd the ear before. The screech-owl peals her shivering tone Upon the brink of night; As some sequestered child unknown, Which feared to come in sight. The cattle all desert the field, And eager seek the glades Of naked trees, which once did yield Their sweet and pleasant shades. The humming insects all are still, The beetles rise no more. The constant tinkling of the bell, Along the heath is o'er. Page 15 Stern Boreas hurls each piercing gale With snow-clad wings along, Discharging volleys mixed with hail Which chill the breeze of song. Lo, all the Southern windows close, Whence spicy breezes roll; The herbage sinks in sad repose, And Winter sweeps the whole. Thus after youth old age comes on, And brings the frost of time, And e'er our vigor has withdrawn, We shed the rose of prime. Alas! how quick it is the case, The scion youth is grown-- How soon it runs its morning race, And beauty's sun goes down. The Autumn of declining years Must blanch the father's head, Encumbered with a load of cares, When youthful charms have fled. HEAVENLY LOVE. Eternal spring of boundless grace, It lifts the soul above, Where God the Son unveils his face, And shows that Heaven is love. Love that revolves through endless years-- Love that can never pall; Love which excludes the gloom of fears, Love to whom God is all! Love which can ransom every slave, And set the pris'ner free; Gild the dark horrors of the grave, And still the raging sea. Let but the partial smile of Heaven Upon the bosom play, The mystic sound of sins forgiven, Can waft the soul away. The pilgrim's spirits show this love, They often soar on high; Languish from this dim earth to move, And leave the flesh to die. Sing, oh my soul, rise up and run, And leave this clay behind; [illegible] ing thy swift flight beyond the sun, Nor dwell in tents confined. Page 16 ON THE DEATH OF REBECCA. Thou delicate blossom; thy short race is ended, Thou sample of virtue and prize of the brave! No more are thy beauties by mortals attended, They now are but food for the worms and the grave. Thou art gone to the tomb, whence there's no returning, And left us behind in a vale of suspense; In vain to the dust do we follow thee mourning, The same doleful trump will soon call us all hence. I view thee now launched on eternity's ocean, Thy soul how it smiles as it floats on the wave; It smiles as if filled with the softest emotion, But looks not behind on the frowns of the grave. The messenger came from afar to relieve thee-- In this lonesome valley no more shalt thon roam; Bright seraphs now stand on the banks to receive thee, And cry, "Happy stranger, thou art welcome at home." Thou art gone to a feast, while thy friends are bewailing, Oh, death is a song to the poor ransom'd slave; Away with bright visions the spirit goes sailing, And leaves the frail body to rest in the grave. Rebecca is free from the pains of oppression, No friends could prevail with her longer to stay; She smiles on the fields of eternal fruition, Whilst death like a bridegroom attends her away. She is gone in the whirlwind--ye seraphs attend her, Through Jordan's cold torrent her mantle may lave; She soars in the chariot, and earth falls beneath her, Resign'd in a shroud to a peaceable grave. ON DEATH. Deceitful worm, that undermines the clay, Which slyly steals the thoughtless soul away, Pervading neighborhoods with sad surprise, Like sudden storms of wind and thunder rise. The sounding death-watch lurks within the wall Away some unsuspecting soul to call: The pendant willow droops her waving head, And sighing zephyrs whisper of the dead. Page 17 Methinks I hear the doleful midnight knell-- Some parting spirit bids the world farewell; The taper burns as conscious of distress, And seems to show the living number less. Must a lov'd daughter from her father part, And grieve for one who lies so near her heart? And must she for the fatal loss bemoan, Or faint to hear his last departing groan. Methinks I see him speechless gaze awhile, And on her drop his last paternal smile; With gushing tears closing his humid eyes, The last pulse beats, and in her arms he dies. With pallid cheeks she lingers round his bier, And heaves a farewell sigh with every tear; With sorrow she consigns him to the dust, And silent owns the fatal sentence just. Still her sequestered mother seems to weep, And spurns the balm which constitutes her sleep; Her plaintive murmurs float upon the gale, And almost make the stubborn rocks bewail. O what is like the awful breach of death, Whose fatal stroke invades the creature's breath! It bids the voice of desolation roll, And strikes the deepest awe within the bravest soul. ON THE EVENING AND MORNING. When Evening bids the Sun to rest retire, Unwearied Ether sets her lamps on fire; Lit by one torch, each is supplied in turn, Till all the candles in the concave burn. The night-hawk now, with his nocturnal tone, Wakes up, and all the Owls begin to moan, Or heave from dreary vales their dismal song, Whilst in the air the meteors play along. [illegible] ength the silver queen begins to rise, [illegible] spread her glowing mantle in the skies, [illegible] from the smiling chambers of the east, [illegible] the eye to her resplendent feast. Page 18 What joy is this unto the rustic swain, Who from the mount surveys the moon-lit plain; Who with the spirit of a dauntles Pan Controls his fleecy train and leads the van; Or pensive, muses on the water's side, Which purling doth thro' green meanders glide, With watchful care he broods his heart away 'Till might is swallowed in the flood of day. The meteors cease to play, that mov'd so fleet And spectres from the murky groves retreat, The prowling wolf withdraws, which bowl'd so bold And bleating flocks may venture from the fold. The night-hawk's din deserts the shepherd's ear, Succeeded by the huntsman's trumpet clear, O come Diana, start the morning chase Thou ancient goddess of the hunting race. Aurora's smiles adorn the mountain's brow, The peasant hums delighted at his plow, And lo, the dairy maid salutes her bounteous cow. ON THE POETIC MUSE. Far, far above this world I soar, And almost nature lose, Aerial regions to explore, With this ambitious Muse. My towering thoughts with pinions rise, Upon the gales of song, Which waft me through the mental skies, With music on my tongue. My Muse is all on mystic fire, Which kindles in my breast; To scenes remote she doth aspire, As never yet exprest. Wrapt in the dust she scorns to lie, Call'd by new charms away; Nor will she e'er refuse to try Such wonders to survey. Such is the quiet bliss of soul, When in some calm retreat, Where pensive thoughts like streamlets roll, And render silence sweet; Page 19 And when the vain tumultuous crowd Shakes comfort from my mind, My muse ascends above the cloud And leaves the noise behind. With vivid flight she mounts on high Above the dusky maze, And with a perspicacious eye Doth far 'bove nature gaze. ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAPPY MARRIAGES. Hail happy pair from whom such raptures rise, On whom I gaze with pleasure and surprize; From thy bright rays the gloom of strife is driven, For all the smiles of mutual love are Heaven. Thrice happy pair! no earthly joys excel Thy peaceful state; there constant pleasures dwell, Which cheer the mind and elevate the soul, Whilst discord sinks beneath their soft control. The blaze of zeal extends from breast to breast, While Heaven supplies each innocent request; And lo! what fond regard their smiles reveal, Attractive as the magnet to the steel. Their peaceful life is all content and ease, They with delight each other strive to please; Each other's charms, they only can admire, Whose bosoms burn with pure connubial fire. Th' indelible vestige of unblemished love, Must hence a guide to generations prove: Though virtuous partners moulder in the tomb, Their light may shine on ages yet to come. With grateful tears their well-spent day shall close, When death like evening calls them to repose; Then mystic smiles may break from deep disguise, Like Vesper's torch transpiring in the skies. Like constellations still their works may shine, In virtue's unextinguished blaze divine; Happy are they whose race shall end the same-- Sweeter than odours is a virtuous name. Such is the transcript of unfading grace, [illegible] eflecting lustre on a future race. [illegible] virtuous on this line delight to tread, [illegible] magnify the honors of the dead-- Page 20 Who like a Phoenix did not burn in vain, Incinnerated to revive again; From whose exalted urn young love shall rise, Exulting from a funeral sacrifice. On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the Poet's freedom. When on life's ocean first I spread my sail, I then implored a mild auspicious gale; And from the slippery strand I took my flight, And sought the peaceful haven of delight. Tyrannic storms arose upon my soul, And dreadful did their mad'ning thunders roll; The pensive muse was shaken from her sphere, And hope, it vanish'd in the clouds of fear. At length a golden sun broke thro' the gloom, And from his smiles arose a sweet perfume-- A calm ensued, and birds began to sing, And lo! the sacred muse resumed her wing. With frantic joy she chaunted as she flew, And kiss'd the clement hand that bore her thro' Her envious foes did from her sight retreat, Or prostrate fall beneath her burning feet. 'Twas like a proselyte, allied to Heaven-- Or rising spirits' boast of sins forgiven, Whose shout dissolves the adamant away Whose melting voice the stubborn rocks obey. 'Twas like the salutation of the dove, Borne on the zephyr thro' some lonesome grove, When Spring returns, and Winter's chill is past, And vegetation smiles above the blast. 'Twas like the evening of a nuptial pair, When love pervades the hour of sad despair-- 'Twas like fair Helen's sweet return to Troy, When every Grecian bosom swell'd with joy. The silent harp which on the osiers hung, Was then attuned, and manumission sung: Away by hope the clouds of fear were driven, And music breathed my gratitude to heaven. Page 21 Hard was the race to reach the distant goal, The needle oft was shaken from the pole; In such distress, who could forbear to weep? Toss'd by the headlong billows of the deep! The tantalizing beams which shone so plain, Which turn'd my former pleasures into pain-- Which falsely promised all the joys of fame, Gave way, and to a more substantial flame. Some philanthropic souls as from afar, With pity strove to break the slavish bar; To whom my floods of gratitude shall roll, And yield with pleasure to their soft control. And sure of Providence this work begun-- He shod my feet this rugged race to run; And in despite of all the swelling tide, Along the dismal path will prove my guide. Thus on the dusky verge of deep despair, Eternal Providence was with me there; When pleasure seemed to fade on life's gay dawn, And the last beam of hope was almost gone. TO THE GAD-FLY. Majestic insect! from thy royal hum, The flies retreat, or starve before they'll come; The obedient plough-horse may, devoid of fear, Perform his task with joy, when thou art near. As at the Lion's dread alarming roar, The inferior beasts will never wander more, Lest unawares he should be seized away, And to the prowling monster fall a prey. With silent pleasure often do I trace The fly upon the wing, with rapid pace, The fugitive proclaims upon the wind, The death-bound sheriff is not far behind. Ye thirsty flies beware, nor dare approach, Nor on the toiling animal encroach; Be vigilant, before you buzz too late, The victim of a melancholy fate. Such seems the caution of the once chased fly, Whilst to the horse she dare not venture nigh; This useful Gad-Fly traversing the field, [illegible] ith care the lab'ring animal to shield. Page 22 Such is the eye of Providential care, Along the path of life forever there; Whose guardian hand by day doth mortals keep And gently lays them down at night to sleep. Immortal Guard, shall I thy pleasures grieve Like Noah's dove, wilt thou the [error in typography] reature leave, No never, never, whilst on earth I stay. And after death, then fly with me away. THE LOSS OF FEMALE CHARACTER. See that fallen Princess! her splendor is gone-- The pomp of her morning is over; Her day-star of pleasure refuses to dawn, She wanders a nocturnal rover. Alas! she resembles Jerusalem's fall, The fate of that wonderful city; When grief with astonishment rung from the wall, Instead of the heart-cheering ditty. When music was silent, no more to be rung, When Sion wept over her daughter; On grief's drooping willows their harps they were hung, When pendent o'er Babylon's water. She looks like some Star that has fall'n from her sphere, No more by her cluster surrounded; Her comrades of pleasure refuse her to cheer, And leave her dethron'd and confounded. She looks like some Queen who has boasted in vain, Whose diamond refuses to glitter; Deserted by those who once bow'd in her train, Whose flight to her soul must be bitter. She looks like the twilight, her sun sunk away, He sets; but to rise again never! Like the Eve, with a blush bids farewell to the day, And darkness conceals her forever. HTML version https://1drv.ms/u/c/ea9004809c2729bb/ERJSA4MEpzNOgaUKiipgU-8BpRLnEgnS76h-_xZ3z2O-Mg?e=0rTZND POETICAL WORKS TEXT version POETICAL WORKS OF <BDB®3E(B3B £Go SI ® IB 93? 3D ST $ flie Colored Bard of North-Carolina, TO WHICH I? PREFIXED THE LIFE OF TM AUTHOR WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. HILLSBOROUGH: PRINTED BY D. HEARTT, J845. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofgOOhort LIFE OF <BIB®IB<BIB mo m<3mT$®289 The Colored Bard of North-Carolina. T^ROM the importunate request of a few individuals, I assume the difficult task of ■writing a concise history of my life. But to open a scene of all the past occurrences of my life I shall not undertake, since 1 should fail by more than two-thirds in the matter. But if you will condescend to read it, I will endea- vor to give a slight specimen entirely clear of exaggeration. A tedious and prolix detail in the matter may not be of any expected, since there is necessarily so much particularity le- quired in a biographical narrative. I was born in Northampton county, N C, near the line of Virginia, and within four miles of the Roanoke River; the property of Wil- liam Horton, senior, who also owned my mother, and the whole stock of her children, which were five before me, all girls, but not of one father. I am the oldest child that my r mother had by her second husband, and she had IV four younger than myself, one boy and three girls. But to account for my age is beyond the reach of my power. I was early fond of music, with an extraordinary appetite for sing- ing lively times, for which I was a little re- markable. In the course of a few years after my birth, from the sterility of his land, my old master assumed the notion to move into Chat- ham, a more fertile and fresh part of country recently settled, and whose waters were far more healthy and agreeable. I here become a cow-boy, which I followed for perhaps ten years in succession, or more. In the course of this disagreeable occupation, I became fond of hearing people read; but being nothing but a poor cow-boy, 1 had but little or no thought of ever being able to read or spell one word or sentence in any book whatever. My moth- er discovered my anxiety for books, and strove to encourage my plan; but she, having left her husband behind, was so hard run to make a little shift for herself, that she could give me no assistance in that case. At length I took a resolution to learn the alphabet at all events; and lighting by chance at times with soma opportunities of being in the presence of school children, I learnt the letters by heart; and fortunately afterwards got hold of some M parts of spelling books abounding with these elements, which I learnt with but little difficulty. And by this time, my brother was deeply excited by the assiduity which he dis- covered in me, to learn himself; and some of his partial friends strove to put him before me, and I in a stump now, and a sorry instrument to work with at that. But still my brother never could keep time with me. He was in- deed an ostentatious youth, and of a far more attractive person than myself, more forward in manly show, and early became fond of po- pularity to an astonishing degree for one of his age and capacity. He strove hard on the wing of ambition to soar above me, and could write a respectable fist before I could form the first letter with a pen, or barely knew the use of a goose-quill. And I must say that he was quite a remarkable youth, as studious as a judge, but much too full of vain loung- ing among the fair sex. But to return to the earlier spring of my progress. Though blundering, I became a far better reader than he; but we were indeed both remarkable for boys of color, and hard raising. On well nigh every Sabbath during the year, did I retire away in the summer sea- son to some shady and lonely recess, when I VI could stammer over the dim and promiscuous syllables in my old black and tattered spelling book, sometimes a piece of one, and then of another; nor would I scarcely spare the time to return to my ordinary meals, being so tru- ly engaged with my book. And by close appli- cation to my book at night, my visage became considerally emaciated by extreme perspira- tion, having no lucubratory aparatus, no can- dle, no lamp, nor even light-wood, being chiefly raised in oaky woods. Hence I had to sit sweating and smoking over my incom- petent bark or brush light, almost exhausted by the heat of the fire, and almost suffocated with smoke ; consequently from Monday morning I anticipated with joy the approach of the next Sabbath, that I might again retire to the pleasant umbrage of the woods, whith- er I was used to dwell or spend the most of the day with ceaseless investigation over my book. A number strove to dissuade me from my plan, and had the presumption to tell me that I was a vain fool to attempt learning to read with as little chance as I had. Play boys importunately insisted on my abandon- ing my foolish theory, and go with them on streams, desport, and sacrifice the day in ath* letic folly, or alibatic levity. Nevertheless vu did I persevere with an indefatigable resolu- tion, at the risk of success. But ah! the op- positions with which I contended are too te- dious to relate, but not too formidable to sur- mount; and I verily believe that those obsta- cles had an auspicious tendency to waft me, as on pacific gales, above the storms of envy and the calumniating scourge of emulation, from which literary imagination often sinks beneath its dignity, and instruction languishes at the shrine of vanity. I reached the threa- tening heights of literature, and braved in a manner the clouds of disgust which reared in thunders under my feet. This brings to mind the verse of an author on the adventurous seaman. * The wandering sailor ploughs the main, A competence in life to gain; The threatening waves around him foam, 'Till flattering fancy wafts him home." For the overthrow and downfal of my scheme had been repeatedly threatened. But with defiance I accomplished the arduous task of spelling, (for thus it was with me,) having no facilitating assistance. From this I entered into reading lessons with triumph. I became very fond of reading parts of the New Testa- ment, such as I could pick up as they lay about at random; but I soon became more fond of reading verses, Wesley's old hymns, and other peices of poetry from various au- thors. 1 became foGnd of it to that degree, that whenever I chanced to light on a piece of paper, so common to be lying about, I would pick it up in order to examine it whether it was written in that curious style or not. If it was not, unless some remarkable prose, I threw it aside; and if it was, I as carefully pre- served it as I would a piece of money. At length I began to wonder whether it was pos- sible that I ever could be so fortunate as to compose in that manner. I fell to work in my head, and composed several undigested pieces, which I retained in my mind, for I knew nothing about writing with a pen, also without the- least grammatical knowledge, a few lines of which I yet retain. I will give you the following specimen. On one very Calm Sabbath morning, a while before the time of preaching, I undertook to compose a divine hymn, being under some serious im- pression of mind: Rise up, my soul, and let ns go Up to the gospel feast; Giid on the garment white as snow, To join and be a guest. Dost thou not hear the trumpet call For thee* my soul, for thee? Not only thee, my soul, but all, May rise and enter free. The other part I cannot now recollect. But in the course of some eight or ten months, Under similar pensive impressions, I compos- ed the following: Excited from reading the obedience of Nature to her Lord in the vessel on the sea. Master, we perish if thou sleep, We know not whence to fly; The thunder seems to rock the deep, Death frowns from all the sky. He rose, he ran, and looking out, He said, ye seas, be still; What art thou, cruel storm, about? All silenced at his will. Dost thou not know that thou art mine, And all thy liquid stoues; Who ordered first the sun to shine And gild thy swelling shores. My smile is but the death of harm, Whilst riding on the wind, My power restrains the thunder's arm, Which dies in chains confined. After having read the travel of Israel from Egypt to the Red Red Sea, where they tri- umphantly arrive on the opposite bank, I was excited to compose the following few lines : Sing, O ye ransom'd, shout and tell What God has done for ye; The horses and their riders fell And perish'd in the sea. Look back, the vain Egyptian dies Whilst plunging from the shore; He groans, he sinks, but not to rise, King Pharaoh is no more. Many other pieces did I compose, which have long since slipped my recollection, and some perhaps better than those before you. During this mental conflict no person was ap- prised of my views except my brother, who rather surmised it, being often in converse with me, and who was equally emulous for literature, and strove to rival me. Though XI he learnt to read very well for one of color, it seems that his genius did not direct him towards Parnassus, for he was rather a Jo- sephus than a Homer; though he could write very well before I could form the first letter as above stated, for I devoted most of my op- portunities to the study of composing or try- ing to compose. At any critical juncture, when any thing momentous transpired, such as death, misfortune, disappointment, and the like, it generally passed off from my mind like the chanting of birds after a storm, for my mind was then more deeply inspired than at other periods. One thing is to be lamented much; that is, that ever I was raised in a family or neigh- borhood inclined to dissipation, or that the foul seed should have been sown in the bosom of youth, to stifle the growth of uncultivated genius, which like a torch lifted from a cell in the midst of rude inclement winds, which, instead of kindling its blaze, blows it out. My old master, being an eminent farmer, who had acquired a competent stock of living through his own prudence and industry, did not de- scend to the particularity of schooling his children at any high rate; hence it is clear that he cared less for the improvement of the mind Xll of his servants. In fact, he was a man who aspired to a great deal of elaborate business, and carried me into measures almost beyond my physical ability. Often has he called me with my fellow laborers to his door to get the ordinary dram, of which he was much too fond himself; and we, willing to copy the ex- ample, partook freely in order to brave the storms of hardship, and thought it an honor to be intoxicated. And it was then the case with the most of people; for they were like savages, who think little or nothing of the re- sult of lewd conduct. Nay, in those days, when the stream of intemperance was little regarded, the living had rather pour a libation on the bier of the dead than to hear a solemn funeral preached from the hallowed lips of a divine ; for Bacchus was honored far more than Ceres, and they would rather impair the fences of fertile lands in their inebriating course, than to assist a prudent farmer in cul- tivating a field for the space of an hour. Those days resembled the days of martyr- dom, and all Christendom seemed to be relaps- ing into dissipation; and libertinism, obsceni- ty and profanation were in their full career; and the common conversation was impregnat- ed with droll blasphemy. In those days sen- XIII filial gratification was prohibited by few; for drinking, I had almost said, was a catholic to- leration, and from 1800 to 1810 there was I scarcely a page of exemplary conduct laid be- fore my eyes. Hence it was inevitably my misfortune to become a votary to that growing evil; and like a Saul, I was almost ready to hold the garments of an abominable rabble in their public sacrilege, to whom the tender of a book was offensive, especially to those who followed distilling on the Sabbath in the midst of a crowd of profligate sots, gambling around, regardless of demon, or Deity! Such scenes I have witnessed with my own eyes, when not a Sunday school was planted in all the sur- rounding vicinities. My old master having come to the conclu- sion to confer part of his servants on his child- ren, lots were cast, and his son James fell heir to me. He was then living on Northh- ampton, in the winter of 1814. In 1815 he moved into Chatham, when my opportunities became a little expanded. Having got in the way of carrying fruit to the college at Chapel Hill on the Sabbath, the collegians who, for their diversion, were fond of pranking with the country servants who resorted there for the same purpose that I did, began also to XIV prank with me. But some how or other they discovered a spark of genius in me, eith- er by discourse or other means, which excit~ ed their curiosity, and they often eagerly in- sisted on me to spout, as they called it. This inspired in me a kind of enthusiastic pride. I was indeed too full of vain egotism, which always discovers the gloom of ignorance, or dims the lustre of popular distinction. I would stand forth and address myself extem- pore before them, as an orator of inspired promptitude. But I soon found it an object of aversion, and considered myself nothing but a public ignoramus. Hence I abandoned my foolish harangues, and began to speak of poetry, which lifted them still higher on the wing of astonishment; all eyes were on me, and all ears were open. Many were at first incredulous; but the experiment of acrostics established it as an incontestable fact. Hence my fame soon circulated like a stream through- out the college. Many of these acrostics I composed at the handle of the plough, and retained them in my head, (being unable to write,) until an opportunity offered, when I dictated, whilst one of the gentlemen would serve as my emanuensis. I have composed love pieces in verse for courtiers from all parts XV of the state, and acrostics on the names of ma- ny of the tip top belles of Virginia, South Ca- rolina and Georgia. But those criticising gentlemen saw plainly what I lacked, and ma- ny of them very generously gave me such books as they considered useful in my case, which I received with much gratitude, and improved according to my limited opportuni- ties. Among these gentlemen the following names occur to me: Mr. Robert Gilliam, Mr. Augustus Washington, Mr. Cornelius Rober- son, Mr. Augustus Alston, Mr. Benjamin Long, Mr. William Harden, Mr. Merryfort, Mr. Augustus Moore, Mr. Thomas Pipkin, Mr. A. Rencher, Mr. Rllerbee, Mr. Gilmer, Mr. William Pickett, Mr. Leonidas Polk, Mr. Samuel Hinton, Mr. Pain, Mr. Steward, Mr, Gatlin, Mr. J. Hogan, Mr. John Pew, Messrs W. and J. Haywood, and several more whose names have slipped my memo- ry; all of whom were equally liberal to me, and to them I ascribe my lean grammatical studies. Among the books given me were Murray's English Grammar and its accord- ant branches; Johnson's Dictionary in minia- ture, and also Walker's and Sheridan's, and parts of others. And other books of use they gave me, which I had no chance to peruse X¥l minutely, Milton's Paradise Lost, Thompr son's Seasons, parts of Homer's Uliad anil Virgil's iEnead, Beauties of Shakespear, Beauties of Byron, part of Plutarch, Morse's Geography, the Columbian Orator, Snow- den's History of the Revolution, Young's IN ight Thoughts, and some others, which my concentration of business did not suffer me tp pursue with any scientific regularity. Mr. Augustus Alston first laid (as he said) the low price of twenty=rfive cents on my com- positions each, which was unanimously es- tablished, and has been kept up ever since; but some gentlemen extremely generous, have given me from fifty to seyenty-flve cents, be- sides many decent and repectable suits of clothes, professing that they would not suffer me to pass otherwise and write for them. But there is one thing with which I am sorry to charge many of these gentlemen. Before the moral evil of excessive drinking had been impressed upon my mind, they flat- tered me into the belief that it wpmM hang me on the wings of new inspiration, which would waft me into regions of poetical perfection. And I am not a little astonished that nature and reason had not taught me better before, after having walked so long on a line which plain? ly dictated and read to me, though young, the lesson of human destruction. This realizes the truth of the sentiment in the address of the Earl of Chatham, in which he spoke of " the wretch who, after having seen the diffi- culties of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder ;" and I have now experienced the destructive consequences of walking in such a devious line from the true centre to which I was so early attracted by the magnet of genius. But I have discovered the bene- ficial effects of temperance and regularity, and fly as a penitent suppliant to the cell of private reflection, sorrowing that I ever had driven my boat of life so near the wrecking shoals of death, or that I was allured by the music of sirens that sing to ensnare the lovers of vanity. To the much distinguished Mrs. Hentz of Boston, I owe much for the correction of ma- ny poetical errors. Being a professional po- etess herself, and a lover of genius, she disco- vered my little uncultivated talent, and was moved by pity to uncover to me the beauties of correctness, together with the true impor- tance of the object to which I aspired. She was extremely pleased with the dirge which I wrote on the death of her much lamented XVIU primogenial infant, and for which she gave m6 much credit and a handsome reward. Not being able to write myself, 1 dictated while she wrote; and while thus engaged she strove in vain to avert the inevitable tear slow trickling down her ringlet-shaded cheek. She was in- deed unequivocally anxious to announce the birth of my recent and astonishing fame, and sent its blast on the gale of passage back to the frozen plains of Massachusetts. This celebrated lady, however, did not con- tinue long at Chapel Hill, and I had to regret the loss of her aid, which I shall never forget in life. At her departure from Chapel Hill, she left behind her the laurel of Thalia bloom- ing on ray £ainJ, and went with all the spot- less gaiety of Euphrooyne with regard to the ■signal services whieii she had done me. In gratitude for all these favors, by which she attempted to supply and augment the stock of servile genius, I inscribe to her the fol* lowing EULOGY. Deep on thy pillar, thou immortal dame, Trace the inscription of eternal fame; For bards tinhorn must yet thy works adore, XIX And bid thee live when others are no more. When other names are lost among the dead, Some genius yet may live thy fame to spread; Memory's fair bush shall not decline to bloom, But flourish fresh upon thy sacred tomb. When nature's crown iefuses to be gay, And ceaseless streams have worn their rocks away; W7hen age's vail shall beauty's visage mask, And bid oblivion blot the poet's task, Time's final shock shall elevate thy name, And lift thee smiling to eternal fame. I now commit my brief and blundering task to the inspection of the public, not pretending to warrant its philology nor its orthography, since grammarians, through criterions them- selves, from precipitation do not always es- cape improprieties ; and which little task, as before observed, I should not have assumed had it not been insisted on by some parti- cular gentlemen, for I did not consider my- self capable of such an undertaking. I trust, therefore, that rny readers will rather pity than abuse the essay of their unqualified writer. I will conclude with the following lines from the memorable pen of Mr. Linn, in XX which he has done honor to the cause of illi- terate genius : *' Though in the dreary depth of gothic gloom, Genius will burst the fetters of her tomb; Yet education should direct her way, And nerve with firmer grasp her powerful sway." INTRODUCTION. The author of the following miscellane- ous effusions, asserts that they are original, and recently written; and they are now pre- sented to the test of criticism, whatever may be the result. It is entirely different from his other work entitled the Museum, and has been written some time since that, and is not so large. The author is far from flattering himself with an idea of superiority, or even equality with ancient or other modern poets. He is deeply conscious of his own inferiority from the narrowness of the scope in which he has lived during the course of his past life. Few men of either a white or colored popula- tion, have been less prompted by a desire for public fame than he whose productions are now before j-ou. He was actuated merely by pleasure and curiosity, as a call to some literary task, or as an example to remove the doubts of cavilists with regard to African ge- gius. His birth was low, and in a neigh- borhood by no means populous; his raising XX11 was rude and laborious; his exertions were cramped, and his progress obstructed from start to goal; having been ever deprived of the free use of books and other advantages to which he aspired. Hence his genius is but an unpolished diamond, and can never shine forth to the world. Forbid to make the least attempt to soar, The stifled blaze of genius burns the more; He still prevails his drooping head to raise, Plods through the bogs, and on the moun- tains gaze. THE OF GEORGE ill. MORTON. THE MUSICAL CHAMBER. I trust that my friends will remember, Whilst I these my pleasures display, Resort to my musical chamber, The laurel crown'd desert in May. Resort to this chamber at leisure, Attend it by night and by day; To feast on the dainties of pleasure, Which cannot be stinted in May. This place is both pleasing and moral, A chamber both lovely and gay, In the shade of a ne'er fading laurel, Whose grace in December is May. Abounding with every fine story, While time passes hurrying aw av, 24 This place is a banquet of glory, Which rings with the ditties of May. The chamber of Chatham and Dolly, A place of a comical play, Gave place unto Lovel's fine folly, The birds and sweet flowers of May. Here Venus attends with her lover, Here Floras their suitors betray, And uncommon secrets discover, Which break from the bosom of May. • Here ever young Hebe sits smiling, The wonders of youth to portray, Excluding old age from defiling The lads and the lassies of May. Call by, little stranger, one minute, Your joy will reward your delay; Come, feast with the lark and the linnet, And drink of the waters of May. Walk in, little mistress, be steady, You 'r welcome a visit to pay; Ail things in the chamber are ready, Resolve to be married in May. 25 A DIRGE. § ,.. rv ; > ,:j:4-. <«£ Deserted of her Spouse,,, she eat lamenting m th© chamber. liast thou gone and left me, ....* Void of faults but.strictly true ? Fly far away . .? , Without delay, , / Adieu, my love, adieu. Hast thou gone and left me, ? Hence to seek another bride ? I must be still, Thou hast thy will, , 'the world is free and wide Qnlyjiadst thou told me .: Ere I drunk the bitter cup, I could with shame, . N o w b ear the blame, And freely give thee up. But I'm left to ponder, „ .. :?>. , Now in the depth of sorrow's gloom, Like some dull sprite, In dead of night, Bewailing o'er her tQmb. 26 Swiftly fly and welcome; It is the fate of fools to rove y With whom 1 know Wedlock is wo Without the stream of love. Where constant love is wanting-, Pleasure has not long to dwell ; I view my fate, Alas, too late I So partner, fare thee wellV But, my love, remember, Hence we meet and face to face, Thy heart shall ache, Thy soul shall quake, The wretch of all disgrace. DEATH OF A FAVORITE CHAMBER MA* O death, thy power I own, Whose mission was to rush, And snatch the rose, so quickly blown, Down from its native bush; The flower of beauty doom'd to pine, Ascends from this to worlds divine. 27 Death is a joyful doom, Let tears of sorrow dry, The rose on earth but fades to bloom And blossom in the sky. Why should the soul resist the hand That bears her to celestial land. Then, bonny bird, farewell, Till hence we meet again % Perhaps I have not long to dwell Within this cumb'rous chain, Till on elysian shores we meef, Till grief is lost and joy complete. THE FEARFUL TRAVELLER IN THE/ HAUNTED CASTLE. Oft do f hear tlxose windows ope And shut with dread surprise, And spirits murmur as they grope,' But break not on the eyes. Still fancy spies the winding sheet,' The phantom and the shroud; And bids the pulse of horror beat Throughout my ears aloud. 58 $ome unknown finger thumps the door, ... From one of faltering voice, Till some one seems to walk the floor With an alarming noise. The drum of horror holds her sound,' , Which will not let me sleep, When ghastly breezes float around, And hidden goblins creep. M ethinks I hear some constant groan,"' The din of all the dead, While trembling thus I lie alone, Upon this restless bed. At length the blaze of morning broke On my, impatient view, _ .. And truth or fancy told the joke, And bade the night adieu *; 'Twas but the noise of prowling rats,' ., Which ran with all their speed, Pursued in haste by hungry cats," Which on the vermin feed. The cat growl'd as she held her prey, Which shriek'd with all its might, And drove the- balm of sleep away Throughout the 'live-long night. 20 *Those creatures crumbling off the cheese Which on the table lay; Some cats, too quick the rogues to seize, With rumblingjost their prey. Thus man is often his own elf, .Who makes the night his ghost, And shrinks with horror from himself, uWhich is to fear the most. TO CATHARINE. J'll love thee as Jong as . I live, Whate'er thy condition may be ; All else but my life would I give, That thou wast as partial to me. JL love jthee because thou art fair, And fancy no other beside ; J languish thy pleasures to share, JVhatever my life may betide. y\l love thee when youth's vital beam Grows dim on the visage of cares; And trace back on time's rapid stream, Thy beauty when sinking in years, rThough nature no longer is gay, .With blooms which the simple adore. 20 Let virtue forbid me to say. That Cath'rine is lovely no more. THE SWAN— VAIN PLEASURES. The Svyan which boasted mid the tide, Whose nest was guarded by the wave, . Floated for pleasure till she died, And sunk beneath the flood to lave. The bird of fashion drops her wing1, The rose-bush now declines to bloom; -The gentle breezes of the spring No longer waft a sweet perfume. Fair beauty with tlmse lovely eyes.? Withers along her vital stream; Proud fortune leaves her throne, and flies From pleasure, as a flattering dream. The eagle of exalted fame, Which spreads his pinions far to sail, Struggled to fan his dying flame, Till pleasure palPd in every gale. And gaudy mammon, sordid gain, Whose plume has faded, once so gay, 31 Languishes mid her flowery train. Whilst pleasure flies like fumes away. Vain pleasures, O how short to last ! Like leaves which quick to ashes burn; Which kindle from the slightest blast, And slight to nothing hence return. THE POWERS OF LOVE. It lifts the poor man from his cell To fortune's bright alcove ; Its mighty sway few, few can tell, Mid envious foes it conquers ill; There's nothing half like love. Ye weary strangers, void of rest, Who late through life have strove, Like the late bird which seeks its nest, If you would hence in truth be blest, Light on the bough of lovo. The vagrant plebeian, void of friends, Constrain'd through wilds to rove, On this his safety whole depends, One faithful smile his trouble ends, A smile of constant love. If JThus did a captured wretch complain, ' Imploring Jieaven above, Till one with sympathetic pain, Flew to his arms and broke the chain, - And grief took flight from love; K jLet clouds of danger rise and roar, And hope's firm pillars move ; With storms behind and death before, O grant me this, I crave rto more, *■ There's nothing half like love.' When nature wakes soft pity's coo The hawk deserts the dove, Compassion melts the creature throughs "With palpitations felt by few, :*' ; The wrecking throbs of love. Xet surly discord take its flight From wedlock's peaceful grove, While Union breaks' the arm of fight, With darkness swallow'd up in light, O what is there like love. TO A DEPARTING FAVORITE. Thon mayst retire, but think of me r lyhen thou art gone afar, 1? JVhere'er in life thy travels be, If tost along the brackish sea, h Qr borne upon the car. Thou mayst retire, I care not where, * .Thy name my theme shall be; With thee in heart I shall be there, Content thy good or ill to share, * If dead* to lodge with thee. Thou mayst retire beyond the 4eep, And leave thy sister train, To roam the wilds where dangers sleep, And leave affection sad to weep In bitterness and pain. g i fi» .. :?v. .* . r Thou mayst retire, and yet be glad To leave me thus alone, Lamenting and bewailing sad; ^Farewell, thy sunk deluded lad May rise when thou art gone. THE TRAVELLER. 'Tis sweet to think of home. When from my native clime, Mfd lonely vallies pensive far J roam9 34 Mid rocks and hills where waters roll sublime, 'Tis sweet to think of home. My retrospective gaze Bounds on a dark horizon far behind, •But yet the stars of homely pleasures blaze And glimmer on my mind. When pealing thunders roll, ^Lnd ruffian winds howl, threat'ning life with gloom, •To Heaven's kind hand I then commit the whole, And smile to think of home. But cease, my pensive soul, To languish at departure's gloomy shrine; Still look in front and hail the joyful goal, The pleasure teeming line. When on the deep wide sea 1 wander, sailing mid the swelling foam, Tost from the land by many a long degree, O, then I think of thee. I never shall forget The by-gone pleasures of my native shore, Until the sun of life forbears to set, And pain is known no more. 65 W<hen nature seems to weep, And life hangs trembling o'er the watery tomb, Hope lifts her peaceful sail to brave the deep, And bids me think of home. My favorite pigeon rest, Nor on the plane of sorrow drop thy train, But on the bongh of h.ope erect thy nest, Till friends shall meet again. Though in the hermit's cell, Where eager friends to cheer me fail to come, Where Zeph'rus seems a joyless, tale to tell, No thought js sweet but home. RECENT APPEARANCE OF A LADY. The joy of meeting one so fair, Inspires the present stream of song ; A bonny belle, That few excell, And one with whom I few compare, Though out of sight so long. It is a cause of much delight, When lads and lasses meet again; But, bonny belle, No long to dwell, jFor soon, upon the wing of flight, We haste away in pain. That long hid form J smile to trace, A star emerging out of gloom, Exal tea* belle, Whose powers impel!, And draw the heart by every grace, The queen of every bloom. Jiong out of sight, but still in mind, Eternal mem'ry holds its grasp," Still, bonny belle, 'Tis sweet to telj. Of thee, when I am left behind Jn sorrow's lonely clasp. MEDITATION ON A COLD, DARK, AND RAINY NIGHT. Sweet on the house top falls the gentle shower, When "jet" bjack darkness crowns the silent hour, When shrill the owlet pours her hollow tone, Like some lost child sequester'd and alone, When Will's bewildering wisp begins to flare, And Philomela breathes her dulcet air, 37 ?Xis sweet to listen to her nightly tune, Deprived of star-light or the smiling moon. ■ "When deadly winds sweep round the rural shed, And tell of strangers lpst, without a bed,". Fond sympathy invokes her dol rous lay, And pleasure steals in sorrow's gloom away, Till fost'ring Somnus bids my eyes to close, And smiling visions open to repose; Still on my soothipg couch I lie at ease, Still round my chamber flows the whistling breeze, Wk Still in the chain of sleep I lie confined,, To all the threat' ning. ills of life resign'd, Regardless of the wand' ring elfe of night* While phantoms break on my immortal sights The trump of morning bids my slumbers end, While from a flood of rest I straight ascend, When on a busy world I cast my eyes, And think of nightly slumbers with surprise. ON AN OLD DELUDED^ SUITOR^ See sad deluded love, in years too late, With tears desponding o'er the tomb of fate, \yhile dusky evening's veil excludes the light Which in the morning' broke upon his sight. 38 Me now regrets his vain, his fruitless plan/ And sadly wonders at the faults of man. 'Tis now from beauty's torch he wheels aside, And strives to soar above affection's tide; 'Tis now that sorrow feeds the worm of pairr With tears which never can the loss regain; 'Tis now he drinks the wormwood and the" gall, And all the sweets of early pleasures pall,' When from his breast the hope of fortune flies, The songs of transport languish into sighs; nd, lovely rose, that beamed as she blew, all the charms of youth the most untrue, She, with delusive smiles, prevail'd to move This silry heart" into the snare of love f Then like a flower closed against thtf beey Folds her arms and turns her back on me. When on my fancy's eye her smiles she shed, The torch by which deluded love was led, Then, like a lark, from boyhood's maze I soar'd, And thus in song her flattering smiles adored. My heart was then by fondling love betray'd, A thousand pleasures bloom'd but soon to' fade, From joy to joy my heart exulting flew, In quest of one, though fair, yet far from true. 39 THE WOODMAN AND MONEY HUNTER, Throughout our rambles much we find ,* The bee trees burst with honey ; Wild birds we tame of every kind, At once they seem to be resign'd; I know but one that lags behind, There's nothing lags but money. The woods afford us much supply, The opossum, coon, and coney ; They all' are" tame and venture nigh, Regardless of the public eye, I know but one among them shy, There's nothing shy but money. And she lies in the bankrupt shade,' The cunning fox is funny ; When thus the public debts are paid', Deceitful cash is not afraid, "Where funds are hid for private trade, There's nothing paid but money. Then let us roam the woods along^ And drive the coon and coney ;' Our lead is good, our powder strong, . To shoot the pigeons as they throng, But sing no more the idle song, Nor prowl the chase for money. 40 THE EYE OF LOVE. I I know her story-telling eye Has more expression than her tongue; And from that heart-extorted sigh, At once the peal of love is rung. When that soft eye lets fall a tear .^ Of doating fondness as we part, The stream is from a cause sincere, And issues from a melting heart. j ....'.;•...„-.' ■"■ "What shall her fluttering pulse restrain,! * The life-watch beating from her soul, When all the power of hate is slain, And love permits it no control. When said her tongue, I wish thee well, Her eye declared it must be true ; And every, sentence seem'd to tell The tale of sorrow told by few. When low she bow'd and wheel'd aside, I saw her blushing temples fade; Her smiles were sunk in sorrow's tide, But love was in her eye betrayM, 41 THE SETTING SUN. *Tis sweet to trace the setting sun Wheel blushing down the west ; When his diurnal race is run, The traveller stops the gloom to shun, And lodge his bones to rest. Far from the eye he sinks apace, But still throws back his light From oceans of resplendant grace, Whence sleeping vesper paints her face, And bids the sun good night." To those hesperian fields by night My thoughts in vision stray, Like spirits stealing into light, From gloom upon the Wing of flight, Soaring from time away. Our eagle, with his pinions furl'd, Takes his departing peep, And hails the occidental world, Swift round whose base the globes are whirl'd, Whilst weary creatures sleep. 42 ■Fee rising fcufcr. The king of day rides on, To give the placid morning birth; On wheels of glory moves his throne* Whose light adorns the eaarth. When once? his limpid mart! Has the imperial course begun, The lark deserts the dusky glader And soars to meet the sun* Vp from the orient deep, Aurora mounts without delay, With brooms of light the plains to sweep. And purge the gloom away. Ye ghostly scenes give wayv Our king is coming now in sight. Bearing the diadem of day, Whose crest expels the night; Thus we, tike birds, retreat To groves, and hide from ev'ry eye; Our slumbering dust will rise and meet Its morning in the sky. The immaterial sun, Now hid within empyieal gloom; 43 Will break forth on a brighter throne* And call us from the tomb. MEMORY. Sweet memory, like a pleasing dream, Still lends a dull and feeble ray ; For ages with her vestige teems, When beauty's trace is worn away. When pleasure, with her harps unstrung* Sits silent to be heard no more, Or leaves them on the willows hung, And pass-time glee forever o'er ; Still back in smiles thy glory steals With ev'ningdew drops from thine eye; The twilight bursting from thy wheels, Ascends and bids oblivion fly. Memory, thy bush prevails to bloom, Design'd to fade, no, never, never* Will stamp thy vestige on the tomb, And bid th' immortal live forever. When youth's bright sun has once declined And bid his smiling day expire, 44 Mem'ry, thy torch steals up behind, And sets thy hidden stars on fire. PROSPERITY. Come, thou queen of every creature, Nature calls thee to her arms j Love sits gay on every feature, Teeming with a thousand charms. Meet me mid the wreathing bowers, Greet me in the citron grove, "Where I saw the belle of flowers Dealing with the blooms of love. Hark! the lowly dove of Sharon, Bids thee rise and come away, From a vale both dry and barren, Come to one where life is gay. Come, thou queen of all the forest, Fair Feroma, mountain glee, Lovelier than the garden florist. Or the goddess of the bee. Come, Sterculus, and with pleasure, Fertilize the teeming field ; 45 From thy straw, dissolved at leisure, Bid the lea her bounty yield. Come, thou queen of every creature, Nature calls thee to her arms ; Love sits gay on every feature, Teeming with a thousand charms. DEATH OF GEN. JACKSON— AN EULOGY. Hark! from the mighty Hero's tomb, I hear a voice proclaim ! A sound which fills the world with gloom, But magnifies his name. JJis flight from time let braves deplore, And wail from state to state, And sound abroad from shore to shore, The death of one so great ! He scorn'd to live a captured slave, And fought his passage through ; He dies, the prince of all the brave, And bids the world adieu ! Sing to the mem'ry of his power. Ye vagrant mountaineers. 45 Ye rustic peasants drop a shower Of love for him in tears. He wields the glittering sword no more, With that transpiercing eye ; Ceases to roam the mountain o'er. And gets him down to die ! Still let the nation spread his fame, While marching from his tomb ; Aloud let all the world proclaim, Jackson, forever bloom. No longer to the world confm'd, He goes down like a star ; He sets, and leaves his friends behind To rein the steed of war. Hark! from the mighty Hero's tomb, 1 hear a voice proclaim ! A sound which fills the world with gloom, But magnifies his name ! MR. CLAY'S RECEPTION AT RALEIGH, April, 1844. Salute the august train t a scene so grand, With kvery tuneful baud \ It The mighty brave, His country bound to save, Extends his aiding hand ; For joy his vofries hoop and stamp,. Excited by the blaze of pomp ! Let ev'ry eye the scene descry, The sons of freedom's land. They look ten thousand stars t lamp tumbler blaze, To give the Hero praise I Immortal Clay, The cause is to pourtray J Your tuneful voices raise j The lights of our Columbian sun, Break from his patriotic throne ; Let all admire The faithful sire, The chief musician plays* Ye bustling crowds give way, proclaims th# drum, And give the Patriot room ; The cannon's sound, The blast of trumpets bound, Be this our father's home ; Haw let the best musician playj 48 A skillful tune for Henry Clay ! Let every ear With transport hear ! The President is come. Let sister states greet the Columbian feast, With each admiring guest ; Thou art our choice ! Let ev'ry joyful voice, Sound from the east to west ; Let haughty Albion's lion roar, The eagle must prevail to soar ; And in lovely form, Above the storm, Erect her peaceful nest. Beyond each proud empire she throws her eye ! "Which lifted to the sky, No thunders roll, To agitate her soul, Beneath her feet they fly ! Let skillful fingers sweep the lyre, Strike ev'ry ear ! set hearts on fire ! Let monarchs sleep Beyond the deep, And howling faction die. 49 Nor h*nee forget tta tesne applauding &*$% When every heart was g-ay ; The universal swell Rnsh'd from the loud to"wn bell '; tn awful, grand array* We see them form the bright parade ; And hark, a gladdening march is play'd ! Along the street, The theme is sweet, For every voice is Clay. To the Capitol the low and upland peers* Resort with princely fears, And homage pay * A loud huzza for Clay ! Falls on our ears ; Loud from his lips the thunders roll* And fill with wonder every soul ; Round the sire of state All concentrate, And W&¥f mortal hears. CLAY'S DEFEAT. 'Tis the hope of the noble defeated ; The aim of the marksman is vain; The wish of destruction completed, The soldier eternally slain; 50 When winter succeeds to ihe smnme'rv The bird is too chilly to sing ; No music is play'd for the drummer, No carol is heard on the wing. The court of n. nation forsaken, An edifice stripn'd of its dome, Its fame from her pinnacle shaken, Like the sigh heaving downfall of Rome. Fali'b, fall'n is the chief of the witty, The prince of republican power ; The star-crown of Washington City Descends his political tower. * The gold-plated seat is bespoken, The brave of the west is before"; The bowl at the fountain is broken, The music of fame is no more. No longer a wonderful story Is told for the brave whig to hear, Whose sun leaves his circuit of glory, Or sinks from the light of his sphere. 51 THE HAPPY BIRD'S NEST. When on my cottage falls the placid shower, When ev'ning calls the labourer home to rest, When glad the bee deserts the humid flower, O then the bird assumes her peaceful nest. When sable shadows grow unshapely tall, And Sol's resplendent wheel descends the •west, The knell of respiration tolls for all, And Hespar smiles upon the linnet's nest. When o'er the mountain bounds the fair g'a- zell, The night bird tells her day-departing jest, She gladly leaves her melancholy dell, And spreads her pinions o'er the linnet's nest. Then harmless Diaii spreads her lucid sail, And glides through ether with her silver crest, Bidding the watchful bird still pour her tale, And cheer the happy linnet on her nest. Thus may some guardian angel bear her light, And o'er thy tomb, departed genius, rest, 52 Whilst thou *halt take thy long eternal flight, And leave some faithful bird to guard thy nest. THE FATE OF AN INNOCENT DOG. When Tiger left his native yard. He did not many ills regard, A. "fleet and harmless cur ; Indeed, he was a trusty dog, And did not through the pastures prog* The grazing flocks to stir, poor dog, The grazing flocks to' stir. He through a field by chance was led* In quest of game not far ahead, And made one active leap ; When all at once, alarm'd, he spied, A creature welt' ring on its side* A deadly wounded sheep, alas ! A deadly wounded sheep. He there was fill'd with sudden fear, Apprized of lurking danger near, And there he left his trail ; Indeed, he was afraid to yelp, 58 Nor could he grant the creature help, But wheel' d and drop'd his tail, poor dog, But wheel' d and drop'd his tail. It was his pass-time, pride and fun, At morn the nimble hare to run, When frost was on the grass ; Returning home who should he meet ? The weather's owner, coming fleet, Who scorn'd to let him pass, alas ! Who scorn'd to let him pass. Tiger could but his bristles raise, A surly compliment he pays, Insulted shows his wrath ; Returns a just defensive growl, And does not turn aside to prowl, But onward keeps the path, poor dog, But onward keeps the path. The raging owner' found the brute, But could afford it no recruit, Nor raise it up to stand ; 'Twas mangled by some other dogs, A set of detrimental rogues, Raised up~at no eommand,"alas ! Raised up at no command. Sagacious Tiger left his bogs, But bore the blame of other dogs, With powder, fire and ball ; They kilPd the poor, unlawful game, And then came back and eat the same ; But Tiger paid for fell, poor dog, But Tiger paid for all. Let ev'ry harmless dog beware Lest he be taken in the snare, And scorn such fields to roam ; A creature may be fraught with grace, And suffer for the vile and base, By straggling off from home, alas! By straggling off from home. The blood of creatures oft is spilt, Who die without a shade of guilt; Look out, or cease to roam ; Whilst up and down the world he plays For pleasure, man in danger strays Without a friend from home, alas ! Without a friend from home. 5S THE TIPLER TO HIS BOTTLE. What hast thou ever done for me? Defeated every good endeavor; I never can through life agree To place my confidence in thee, JNot ever, no, never! Often have I thy steam admired, Thou nothing hast avail'd me ever; Vain have I tliought myself inspired, Say, have 1 else but pain acquired? Not ever, no, never! No earthly good, no stream of health, Flows from thy fount, thou cheerful giver; From thee, affluence sinks to stealth, From thee I pluck no bloom of health, Whatever, no, never ! Thou canst impart a noble mind, Power from my tongue flows like a river; The gas flows dead, I'm left behind, To all that's evil down confined, To flourish more never! With thee I must through life complain, Thy powers at large will union sever; Disgorge no more, thy killing bane, The. bird hope flies from thee in pain. To return more never! ROSABELLA— PURITY OF HEART, Though with an angel's tonguo I set on fire the congregations all, *Tis but a brazen bell that I have "rung* And I to nothing fall; My theme is but an idle air If Rosabella is not there, though I in thunders rave, And hurl the blaze of oratorio flowers, Others I move, but fail myself to save With my declaiming powers; I sink, alas! Ijknow not where, If Rosabella is not there. Though J poirlt o&t the way, And closely circumscribe the path to heaven, And pour my melting prayer without delay, And vow my sins forgiven, I sink^into the gloom despair f( Rosabella is not there, V7 Though I may mountains more, And make tbe vallies vocal with my song, I'm vain without a stream of mystic love, For alt my heart is wrong; I've laid myself a cruel snare, If Iiosabella is not there. From bibliothic stores, I fly, proclaiming heaven from land to land, Or cross the seas and reach their distant shores. Mid Gothic groups to stand; O, let me of myself beware, If Rosabella is not there. Our classic books must fail, And with their flowery tongue* to ashes burn, And not one groat a mortal wit avail Upon his last return; Be this the creature's faithful prayer, That Rosabella may be there. This spotless maid was born The babe of heaven, and cannot be defiled; The soul is dead and in a state forlorn On which she has not smiled; Vain are the virile and the fair* Jf Rosabella be not there. When other pleasures tire, And mortal glories fade to glow ho more, She with the wing of truth augments her fire, And still prevails to soar; All else must die, the good and wise, But Rosabella never dies. FALSE WEIGHT. The poor countryman to a fraudulent lady profess- ing fright Christianity. If thou art fair, deal, lady, fair, And let the scales be oven; Forbid the poising beam to rear, And pull thee down from heaven. Dost thou desire to die in peace, For ev'ry sin forgiven, Give back my right, thy weight decrease, And mount like mine to heaven. Itathcr give over to the poor, Take ten and give eleven ; Or else be fair, I ask no more, 'Tis all required of heaven. And when on thee for pay I call, Which is but four for seven, 59 Keep nothing back, but pay it all, It is not hid from heaven. Remember hence the sentence past, The truth in scripture given, Last shall be first, and first be last, DEPARTING SUMMED. When auburn Autumn mounts the stage, And Summer fails her charms to yield, Bleak nature turns another page, To light the glories of the field. At once the vale declines to bloom, The forest smiles no longer gay; Gardens are left without perfume, The rose and 1 Illy pine away. The orchard bows her fruitless head, As one divested of her store; Or like a queen whose train hashed, And left her sad to smile no more. That bird which breath'd her vernal song, And hopp'd along the flow'ry spray, 60 Now silent holds her warbling tongue, Which dulcifies the feast of May. But let each bitter have its sweet, No change of nature is in vain ; 'Tis just alternate cold and heat, For time is pleasure mix'd with pain. REFLECTIONS FROM THE FLASH OF A METEOR. Psalm xc. 12. So teach me to regard my day, How small a point my life appears ; One gleam to death the whole betrays, A momentary flash of years. One moment smiles, the scene is past, Life's gaudy bloom at once we shed, And sink beneath affliction's blast, Or drop as soon among the dead. Short is the chain wound up at morn, Which oft runs down and stops at noon; Thus in a moment man is born, And, lo! the creature dies as soon. Life'sjittle torch how soon forgot, Dim burning on its dreary shore; 61 Just like that star which downwards shot, It glimmers and is seen no more. Teach me to draw this transient breath, With conscious awe my end to prove, Early to make my peace with death, As thus in haste from time we'move, O heaven, through this murky vale, Direct me with a burning pert ; Thus shall I on a tuneful gale Fleet out my threescore years and ten. TRUE FRIENDSHIP. Friendship, thou balm for ev'ry ill, I must aspire to thee; Whose breezes bid the heart be still, And render sweet the patient's pill, And set the pris'ner free. Friendship, it is the softest soul Which feels' another's pain; And must with equal sighs condole, While sympathetic streamlets roll* Which nothing can restrain* Not to be nominated smart* Of mortals to be seen, 62 She does not thus her gifts impart, Her aid is from a feeling heart, A principle within. When the lone stranger, forced to ream, Comes shiv'ring to her door, At once he finds a welcome home,"*; The torch of grace dispels his^gloom, And bids him grope no more. Friendship was never known to fail The voice of need to hear, When rainless ills onr peace assail, When from our hearts she draws the veil, And drys the falling tear. When dogs and devils snarl and fight, She hides and dwells alone; When friends and kindred disunite, With pity she surveys the right, And gives to each his own. Friendship has not a sister grace Her wonders to exceed ; She is the queen of all her race, Whose charms the stoutest must embrace When in (he vale of need. 03 Friendship is but the feeling sigh. The sympathizing tear, • Constraint to flow till others dry Nor lets the needy soul pass by, JNor scorns to see or hear. ON THE CONVERSION OF A SISTER. "JTis the voice of my sister at home, Resigned lo the treasures above, Inviting the strangers to come, And feast at the banquet of love. 'Tis a spirit cut loose from its chain, 'Tis the voice of a culprit forgiven, Restored from a prison of pain, With th' sound of a concert from heaven. 'Tis a beam from the regions of light, A touch of beatific fire; A spirit exulting for flight, With a strong and impatient desire. 'Tis a drop from the ocean of love, A foretaste of pleasures to come, Distill'd from the fountain above, The joy which awaits her at home. <k A BILLET DOLX Dear Miss : Notwithstanding the cloud of doubts which overshadows the mind of ador- ing fancy, when t trace that vermillion cheek, that sapphire eye of expressive softness, and that symmetrical form of grace, I am con- strained to sink into a flood of admiration be* neath those heavenly charms. Though, dear Miss, it may be useless to introduce a multi- plicity of blandishments, which might either lead you into a field of confusion, or absorb the truth of affection in the gloom of doubts | but the bell of adulation may be told from the distance of its echo, and cannot be heard far- ther than seen. Dear Miss, whatever may be the final result of my adventurous progress, I now feel a propensity to embark on the ocean of chance, and expand the sail of re- solution in quest of the distant shore of con- nubial happiness with one so truly lovely. Though, my dearest, the thunders of parental aversion may inflect the guardian index of af- fection from its favorite star, the deviated nee- dle recovers its course, and still points on- wards to its native poll. Though the waves of calumny may reverberate the persevering mind of the sailiug lover, the morning star of 65 hope directs him through the gloom of trial to the object of his choice. My brightest hopes are mix'd with tears, Like hues of light and gloom ; As when mid sun -shine rain appears, Love rises with a thousand fears, To pine and still to bloom. When I have told hi}- last fond tale In lines of song to thee, And for departure spread my Fail, Say, lovely princess, wilt thou fail To drop a. tear for me? O, princess, should my votive strain Salute thy ear no more, Like one deserted on the main, I still shall gaze, alas! but vain, On wedlock's llow'ry shore. TROUBLED WITH THE ITCH, AND RUB- BING WITH SULPHUR. 'Tis bitter, vet 'tis sweet, Scratching effects but transient case ; Pleasure and pain together meet, And vanish as they please. My rralte, She only balm, To ev'ry bump are oft applied, And thus the rage will sweetly calm ^Vhich aggravates my hide. It soon returns' again ; A frowh succeeds to ev'ry smile ; Grinning I scratch and curse the pain, But grieve to be so vile* In fine, 1 know not which Can play the most deceitful gam<?? The devil, sulphur, or the itch; The three are but the same. The devil sows the itch, /slid sulphur has a loathsome smell, And tfrith my clothes as black as pitch, I stink where'er I dwell. Excoriated deep, By friction play'd on ev'ry part, It oft deprives me of my sleep, And plagues me to my heart. 67 EARLY AFFECTION. I loved thee from the earliest dawn, When first I saw thy beauty's ray; And will until life's eve cornea on, And beauty's blossom fades away; And when all thing's go well with thee^ With smiles or tears remember me. I'll love thee when thy morn is past And wheedling galantry is o'er. When youth is lost in age's blast, And beauty can ascend no more; And when life's journey ends with thee, 0 then look back and think of me. I'll love thee with a smile or frown, JV1 id sorrow's gloom or pleasure's light; And when the chain of life runs down, Pursue thy last eternal flight; When thou hast spread thy wing to flee, Still, still a moment wait for me. 1 love thee for those sparkling eyes, To which my fondness was betray 'd, Bearing the tincture of the skies, To glow when other beauties fade; And when they sink too low to see, Reflect an azure beam on me. 68 THE CREDITOR TO HIS PROUD DEBTOR, Ha, tott'ring-Johny, strut and boast, But think of what your feathers cost; Your crowing days are short at most, You bloom but soon to fade; Surely you could not stand so wide, If strictly to the bottom tried, The wind would blow your plume aside If half your debts were paid. Then boast and bear the crack, With the sheriff at your back; Huzza for dandy Jack, My jolly fop, my Joe, The blue smoke from your segar flies, Offensive to my nose and eyes; The most of people would be wise Your presence to evade; Your pocket jingles loud with cash, And tbus you cut a foppish dash, But, alas! dear boy, you would be trash, If your accounts were paid. Then boast and bear the crack, &c. My duck bill boots would look as bright, Had you injustice served me right; Like you I then could step as light, Before a flaunting maid; As nicely could I clear my throat, And to my tights my eyes devote; But I'd leave you bare without that coat, For which you have not paid. Then boast and bear the crack, &c. I'd toss myself with a scornful air, And to a poor man pay no care; I could rock cross-leg'd on my chair Within the cloister shade; I'd gird my neck with a light cravat, And creaning wear my bell-crown hat; But away my down would fly at that, If once my debts were paid. Then boas! and bear the crack, With a sheriff at your back; Huzza for dandy Jack, My jolly fop, my Joe. REGRET FOR THE DEPARTURE OF FRIENDS. As smoke from a volcano soars in the air, The soul of man discontent mounts from a sigh, 70 Exhaled as to heaven in mystical prayeij Invoking that love which forbids him to die. Sweet hope, lovely passion, my grief ever ehase, And scatter the gloom which veils plea- sure's bright ray, O lend me thy wings, and assist me to trace The flight of my fair one when gone far away. When the dim star of pleasure sets glimmer- ing alone, The planet of beauty on life's dreary shore, And th' fair bird of fancy forever is flown, On pinions of haste to be heard of no more. Hope, tell me, dear passion, thou wilt not for- get, To flourish still sweetly and blossom as Expelling like morning the gloom of regret, When the lark of aifection is gone far away. If hurried into some unchangeable clime, Where oceans of pleasure continually roll, Far, far from the limited borders of time, With a total division of body and soul. 71 Hope, tell me, cigar passion, ifhicb must earth survive, That love will be sweeter when nature is o'er, And still without pain though eternity live, In the triumph of pleasure when time is iiq more. O love, when the day-light of pleasure shall close, Let the vesper of death break on life's dus- ky even; £et the faint sun of time set in peace as it rose, And eternity open thy morning in heaven. Then hope, lovely passion, thy torch shall expire, Effusing on nature life's last feeble ray; While the night maid of love sets her taper on fire, To guard smiling beauty from time far away. FAREWELL TO FRANCES. Farewell ! if ne'er I see' thee more, Thdugri distant calls my flight impel, 78 I shall not less thy grace adore, So friend, forever fare thee well. Farewell ! forever, did I say ? What, never more thy face to see ? Then take the last fond look to-day, And still to-morrow think of me. Farewell ! alas, the tragic sound Has many a tender bosom torn; While desolation spread around, Deserted friendship left to mourn. Farewell! awakes the sleeping tear, The dormant rill from sorrow's eye, Express'd from one by nature dear, Whose bosom heaves the latent sigh. Farewell ! is but departure's tale, When fond association ends, And fate expands her lofty sail, To show the distant flight of friends. Alas ! and if we sure must part, Far separated long to dwell, I leave thee with a broken heart, So friend, forever, fare thee well. I leave thee, but forget thee never, Words cannot my feeling tell, **Faro thed well, and if former, Sjtill forever fare thee well." THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. Sad Moscow, thy fate do I see* Fire ! lire ! in the city all cry ; Like quails from the eagle all flee, JEscape in a moment or die. It looks lite the battle of Troy, The stclrm rises higher and higher ; The scene of destruction all hearts must an* noy, The whirlwinds, the smoke,- and the fire* The dread conflagration rolls forth, Augmenting the rage of the wind, Which blows it from soilth unto norths And leaves but the embers behind; It looks l&e Gomorrah? the flame Is moving Still nigher arid nigher, Aloud from all quarters the people proclaim^ The whirlwinds, the sniok«e,, and the firq* Jl dead fumigation now swells, A b^ue circle darkens the air, 74 With tones as the pealing of bells, Farewell to the brave and the fair. O Moscow, thou city of grace, Consign'd to a dread burning pyre, From morning to ev'ning with sorro.w I trace The wild winds, the^ smoke, and the fire. The dogs in the kennel all howl, The wether takes flight with the ox, Appal'd on the wing is the fowl, The pigeon deserting her box. With a heart full of pain, in the night Mid hillocks and bogs I retire, Through lone, deadly vallies I steer by ite light, The wild storm, the smoke, and the fire* Though far the crash breaks on my ear, The stars glimmer dull in the sky, The shrieks of the women I hear, The fall of the kingdom is nigh. O heaven, when earth is no more, And all things in nature expire, May I thus, with safety, keep distant before The whirlwinds, the smoke, and the fire. IMPLORING TO BE RESIGNED AT DEATH. Let me die and not tremble at death* But smile at the close of my day* And then, at the flight of my breath, Like a bird of the morning in May* Go chanting away. Let me did without fear of the dead, No horrors my soul shall dismay, And with faith's pillow Under my head, With defiance to mortal decay, Go chanting away. Let me die like a son of the brave, And martial distinction display, Nor shrink from a thought of the grave, No, but with a smile from the clay* Go chanting away* Let me die glad, regardless of pain, No pang to this world to betray ; Arid the spirit cut loose from its chain, So loath in the flesh to delay, Go chanting away. Let me die, and my worst foe forgive, When death veils the last vital ray ) Since I have but a moment to live, Let me, when the last debt I pay, Go chanting away, fe THE PLEASURES GfF COLLEG# tlFE. With tears I leave these academic bowers, And cease to cull the scientific flowers ; With tears I hail the fair succeeding train, And take my exit with a breast of pain, The Fresh may trace these w6nd£f£ as they smile ; The stream of sciericC like the river Nile, Reflecting mental beauties as it flows, Which all tl^e charms of College life disclose j This sacred current as it runs refines, Whilst Byron sings and Shakspeajre's mirror shines,. First like a garden flower did I rise, When on the college bloom I cast my eyes; I strove to emulate each smiling gem, Resolved to wear the classic diadem » But when the Freshman^s garden breeze was gone'/ Around me spread a vast extensive lawn'; 'Twas there the muse of college life begun, Beneath the rays of erudition's stiri, 'Where study drew the mystic focus down, And lit the lamp of nature with renown ; There first I heard the epic thunders roll, And Homer's light'ning darted through my soul. Hard was the task to trace each devious line; Though Locke and Newton bade me soar and shine ; I sunk beneath the heat of Franklin's blazer And struck the notes of philosophic praise ; With timid thought I strove the test to stand. Reclining on a cultivated land, Which often spread beneath a college bower:. And thus invoked the intellectual shower \ E'en that fond sire on whose depilous crown, The smile of courts and states shall shed re? nown ; Now far above the noise of country strife, I frown upon the glooni of rustic life, Where no pure stream of bright distinction flows, No mark between the thistle and the rose f One's like a bird encaged and bare of food, Borne by the fowler from his native wood, Where sprightly oft he sprung from spray to spray, ^nd cheer'd the forest with his artless lay. 78 Or fluttered o'er the purling brook at will, Sung in the dale or soar'd above the hill. Such are the liberal charms of college life, Where pleasure flows without a breeze of strife; And such would be my pain if cast away, Without the blooms of study to display. Beware, ye college birds, again beware, And shun the fowler with his subtile snare; Nor fall as one from Eden, stript of all The life and beauty of your native hall; Nor from the garden of your honor go, Whence all the streams of fame and wisdom flow; Where brooding Milton's theme purls sweet along W7ith Pope upon the gales of epic song; Where you may trace a bland Demosthenes, Whose oratoric pen ne'er fails to please; And Plato, with immortal Cicero, And with the eloquence of Horace glow; There cull the dainties of a great Ainsworth, Who sets the feast of ancient language forth; Or glide with Ovid on his simple stream, And catch the heat from Virgil's rural beam; Through Addison you trace creation's fire, And all the rapid wheels of time admire ; Or pry with Paley's theologic rays, And hail the hand of wisdom as you gaze; Up Murray's pleasant hill you strive to climb, To gain a golden summit all sublime, And plod through conic sections all severe, Which to procure is pleasure true and dear. The students' pensive mind is often stung, Whilst blundering through the Greek and Latin tongue; Parsing in grammars which may suit the whole, And will the dialect of each control. Now let us take a retrospective view, And whilst we pause, observe a branch or two. Geography and Botany unfold Their famous charms like precious seeds of gold; Zoology doth all her groups descry, And with Astronomy we soar on high; But pen and ink and paper all would fail, To write one third of this capacious tale. Geography presents her flowery train, Describes the mountain and surveys the plain, Measures the sounding rivers as they grow, Unto the trackless deeps to which they flow: She measures well her agriculture's stores, Which meet her commerce on the golder* shore, Includes the different seasons of the year, And changes which pervade the atmosphere? Treats of the dread phenomena which rise In different shapes on earth, Or issue from the skies; She points in truth to Lapland's frozen climq? And nicely measures alt the steps of time; Unfolds the vast equator's burning line', Where all the stores of heat dissolve anc( shine; Describes the earth as utfperceived she rolls* Her well-poised axis placed upon the poles*.* Botany,whose charms her florists well display, Whose lavish odpurs swell the pomp of May? Whose purling wreaths the steady box adorn, And fill with fragrance all the breeze of morri. Through various means her plants are oft ap? plied, Improved by art, and well hy nature tried; Thro' her, the stores of herbage are unroll'd, All which compose the vegetable world; tjven the sensitives, which feel and shrink, From slightest touches, though they cannot think, Nor yet rejoice, void of the power to fear, 01 dr sense to smell, to see, to taste, or hear. Zoology, with her delightful strain, f)oth well the different animals explain; From multipedes to emmets in the dust. And all the groveling reptiles of disgust; She well descries the filthy beetle blind, "With insects high and low of every kind; She with her microscope surveys the mite, Whi.eh ne?er could be beheld by naked sight; Thence sne descends into the boundless deep, Where dolphins play and monsters slowly creep; pxplofes (he fotfmiug main from shore to shore, And hears With aive tfie dshing sea bull roarj Traces enormous whales exploding high Their floods of briny water to the sky; Desribes the quadrupeds of ever shape. The bear, the camel, elephant and ape, And artful monkey, which but lack to tatk7 And like the human' kind uprightly walk. Astronomy, with her aerial powers, Lifts iis above this dfeafy globe of Ours; Throughout the realms of ether's vast expanse, Her burning wings our towering minds ad- vance^ ^Measures her tropic well from line tp line. 8* And marks her rolling planets as they shine; Describes the magnitude of every star, And thence pursues her comets as they roll afar. But nature never yet was half explored, Though by philosopher and bard adored; Astronomer and naturalist expire, And languish that they could ascend no higher; Expositors of words in every tongue, Writers of prose and scribblers of song, Would fail with all their mathematic powers, And vainly study out their fleeting hours. Sir Walter Baleigh, Pen and Roberson, With Morse and Snowden, who are dead and gone, They all were, though mused their lives away, And left ten thousand wonders to display. And though the fiery chemists probe the mine. The subterraneous bodies to define; Though melting flames the force of matter try, Rocks mix'd with brass and gold to pieces fly; And those who follow the electric muse, Amidst the wilds of vast creation loose Themselves like pebbles in the swelling main, And strive for naught these wanders to ex- plain; 88 Galvin himself, the monarch of the whole, Would blush his empty parchments to unroll. These different branches to one ocean go, "Where all the streams of life together flow, Where perfect wisdom swells the tide of joy, A tide which must eternity employ; A boundless sea of love without a shore, Whose pleasure ebbs and flows forever more; Volume Divine ! O thou the sacred dew, Thy fadeless fields see elders passing through, Thy constant basis must support the whole, The cabinet and alcove of the soul; It matters not through what we may have pass'd, To thee for sure support we fly at last; Encyclopedias we may wander o'er, And study every scientific lore, Ancient and modern authors we may read, The soul must starve or on thy pastures feed. These bibliothic charms would surely fall, And life grow dim within this college wall, The wheels of study in the mind would tire, If not supported by thy constant fire; Greatest of all the precepts ever taught Maps and vocabularies dearly bought, Purns with his harp, Scott, Cambell, and their flowers, 84 Will shrink without the? everlasting showers; Theology, thou sweetest science yet, Beneath whose boughs the silent classics sitf And thus imbibe the sacred rays divine, Which make the mitred faculty to shine; O for a gleam of Buck, immortal muse, With elder Scott and Henry to peruse; These lines which did a secret bliss inspire, And set the heads, the hearts, the tongues, on fire. Such is the useful graduate indeed, Not merely at the bar in law to plead, . Nor a physician best to heal the flesh, But all the mystic power of soul and flesh; On such a senior let archangels smile? And all the students imitate his style. Who bears with joy the mission all divine, The beams of sanctitude, a Paul benign; Whose sacred call is to evangelise, A gospel prince, a legate of the skies, Whose bright diploma is a deed from heaven, The palm of love, the wreath of sins forgiven. THE GRADUATE LEAVING COLLEGE, What summons do I hear ? The morning peal, departures knell ; If My eyes let fall a friendly tear* And bid this place farewell. Attending servants come; The carriage wheels like thunders roar, To bear the pensive seniors home, Here to be seen no more. Pass one more transient night, The morning sweeps the college clean; The graduate takes his last long flight, No more in college seen; The bee, which courts the flower, Must with some pain itself employ,3 And then fly, at the day'd last hour,* Home to its hive with joy* TO THE KING OF MACEDONIA.' Phillip, thou ajt piprtal ! Thou may'st with pleasure hail the dawn,- And greet the morning's eye ; Remember, king, the night comes on, The fleeting day will soon be' gone, Not distant, loud proclaims the funeral tone, Phillip, thou hast to die. 86 With thee thy dame, the queen of birds, May spread her wing to fly; Or smile to trace the numerous herds, Thunders from the Lord of lords, I hear some peal surpassing human words, Philip, thou hast to die* Thou rrtayst thy mighty host survey And neighboring kings defy, Whilst round thy retinues flit gay, Beneath thy pomp's imperial ray, Make merry on the tide of joy to day, To-morrow thou shalt die. I heave to hear the day's last peal, A sorrow teeming sighj The morning's fluttering bird has flowri, The roses fade, so quickly blown,- The lofty king falls robeless from his throne, Philip was born to die. 'Twas thus the haughty king of France Strove to ascend on high; Lifting his adamantine lance, He bade his dauntless war-»horse pnince, Defied the World, and rode the car of chance, To rage, to fume and die. Thus vile, thus obstinately vain, . He pours his distant brag, 87 Regardless of his millions slain, Regales his pale surviving train, Was but wraped in his infernal chain, Dies on the ocean crag. This faithful lesson read to all Creation, far and nigh, It is the fate, from Adam's fall, The swain, the king, the low, and tall, The watchman of the grave must give the call, Mortal, thou hast to die. DIVISION OF AN ESTATE. It well bespeaks a mail beheaded, quite Divested of the laurel robe of life, "When every member struggles for its base, The head; the power of order now recedes, Unheeded efforts rise on every side, With dull emotion rolling through the brain Of apprehending slaves* The flocks and herds, In sad confusion, now run to and fro, And seem to ask, distressed, the reason why That they are thus prostrated. Howl, ye dogs! Ye cattle, low ! ye sheep, astonish'd, bleat ! Ye bristling swine, trudge squealing through the glades, m Void of an owner 10 impart your fooiH Sad hoVses, lift your heads and heigh atoudf And caper frantic from the dismal scene j Mow the last food upon your grass-clad lea^ And leave a solitary home behind, In hopeless widowhood no" longer gay ! The traveling sun of gain his journey erfds In unavailing pain J he sets with tears;' A king sequester' d Striking from his throne, Succeeded by a train of busy friends, Lffce stars which rise with smiles, to mark the flight Of awful Phoebus to another World f Stars after stars in fleet succession rise Into the wide empire of fortune clear, Regardless of trie donor of their lamps/ Li£e heirs forgetful of parental care, Without a grateful smile or filial tear^ Redound in rev'rerice to expiring age. But soon parental benediction flies Like vivrd meteors ; in a moment gone, As though they ne'er had been. But 0\ the state, The dark suspense hr whiph poor vassals stand, Each mind upon the spire of chance hangs' fluctuant ; 89 The day of separation is at hand ;' Imagination lifts her gloomy curtains, Like ev'ning's mantle at the flight of day, Thro' which the trembling pinnacle we spy, On which we soon must stand with hopeful smiles, Or apprehending frowns ; to tumble on The right or left forever. PRIDE IN HEAVEN. On heaven's ethereal plain, With hostile rage ambition first begun, When the arch rebel strove himself to reign And take Jehovah's throne. Swift to the fight the seraphim On floods of pride were seen to swim, And bold defy the power supreme^ And thus their God disown. High on a dome of state, From azure fielcls he cast his daring eye, Licentious trains his magazines await, At whose command they fly. The gloom excludes celestial charms, When all the angels rush to arms, Heaven shakes beneath the vast alarms, And earth begins to sigh. 90 Eternal mountains move, And seven-fold thunders rock the hills below. While starry throngs desert the worlds above, Beneath Jehovah's brow. O Lucifer, thou morning son, To glut thy pide what hast thou done ? Sing, 0 ye heavens, the plague is gone, And weep, thou earth, for wo. Creation felt the fall, And trembling nature heay'd a dismal groan; For that rebellion brought her into thrall, She must her fate bemoan ; See angels fall no more to rise, And feed the worm that never dies ; No ear of grace can hear their cries, And hoarse lamenting tone. Weak nature lay exposed, And felt the wound in pleasing hate conceal'd; And, void of fear, the secret charm disclosed Which ev'ry ill reveaj'd. The venom struck through ev'ry vein, And every creature felt the pain; But undefiled a lamb was slain, By which the wound was heal'd. 01 TO MISS TEMPE. Bless'd hope, -when Tempe takes her last long flight, And leaves her lass-lorn lover to complain, Like Luna mantling o'er the brow of night. Thy glowing wing dispels the gloom of pain. Yes, wondrous hope, when Tempe sails afar, Thy vital lamp remains to burn behind, While by-gone pleasure, like a setting star, Reflects her glory o'er the twilight mind? Thy glowing wing was never spread to tire, Expanded o'er the mansion of the brave, To fan and set the heaving breast on fire, That soars in triumph from affliction's wave. Then, Tempe, dart along the ocean drear, Hope yet forbids my cheerful soul to weep, But marks thy passage with affection's tear, And hails thee on the bosom of the deep. Farewell, since thou wilt leave thy native shore, I smile to think I am not left alone ; Auspicious hope shall yet my peace restore, When thou art from the beach forever gone. 92 MAN A TQBCH. Blown up with painful care, and hard to light, A glimmering torch, blown in a moment out; Suspended by a webb, an angler's bait. Floating at stake along the stream of chance, Snatch'd from its hook by the fish of poyerty. A silent cavern is his last abode ; T'he king's repository, veil'd with gloom, The umbrage of a thousand oziers ; bowed, The couch of hallowed bones, the slave's asy- lum, The brave's retreat, and end of ev'ry care. CONTENTS. .ife of the Author, 3 introduction, 21 The Musical Chamber, 23 A Dirge, 25 Death of a favorite Chamber Maid, 26 The fearful Traveller in the haunted Castle, 27 To Catharine, 29 The Swan — Vain Pleasures, SO The powers of Love, 31 To a departing Favorite, 32 The Traveller, 33 Eecent appearance of a Lady, 35 Meditation on a cold, dark and rainy night, 33 On an old deluded Suitor, 37 The Woodman and Money Hunter, 39 The eye of Love, 40 The setting Sun, 41 The rising Sun, 42 Memory, 43 Prosperity, 44 Death of Gen. Jackson, 45 Mr. Clay's reception at Kaleigh, 46 Clay's Defeat, 49 The happy Bird's nest, 51 The fate of an innocent Dog, 52 The Tippler and hie Bottle. 55 04 Rosabella — Purity of heart, 56 False Weight, 58 Departing Summer, 59 Reflections from the flash of a Meteor, 60 True Friendship, 61 On the Conversion of a Sister, 63 A Billet Doux, 64 Troubled with the Itch, 65 Early Affection, 67 The Creditor to his proud Debtor, 68 Regret for the Departure of Friends, 69 Farewell to Frances, 71 The Retreat from Moscpw, 73 Imploring to be resigned at Death, 75 On the Pleasures of a College Life, 76 THe graduate leaving College, 85 Division of an Estate, 87 Pride in Heaven, 89 To Miss Tempe, 91 Man a Torch,1 ' 92 SUBSCRIBERS' NAMES. Thos. M. Arrington, A. Alston, G. W. Brookes, Geo. T. Baskerville, William K. Blake, John Wi By nu m, Ridley Brown, C. B. Brookes, T. B. Bailey, James P. Bryan, Joseph Benjamin, V. C. Barringer, J. C. Coleman,' R. Cow per, J. W. Cameron, W. F. Carter, Alexr. J. Cansler, John Y. Campbell, D. L. Clinch, D. Clanton, Alexr. O. Daniel, William J. Duke, J. N. Daniel, William A. Daniel, H. M. Dusenbery, "\Viljiam H. Davie, T. A. Donoho, Thomas W. Dewey, William A. Faison, Solomon J. Faison, L. CJ. Farrell, James S. Green, Wijliam M. Green, James pallier, jr. Augustus Graves, James W. Hicks, Wm. M. Howerton, E. A. Roscoe Hooker, E. W. Hall, Edward H. Hicks, H. 0. W. Hooker, Thomas C. Hall, G. O. Hines, ^ames J. Herring, E. Burke Haywood, R. C. T. S. Hilliard, William H. Jones, D. §. Johnston, James M. Johnson, James J. Iredell, John J. Kindred, Martin A. Lyon, 96 Charles E. Lowther, Lionel L. Levy, J. S. Lncas, W. B. Meares, O. P. Meares, J. D. Mysick, Wm. Henry Manly, John Mallett, Edward Mallett, John Murphy, John L. Malone, John A. Malone, James L. Moseley, C. M'Eachin, E. H. Norcom, Thos. C. Pinckard, John Pool, Thomas J Person, L. H. Rogers, Alexander Ramsey, James S. Ruffin, Alfred M. Scales, W. M. Smith, Edward M. Scott, Thos. E. Skinner, David L. Swain, John V. Sherard, John K. Strange, T. W. Steele, James G. Scott, Charles Shober, William S. Trigg, R. E. G. Tucker, R. Taleavero, D. T. Tayloe, Edward Thorne, Robert H. Tate, John Wilson, N. L. Walker, H. G. Williams, Geo. W. Whitfield, Thomas White, jr. Thomas C. William* L. G. Whyte, John H. Watson, Thomas Webb, James R, Ward. ■ ♦ • ■ * -Mb PDF version https://1drv.ms/b/c/ea9004809c2729bb/EdgukNWJ3ZBPgtD9RfSXET8Bjgld-Uz0zJtLg4W6Ws-PVg?e=j4aKRe

ok, just place a book you think needs to be in the k-12 book list for black kids and I will add it below K - 12 book list The Screwing of the Average Man (1974) by David Hapgood from @umbrarchist ?

I was unable to find the stageplay book. I imagine someone has it somewhere. But if I ever get it I will share it in this work. This isn't the first african american stageplay, my book of old stageplays have many that are older and that were popular. But Shuffle Along did have a sensation especially among whites that is underrated. Well, enjoy the images. Shuffle Along (1921) Posted onMarch 16, 2008by contributed by: Anthony Duane Hill Shuffle Along, a musical comedy by composer Eubie Blake and lyricist Noble Sissle which featured an all-black cast, was the most significant achievement in black theatre of its time. Shuffle Along opened at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., in late March, 1921 for two weeks. It was later performed at the Sixty-third Street Theatre in New York City, New York in May, 1921. Promoters and theatre managers were skeptical at first as to whether white audiences would accept a colored musical because no black show had been successful on Broadway in over 12 years. The musical mélange became an instant hit because of the energetic, vivacious, torso-twisting dancers that gave birth to the speed shows that were to characterize black productions thereafter. It also won the distinction of becoming an actor’s show during its more than its 200 performances. It proved that white audiences would pay to see black musical comedies on Broadway. Among the cast were Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Paul Floyd, Lottie Gee, Gertrude Saunders, Roger Matthews, Mattie Wilkes, Lawrence Deas, and Adelaide Hall. The plot centers on the characters Sam and Steve who run for mayor in Jimtown, USA. If either one wins, he will appoint the other his chief of police. Sam wins with the help of a crooked campaign manager. Sam keeps his promise to appoint Steve as chief of police, but they begin to disagree on petty matters. They resolve their differences in a rousing, humorous 20-minute fight scene. As they fight, their opponent for the mayoral position, Harry Walton, vows to end their corrupt regime, underscored in the song “I’m Just Wild about Harry.” Harry wins the next election as well as the girl and runs Sam and Steve out of town. Recording companies marketed all of the 18 song from the show including “Love Will Find a Way” and “I’m Just Wild about Harry” (which became President Harry S. Truman’s campaign slogan in 1948) “Gypsy Blues,” “I’m Cravin’ for That Kind of Love,” and “Shuffle Along.” The landmark production renewed the public’s interest in black theatricals and marked a decided turning point in the history of black entertainment in the United States. It introduced to the Broadway stage a black chorus of partially garbed “girls” in the style of the white “Follies.” Because of the show’s popularity, the entertainment profession witnessed the return of black musical comedies to Broadway on a regular basis. url https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/shuffle-along-1921/ The 1921 sheet-music cover for “Love Will Find a Way.” Listen to a version of the song from the 1952 revival here. CreditMusic Division, The New York Public Library ‘Shuffle Along’ and the Lost History of Black Performance in America By John Jeremiah Sullivan March 24, 2016 Ninety-­five years ago in New York, a journalist named Lester Walton bought a ticket to see a much-­buzzed-­about new show, a “musical novelty” that had opened about a week before at the Sixty-­Third Street Theater. Or the Sixty-­Third Street Music Hall, as it was more properly called. A kind of multipurpose performance space, not very big, not very nice, “sandwiched in between garages,” Walton wrote, and “little known to the average Broadway theatergoer.” You could rent the place for the night. It had philosophical lectures, amateur violin recitals and religious meetings, and during the day it showed silent movies: “ ‘Pudd’n Head Wilson,’ with Theodore Roberts, tomorrow.” But on this evening — and for many months to come, as it turned out — the stage belonged to an all-black show called “Shuffle Along,” a comedy with lots of singing and dancing. A problem: The music hall had no orchestra pit, and this show needed an orchestra. It needed space for the band, which happened to include a 25-year-old musician known as Bill Still, later to become the famous composer William Grant Still, but in 1921 a mostly unheard-­of young man from Arkansas, switching among the six or seven instruments he taught himself to play. The production was forced to rip out seats in the front three rows to make room. These were people used to improvising. Among themselves, they referred to the show as “Scuffle Along.” Les Walton, the journalist in the audience that night, was also a theater man. In St. Louis, a city he left behind 15 years before — and where he got his start as America’s first black reporter for a local daily, writing about golf — he had somehow come to know and collaborate with the legendary Ernest Hogan, a.k.a. the Unbleached American, an early black minstrel and vaudeville comedian who (by some historians’ reckoning) was the first African-­American performer to play before a white audience on Broadway. Walton and Hogan wrote songs together, and it was Hogan who first brought Walton to New York, as a kind of business manager. Hogan was not so much unbleached as the opposite of bleached. He was a black entertainer who painted his face — with burned cork or greasepaint (or in emergencies, lampblack, or in real emergencies, anything black mixed with oil) — to make it appear darker. Or at least to make it appear different. In one picture of Hogan, from the 1890s, he looks more like a sock puppet, wearing a clownish pointed cap. The blacks-­in-­blackface tradition, which lasted more than a century in this country, strikes most people, on first hearing of its existence, as deeply bizarre, and it was. But it emerged from a single crude reality: African-­American people were not allowed to perform onstage for much of the 19th century. They could not, that is, appear as themselves. The sight wasn’t tolerated by white audiences. There were anomalous instances, but as a rule, it didn’t happen. In front of the cabin, in the nursery, in a tavern, yes, white people might enjoy hearing them sing and seeing them dance, but the stage had power in it, and someone who appeared there couldn’t help partaking of that power, if only ever so slightly, momentarily. Part of it was the physical elevation. To be sitting below a black man or woman, looking up — that made many whites uncomfortable. But what those audiences would allow, would sit for — not easily at first, not without controversy and disdain, but gradually, and soon overwhelmingly — was the appearance of white men who had painted their faces to look black. That was an old custom of the stage, going back at least to “Othello.” They could live with that. And this created a space, a crack in the wall, through which blacks could enter, because blacks, too, could paint their faces. Blacks, too, could exist in this space that was neither-­nor. They could hide their blackness behind a darker blackness, a false one, a safe one. They wouldn’t be claiming power. By mocking themselves, their own race, they were giving it up. Except, never completely. There lay the charge. It was allowed, for actual black people to perform this way, starting around the 1840s — in a very few cases at first, and then increasingly — and there developed the genre, as it were, of blacks-­in-­blackface. A strange story, but this is a strange country. Ernest Hogan died not too long after bringing Les Walton east to New York, but Walton maintained his interest in the theater and songwriting and had managed a theater in Harlem, the Lafayette. A progressive theater — it was the first major venue in New York to desegregate its audiences, i.e., to let blacks come down from the balcony and sit in the orchestra seats — and Walton worked hard to put serious black theater on the stage. At the same time, he had been making a name for himself as one of the first black arts critics in America, writing for The New York Age, a black newspaper. (His life would get only more interesting — over a decade later, Franklin D. Roosevelt named him an American minister to Liberia.) That evening, he went to see “Shuffle Along” on assignment. It was late May. That week, the Tulsa race riots had erupted more than a thousand miles away. A white mob torched one of the most prosperous black neighborhoods in America. Walton had already seen the show, with more or less the same cast. He had caught it in Philadelphia a month or so before, near the end of a long road tour meant to shake out the performers’ nerves and generally get the production battle-­hardened for New York. And he loved it — he saw it several times in the end. Which is surprising, maybe, given his interest in serious black theater and in ennobling the black community (in 1913, he campaigned to have the “n” in the word “Negro” capitalized as a matter of journalistic style), because “Shuffle” wasn’t exactly forward-­thinking on race. It broke boundaries, no doubt, but mainly through its success, and by having great pop tunes. Otherwise, it was a blacks-­in-­blackface production. Walton even mentions that there were “more than the usual number of comedians under cork in one show.” There was, however, an area in which the show genuinely pushed things forward: romance. In “Shuffle Along,” two black people fell in love onstage, and Walton wanted to see how a white audience would handle this. He came to the music hall expressly for that reason, he told us. The theater he had gone to in Philadelphia, the Dunbar, was a black place. Now, Walton wrote, he was “curious to learn if ‘Shuffle Along’ would find its way into the category of what is known, in the language of the performer, as a ‘white folks’ show.’ ” Could the production, in other words, manage to be both black enough to have “it” and at the same time white enough to make loads of money? Specifically, Walton wanted “to observe how the white people in the audience took to Roger Matthews, the tenor, and Lottie Gee, the prima donna, singing ‘Love Will Find a Way.’ ” What he expected to see was not rage or revolt but something more ambiguous, an occasional discomfort passing through the room, and perhaps at certain moments a holding-­back too, on the part of the cast. “White audiences, for some reason,” Walton wrote, “do not want colored people to indulge in too much lovemaking. They will applaud if a colored man serenades his girl at the window, but if, while telling of his great love in song he becomes somewhat demonstrative and emulates a Romeo — then exceptions are taken.” Black sexuality was dangerous. Walton was among the first critics of “Shuffle Along,” our first eyes on its original production. His response to the show was positive — “Speaking as a colored American,” he wrote, “I think ‘Shuffle Along’ should continue to shuffle along at the Sixty-­Third Street Theater for a Long Time.” And when he went back in October, he celebrated that the show was now “in its sixth month” at the music hall, assuring readers that the fact would be “pregnant with historical significance” for anyone “conversant with the ups and downs of colored theatricals” and all “the abortive, yet well-­intended efforts of the past.” But Walton’s response was complicated too, or shadowed by something. Facets of the show must have made him uneasy, just as the black-­on-­black romance had made some of the whites in the crowd uneasy. “Shuffle” seemed at times to have one foot stuck in the mire of a murkier racial past, even as it strode boldly forward with the other. Dancers in ‘‘Shuffle Along’’ performing ‘‘Bandanna Days.’’ Josephine Baker is sixth from the right.Credit...Eubie Blake Photograph Collection/Maryland Historical Society Savion Glover slouches a little. It’s not the slouch of an old man, not stiff — or the diffident slouch of a young one, for that matter — it’s somehow part of his movement, closer maybe to how boxers crouch, but relaxed. It suggests a body that’s resting slightly because it’s about to burst into motion, which he kept doing throughout the morning (this was late last summer). If the slouch was noticeable, it could have reflected the fact that Glover, the genius child at 42, had been spending hundreds of hours bent forward and pacing around like this, staring down at other people’s feet. For the last few months, he’d worked pretty much exclusively as a choreographer and would stay in that role for months to come as he conceived and staged a wildly ambitious revival of “Shuffle Along,” one of the most significant musicals of the 20th century. He would not appear onstage for this show. Except maybe, it was rumored, for a sort of cameo. There was one dance he liked so much he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay away from it entirely. We were in a rehearsal space at the New 42nd Street Studios in Manhattan. A long open room with extremely high ceilings (productions have to be able to wheel in huge Broadway props sometimes). Giant windows at the front looked out onto 42nd Street, but no one looked out of them. It was dark and gray and pounding rain that day, as hard as I had ever seen it rain in New York. The noise of it made a strange effect when the dancers were actually dancing, because the sound of all their tap shoes was also loud, body-­shaking, so the two different thunders, theirs and the storm’s, were mixing and fading, creating illusions, and when the tap would stop abruptly, the rain outside for a second seemed like an echo or a rumbling of it. This happened most often when Glover would spot a mistake or something in his own choreography that he didn’t like and clap his hands to make everything quiet. In front of him in three rows, 15 or so of the most gifted young singer-­dancers in the country would come to an abrupt stop. Their eyes watching him were hard to look away from. Awe was there, but equally something that couldn’t afford to be awed, that was having to pay too close attention and was too professional to indulge it, and the two registers chased each other across their faces. To sit five or six feet away made a person want to reel back decades of career choices and become the world’s most passionate talentless tap dancer. Glover would slide forward into the crowd of dancers toward the person or group of people whose steps he wanted to change. Big loose dreads, tight V-neck T-shirt, tap shoes, sweats. He would stop and flash out some blazing routine. “Like that, like that,” talking while he danced. “Not da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-DA. It’s da-da-da-DA-da-da-da-DA-da-da.” The changes often seemed less rhythmical than mathematical. At tap’s higher levels, a dancer can hit an ungodly number of beats per second, so the variations of pattern that are potential in just two or three seconds’ span can quickly jump beyond a normal person’s ability to follow. “We have seven, so you’re actually coming in on the two.” The dancers picked up Glover’s minuscule tinkering within two to four tries. Some could do it right off. In particular, one young woman, a 22-year-old from Texas named Karissa Royster, had clearly been recognized by the group as having a Rain Woman knack for memorizing Glover’s choreography. She would watch it, do it, then sort of drift around the room repeating it. Everybody’s hands floated at their sides. On his side on the floor with his elbow cocked and his palm supporting his head lay George C. Wolfe, whose idea this production was. Wolfe is a big old deal in the theatrical world — winner of two Tonys, for directing “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” as well as “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk,” which revolved around Savion Glover’s talents, telling the saga of African-­American history by tracing the evolution of tap. It was an implausible-­sounding idea that succeeded wildly. The show kicked off a renaissance of interest in a form that Glover himself describes as “almost lost,” birthing a generation of what he called, with no modesty but no inaccuracy either, “Noise/Funk babies.” The show had paid a deep and very explicit homage to the black American cultural past and to Glover’s own teachers in the tap field, both the mentors he’d known in life, like Gregory Hines, and the ancestors, the inventors and innovators, people like Bill (Bojangles) Robinson or Ulysses (Slow Kid) Thompson, a spellbinding dancer who performed in the original “Shuffle.” He got his nickname from his ability to perform wild dance moves in completely credible-­looking slow motion, which audiences had just become familiar with through the movies. Also here, in the corner opposite where I sat, stood Daryl Waters, who worked on the music for both “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “Noise/Funk.” And starring in this show — although she wasn’t there that day, except as an energy — was Audra McDonald, the powerhouse actress-­singer and Winner of Six Tony Awards, a phrase that has begun to trail her name like a title. Billy Porter and Brian Stokes Mitchell were here — both Tony winners as well. It was a supergroup of black Broadway and designed to be such. At a moment when the conversation about blacks and how they’re represented in American entertainment is as fraught as it has been since “The Birth of a Nation,” this bunch had undertaken to put one of the sacred relics of black theater back in front of the public. There was an inescapable sense that they’d be letting down more than themselves if they failed. An unfair pressure to put on anybody. Also an exciting one, for the people involved. I kept thinking of one of those movies where they’re trying to lift something out of the desert, some buried archaeological monument, and everyone’s wondering if the ropes will hold. Maybe it will fall and shatter. “Shuffle Along” is often called the first successful all-black musical. It wasn’t that — there was a prehistory, 20 or so years earlier — but in between the two pulses had come the Great Migration and the Great War. The list of names alone, of those whose careers “Shuffle” hatched in the original show and later productions, is enough to establish its influence on American theater and song as they played out over the rest of the 20th century: Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Nat King Cole, Florence Mills (one of the greatest who ever lived, said those who heard her sing). Langston Hughes said more than once that “Shuffle Along” was the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. In order to deal with the crush of patrons, the city had to alter the traffic pattern around the theater, turning a stretch of 63rd into a one-way street. It was a supernova. An argument could be made (has been made, by the scholar David S. Thompson in his unpublished “Shuffle Along in Theatrical Context”) that the reason chorus girls, or the stereotypical chorus girls in your mind, dance jazz is “Shuffle Along.” As Wolfe told me, “It introduced syncopation into the American musical,” meaning syncopation but also meaning blackness. Not blackface but black faces. Well, blackface too. Florence Mills in various costumes.Credit...White Studio/Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library The original “Shuffle” run lasted something like 500 nights, a record, they said, and it toured in different forms for years. There were spinoffs. It was announced that the pioneering blues singer Mamie Smith would appear in a show called “Struttin’ Along.” Nineteen hundred twenty-­one: the year of “Shuffle Along” and the year Mamie’s “Crazy Blues” became the first true black pop success. Before that, prehistory. After that, everything. The most famous song from “Shuffle,” “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” is one everybody can still hum. We may not know why we know it, how we heard it (from an old musical? a frog in a cartoon?), but it percolates somehow. Harry S. Truman used it as the theme song for his presidential campaign in 1948. A song written by African-­Americans used as a presidential campaign theme — it would take until Barack Obama’s candidacy for that to happen again. (Bob Dole used “Soul Man,” but that shouldn’t be allowed to count somehow.) It’s questionable whether Truman even knew who wrote it. By 1948, the song’s origins had been scrubbed. Although “I’m Just Wild About Harry” was originally a love song, the Harry character in “Shuffle Along” is also running for office. He wants to be “Mayor of Jimtown.” But even to write those two sentences, I’ve had to make it sound as though the show had more of a story than it did. The plot of the first “Shuffle Along” was mainly to allow an excuse for the singing and dancing. That was one of the first things Wolfe mentioned when I asked about “creative challenges” he encountered in dealing with the source text. It was the day after the rehearsal, and we were at the Music Box Theater on 45th Street, where the new production will be staged. Irving Berlin made that theater famous. The interior was beautifully baroque-­looking and on the intimate side size-wise. Music-­boxy. Wolfe stood on the stage and admired the empty seats. Lots of them, and very empty. “Look at those boxes,” he gasped. The boxes were elegant. Creative challenges? “The book,” he said, meaning the script, the nonmusical part of the show. “Terrible book, bad book. Everybody knows it’s terrible.” Because it was racist? “Because it was bad.” (And, it seems to me, because it was racist, or racially offensive;a typical line: “You ain’t got no business being no mayor and you knows you ain’t, what you talking about being mayors.”) What was a black director doing even messing with that in 2015? Wolfe said he cared less about the Major Historical Significance of the 1921 show and more about an attitude that he saw as having been present at the beginning of the “Shuffle” story, when the team that put the production together was touring the country, or first getting ready to stage the show in Manhattan. There was a “purity” to that scene, he said, using the last word I ever thought I’d hear about the origins of “Shuffle Along.” In what sense did he mean? “In the sense that they didn’t have time to have a full awareness of what they were doing.” Full awareness, as in, the politics of it? “Yes,” he said. “They weren’t savvy that way. They were too busy being creative.” He’d said “savvy” but had also meant “self-­conscious.” “They lived,” he said, “inside that pure love of wanting to do the thing you do, the part of me that gets into show business.” But weren’t they also having to deal with all sorts of racism, even inside the world of the theater, especially inside it sometimes? “Yes,” he said, “but they were trying to figure out how to make America work for them. It was, How do I keep pushing against this thing in order to be what I need to be?” He asked it with a real urgency that made his chin quiver. It was clearly not an abstract question for a gay black man from Frankfort, Ky., who had conquered Broadway. Nor an arbitrary one in the context of Wolfe’s career. In approaching “Angels in America” 23 years ago, he first keyed into the notion of “performance of self” that runs through the play. It was, he said, “something I understand from having been raised a Negro.” The tradition of blacks-­in-­blackface was sparked, according to one account, by the circus impresario P.T. Barnum one day in the early 1840s. He had a white kid in one of his shows, a boy by the name of Diamond, who specialized in what was called Juba or Juber dancing. Also “patting Juba.” That meant African dancing, plantation dancing. Expressive, complex, physically taxing. In Juba, you drum on your body, slapping your chest and knees and the soles of your feet. Certain familiar Celtic elements had been mixed into it over the decades and centuries, most obviously the percussive effect of hard-­soled shoes on a wooden floor, which could work as a drum during the dance (think clogging). It was with Juba as inspiration that blacks and Irish-­Americans created what we call tap. Or rather, that’s the kind of simplistic explanation that an actual dance scholar would quibble with every word of, but it’s trueish. So, Barnum had this Irish kid, John Diamond, doing Juba dancing in his shows. And Diamond would dance in blackface. Patting Juba was seen as a black thing, even if there were Irish and Scottish tinges, so Diamond performed it that way. But one day, around 1841, Barnum found out that Diamond had (supposedly) been dishonest in some financial dealing. Diamond, knowing that Barnum’s wrath was coming, ran off. And now Barnum was without his Juba dancer. Not just any Juba dancer, but the second-­best in the world. A newspaper’s depiction of Juba performing at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1848.Credit...Illustrated London News Yes — there was one better. A boy even younger than Diamond. They called him Juba, that’s how good he was. Outside the circus tent, in a tavern or a theater, he and Diamond would compete against each other in challenge matches. They had teams of supporters. People gambled. It seems Juba hardly ever lost. “He defies all competition on ‘the light fantastic,’ ” they wrote in Boston. One of the first times the word “tap,” as a technical term of dance, showed its head was in an advertisement for a match, where we are told a judge will be present to “count the taps.” The only problem with young Juba, from P.T. Barnum’s point of view, was that he was black. The spectators wouldn’t accept it, or the laws and civic codes wouldn’t permit it, or Barnum himself just couldn’t deal with it. But here is where his cynical genius comes in. He decides to paint Juba black. Same burned cork, same curly black wig. He looked just like Diamond. But people went even more nuts for Juba. He was better. We don’t know the real name of Juba, the first great American tap dancer, and may never. The encyclopedias say William Henry Lane, but the lone source for that is a white theatrical agent turned journalist turned amateur historian named Thomas Allston Brown, who was not the type to use footnotes, and who anyway did not enter the entertainment world until years after the supposed Lane was dead. Brown’s other two sentences on Lane are anti-­factual. They include the statement that the dancer “married too late” to a white woman, which is a strange thing to say about a man who by most accounts was dead before he reached 30. They also include the claim that in 1852, Lane’s skeleton was placed on display at a music hall in Sheffield, England, but in truth he was still dancing in London in 1852, before he vanished as thoroughly as it is possible to vanish. There is slight reason to suspect that his real name may have been Redmond, though whether that was a first or last name, we cannot say. In any case, the question is academic. He was known as Juba. Prince Juba, Master Juba, Little Juba and Juba the King of All Dancers. The encyclopedias say he was born in Providence, R.I., around 1825, but an English journalist who interviewed him for The Manchester Times in 1848 — the only journalist who ever spoke to him and wrote about him, as far as can be determined — stated clearly that he was born in New York in 1830, a date that corresponds better with later reports of his age. The Providence theory may have sprung up because the band of minstrel musicians with whom he had toured earlier in his career, the Georgia Champions, formed in that city. When Juba’s great success in England was noted in a Providence paper in 1848, the article made no mention of his having been from there, only that he “formerly gave exhibitions of his skill in this city, at the ninepenny entertainments.” But he had done that in every city on the East Coast. Juba came up performing in the interracial underworld “halls” in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. That’s probably where Barnum discovered him. He played banjo and tambourine too, but those who saw him said he was the greatest dancer they’d ever witnessed, like Charles Dickens, who in his “American Notes” remembered having watched Juba dance in New York City. Dickens had written under the pen name Boz, so when Juba went to London in 1848, under the sponsorship of a white blackface minstrel named Gilbert Ward Pelham (the leader at that time of the Ethiopian Serenaders, with whom Juba also toured), the young dancer was billed as Boz’s Juba. The coverage he received from the English press from 1848 to 1852 is almost exhausting to follow, it grew to be so extensive, mostly ecstatic in its praise. All we know about him is that he was a brilliant dancer — an artist, not just an athlete — and that he was the first black entertainer to perform before large crowds of whites in a context that transcended the informal. He was onstage. The explosiveness of his new “tap” style allowed him to cross over. “Not to be irreverent about it,” said the early minstrel S.S. Sanford in 1874, but “he was the ‘John the Baptist,’ preceding by a few years the Jubilee Singers of Tennessee, who are now before the public with the full chorus of songs.” In the only semi-­naturalistic image we have of Juba performing, his face is coal black. In the one (cartoonish) picture of the Ethiopian Serenaders that includes him, he is indistinguishable from the others, from the white men. They are all painted the same. Only a caption tells us which is him. He’s holding a tambourine and looks about to jump up and start dancing. When the rehearsal was over, I spent an hour with Glover in a little side room off the rehearsal space. He was on his lunch break. His meal, which he devoured, was from a Caribbean place. Energy food — goat meat, mac and cheese, yams. He had at least four more hours of pacing and dancing to do after this. He was going to burn it all into nothing. A cakewalk in 1903. CreditAmerican Mutoscope & Biograph Company/Library of Congress He had a laptop out and was showing me clips he had watched for inspiration after being asked to choreograph the show: the Nicholas Brothers skipping across tabletops in “Stormy Weather” (the sequence that Fred Astaire is said to have called the greatest dance number ever filmed, a superlative that, when you watch the scene, seems like an obvious thing to say). Then some eerie old footage of a “cakewalk,” from an early black vaudeville performance, one of the few that were ever filmed. The women in the clip wore high-­collared Victorian dresses, the men black tailcoats. The cakewalk was a dance, created by slaves in imitation (some accounts say in mockery) of the white minuet. In one common iteration, the dancers would form two lines, one of men, one of women, then the couple at the end would link arms and promenade down between the rows of clapping hands. Each couple was expected to do something distinctive. Some would dance; others would simply present themselves. It was not unlike vogueing. Nor “Soul Train.” Also, while we’re defining things: vaudeville. That’s the world of “variety” shows, mixed shows made up of several brief acts, that dominated the American entertainment world during roughly the half-­century that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, from, say, 1880 to 1930. The format grew out of minstrel shows and medicine shows. A white vaudeville lineup would often feature one black act, called, counter­intuitively, a “white act.” Lester Walton had the same dynamic in mind when he wondered if “Shuffle Along” could make it as a “white folks’ show.” Glover asked if I’d seen the recently identified Bert Williams footage, from 1913. Williams — there was a name to conjure while discussing the history of blacks-­in-­blackface shows. It was easy to articulate his relationship to the tradition: He was the pinnacle of it. Williams made art from behind the blackface mask. At the same time, he was haunted and wounded by having to wear it. W. C. Fields claimed to sense “a deep undercurrent of pathos” in Williams. His masterpiece was the song “Nobody,” a nihilistic ditty one of his characters sang to himself when the penny-­tossers walked away, a sort of song-­monologue, as weird and dark, you might sense, when Williams introduced it in 1906 as it sounds today. There could have been no Sam Beckett without Bert Williams. His record of the song sold more than a hundred thousand copies, making him the first black recording artist ever to do so. The film reels were retrieved from the MoMA archives in 2004. George Wolfe had taken the cast on a field trip to view them. They represent the oldest surviving fragments of a black feature film, part of a very early and almost completely forgotten African-­American filmmaking scene that sprang up before World War I but left no physical traces, mainly because of the extreme fragility (and inflammability) of the old film stock. This footage was more than rare — it was a peek through a keyhole many had assumed was forever blocked. It showed another cakewalk, this time from an outdoor celebration, a “field day.” Williams himself makes up half of one couple. His beautiful partner for the walk laughs delightedly at him. His shoes flap, he walks oafishly on his heels. His smile is inwardly pleased, sublime. Williams was Bahamian-­born, a strikingly handsome man when he wasn’t in cork. He grew up in Florida and California. In San Francisco, in his late teens, he fell into the medicine-show world. Around 1893, he joined a troupe called the Mastodon Minstrels, and it was while performing with them that he came to know a fellow cast member named George Walker, a young man from Kansas who was to become his closest friend and creative partner for nearly 15 years. Williams and Walker — the black theatrical world at the start of the 20th century is unimaginable without them, and so is “Shuffle Along.” When Williams and Walker started out in the 1890s, they were billed as “two real coons” who did “buck dancing.” But as the decade progressed, their ideas found some range, and they started producing musical comedies. In 1900, they did “Sons of Ham,” a sort of variety-­farce, full of “oddities hard to describe.” It boasted a “carload of special scenery and electrical effects,” as well as “a chorus of handsome colored girls, 30 in number.” Besides that, it featured “a company of picked talent,” among whom was one Aida Overton. Walker fell in love with her and married her, and she became Aida Overton Walker, the greatest black actress in America before the First World War. Her “Salome” dance took over New York for about a year, around 1912. In the new “Shuffle Along,” Wolfe has Audra McDonald’s character, Lottie Gee, reminisce at one point over having shared the stage with Aida Overton Walker and a piece of singing advice she received from this mythic woman. Some of the Williams and Walker shows were enormously popular. In fact, most of the claims that are made for “Shuffle Along” — that it was the first black Broadway show, or the first successful one — are really true of earlier Williams and Walker productions. Their 1907-9 show “Bandanna Land” played for capacity houses on tour and at the Majestic Theater at Columbus Circle, a much more legitimate “Broadway” house than the Sixty-­Third Street Music Hall could ever aspire to be, and those audiences included, according to a much younger Lester Walton, “hundreds of white theatergoers.” Bert Williams and George Walker. Their 1903 production of ‘‘In Dahomey’’ was the first full-length black musical to open on a main Broadway stage. CreditSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library George Walker, Bert Williams and Aida Overton Walker in “Bandanna Land” in 1908. CreditSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Aida Overton Walker, George Walker’s wife, whose ‘‘Salome’’ dance was a hit in 1912. CreditSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Williams and Walker were so successful that they changed the profile of black entertainment in America, vastly for the better, but also in ways that pushed up against boundaries. A forgotten incident from their “Policy Players” tour of 1899-1900 makes clear how real the tensions were. The show was booked to run at the Grand Opera House in Washington, but according to a newspaper report, the manager of the house had objected to Williams and Walker’s having an “orchestra leader who was a colored man.” The musicians, it was felt, wouldn’t like to see “a black director.” The New York Morning Telegraph of Nov. 18, 1899, ran a startling headline, “WILLIAMS AND WALKER, SENEGAMBIAN COMEDIANS, CAUSE TROUBLE,” on top of its report: Not so long ago they were content to fill a place upon the vaudeville stage at rapidly increasing compensation. But since then they have been advanced to a position at the head of their own company, and they are now beginning to tell managers of theaters how they want things conducted during their various engagements. . . . [One] kick that arose was upon the question whether colored people should be admitted to all parts of the house, or should be restricted to the balcony and gallery. The manager of the theater took a positive stand this time, and said he would close his doors rather than violate the rule against letting Negroes occupy the orchestra chairs. When Williams and Walker found they were really “up against it” they receded from their position, and consented to go on. . . . The report concludes menacingly: “These young men are likely to wake up with a start some morning.” Williams often remarked that although he was proud of having made people laugh for many years, he wanted to show that he could make them cry. But his and Walker’s ambitions for their material grew during that first decade of the century. When their “In Dahomey” debuted in 1903, they advised audiences to read a book about Ethiopia before going to see it, so they’d understand what was happening. Critics began to complain that they were no longer black enough. No longer blackface enough. In trying to be intellectual, the comedians had left behind what made them fun. This reaction elicited from Walker a remarkable, slashing reply. He told The Toledo Bee (this is in Camille Forbes’s excellent “Introducing Bert Williams”): “There is no reason why we should be forced to do these old-time nigger acts. It’s all rot, this slap-­stick-­bandanna handkerchief-­bladder in the face act, with which Negro acting is associated. It ought to die out, and we are trying hard to kill it.” Walker said that 110 years ago. The cast of “In Dahomey” in 1904.Credit...The archives of Robert Kimball It’s only with that “slap-­stick-­bandanna handkerchief-­bladder” ringing in our ears that we can understand what Williams and Walker were up to with “Bandanna Land.” One of its songs became a hit, the unbelievably cloying “Bon Bon Buddy (The Chocolate Drop)” (Mamie Smith covered it when she was still a struggling vaudevillian; on YouTube you can hear a white singer named Billy Murray doing it a year after it came out, in 1908). By singing about the old mammy days, when don’t you know, nobody minded a bit being called “chocolate drop,” Williams and Walker were laughing back at the white audiences who were laughing at them — with an irony that said out the side of its mouth, Are they actually buying this? — and at the same time they were laughing with the black audiences who came to see and hear them. And at the same time they weren’t laughing at all. It was a delicate balance, but they maintained it for a decade. A white critic wrote about “Shuffle Along” around the same time Lester Walton did — the reviews were just days apart. The man’s name was James Whittaker. He lived in New York and was working as a music critic for The Daily News and then The Daily Mirror — where he would work until the end of his life, dying only after the paper folded in the early 1960s, and where he was remembered by former colleagues as having been “a large man with a crown of white hair, favoring vests and double-­breasted suits.” I can’t help pausing to watch him turn the corner onto 63rd Street and walk toward the theater. Pictures suggest he favored black, dark ties. He had fought in the war as an artillery man, and before that spent most of his teens in Europe, in Leipzig and Paris, studying with tutors. He was once considered a gifted child pianist. None of the strangers passing on the street would have guessed he was romantically lucky (he had a dour and unfortunate face that involved a triple-­threat combination of double chin, cleft chin and underbite) — but he was married to one of the most beautiful women in America, the actress Ina Claire. People whispered that she married him so he would chirp like a cricket about her in the papers, praising her performances. But she insisted that it had been for love. They are together, she and Jimmy. They take their seats. Afterward, Whittaker would have seen her home and gone to the office. He wants to file the review that night so it can run in the morning editions: Negro humor is better in print or in the synthetic face of Frank Tinney than coming from the mouths of the originators. Fifty Negroes have banded together into a musical comedy company which is playing to white audiences in the Sixty-­Third Street theater. “Shuffle Along,” as it is named, makes brave attempts to entertain the white folks in the intervals between its gorgeous songs. It subscribes to the musical comedy formula that, when you are not singing a song, you must be acting a joke. But racial genius grips the cast and you when the songs begin. At a grand piano in the orchestra pit sits Mr. Eubie Blake, composer of all the music. He is surrounded by fifteen helpful harmonists. Miss Lottie Gee or Roger Matthews comes down to the footlights and sets a metronomic foot to beating a rhythm. It travels down the expectant spine of Mr. Blake and into his and his helpful fifteen’s fingers. In two semi-­quavers you are quivering to the same magic that has set all these spontaneous musicians to reeling melodiously. You may resist Beethoven and Jerome Kern, but you surrender completely to this. It is perhaps fortunate that there are dead intervals between the songs of “Shuffle Along.” Because some of the music is as insidious and heady as absinthe. Josephine Baker, noticed for her dancing, found her way into the chorus line of ‘‘Shuffle Along.’’ She performed in the show’s traveling production before going on to fame in Paris, dancing what was called a Danse Sauvage while wearing a skirt of bananas. CreditLucien Walery, via Wikimedia Commons A scene from “Shuffle Along Jr.”, a shortened revue by Eubie Blake. CreditThe archives of Robert Kimball Florence Mills, Roger Matthews and Lottie Gee in “Shuffle Along.” CreditThe archives of Robert Kimball Whittaker’s opinions, at least that night, were dubious, racist and smug. But he was paying some kind of attention. And in one fundamental respect, he agreed with George Wolfe about the show: that the book, the comedy, didn’t work. But Wolfe’s problem, in trying to resurrect “Shuffle,” wasn’t as simple as what Whittaker prescribed. He couldn’t just throw away the talking and leave the song-and-dance bits. He’d end up with a vaudeville show. No, the very innovation that Williams and Walker had introduced — the reason their productions were so important to Broadway and black theater and the creation of “Shuffle Along” — was that their shows had a new kind of coherence. It would seem very loose to us, but it was different from vaudeville, closer to drama. Their musical comedies were musical, but they were also comedies, meaning they were plays. This isn’t reading backward onto their work a kind of artistic ambition it didn’t possess, but rather echoing what the new generation of black critics were saying at the time, when “Shuffle” came out. This is what Lester Walton was saying in 1921 and what he was trying to make happen at the Lafayette Theater. Joshua Henry as Noble Sissle and Brandon Victor Dixon as Eubie Blake in the new revival of “Shuffle Along.”Credit...Lyle Ashton Harris for The New York Times Wolfe’s solution has been to build a kind of historical box around the set pieces. This new show would be unlike any of the previous revivals (1932 and 1952), most of which were failures, some of which never even made it to the stage. It wouldn’t be a revival. Wolfe had in mind instead a transformation. He wanted to do not “Shuffle Along” but the making of “Shuffle Along” (official title: “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”). He would tell the story of the original creators and cast and how they pulled it off — complete with a character (played by Brooks Ashmanskas) who gives voice to various white outsiders, people who commented on the original show, among them H.L. Mencken and Carl Van Vechten. Interesting approach, you say, sounds great. But to make it work, you couldn’t stint on the dancing and the songs. Those were what made the show go: syncopation, fire, artistry. They couldn’t be saved with historical buttressing, or even historical reimagining. They had to happen in the here and now, and they had to be authentic and good, or else — bomb. Meanwhile, no matter what you did, some seams were liable to show. You couldn’t bring the show into the future and preserve it at the same time and do each perfectly at every minute. But that, I suppose, is when it becomes good to know Savion Glover. It never hurts to know Scott Rudin, either. Unless it actually hurts because he has just thrown a cellphone at the back of your head. Rudin is the notoriously temperamental producer of major movies who has never let go of his love for the New York theater, or his investment in it. You would be silly to pretend as if he weren’t part of the reason that this show has the very best, the laughably best, of everything: Ann Roth, the queen of costume designers (“Midnight Cowboy” and “The Book of Mormon”), is sitting here trying to work out how you design a jazzy, feminine-­heeled shoe that can be tapped in as hard as Glover needs without coming apart; Jules Fisher is working on the lights (he lit “Hair”); Santo Loquasto is on scenic design (three Tonys). And yet, that Rudin’s machinations helped to make it possible, to assemble all that talent and power in the service of resurrecting a crucial piece of African-­American history, reminded me of an uncomfortable fact, namely that Rudin was caught two years ago in the Sony email hack making racist jokes. Or borderline racist. I believe the official terminology landed on by the news media was “racially insensitive.” Rudin and the co-­chairwoman of Sony at the time, Amy Pascal, were trading messages, and they somehow got onto the question of President Obama’s taste in movies, throwing out such recommendations as “Twelve Years a Slave” and “Ride Along,” the buddy-­cop movie that stars Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. It was the kind of joke that if you saw it on “Saturday Night Live,” you might have laughed. Movie night at the Obamas’, curated by Mitch McConnell. For two rich white people to be typing it back and forth, no doubt from the backs of chauffeured cars, was ignorant and tasteless at best. Rudin and Pascal issued public apologies. She lost her job, but only Rudin can fire Rudin. Was his backing of the new “Shuffle” in part an attempt at karmic balancing, or more crassly, damage ­control? You could point to “A Raisin in the Sun,” which he produced in 2014. In a way, the question itself is racist, given that the new show was an idea cooked up by Wolfe. He was going to find someone to back the production, especially given the other people he could recruit. Still, Rudin was at the helm, part of another old story and history — Jewish producer, black talent, a zone of cultural interface that has exerted tremendous force in American culture and made beautiful things happen and always been messy and uneven. Whatever lay behind the scenes, the fact is the production would be responsible for a truly magical bit of casting: Audra McDonald in the role of the singer and original “Shuffle Along” star Lottie Gee. The dance that Glover had said he might have to sub in for one night, after the show goes live — what he actually said was, “I might have to tie the one doing it to a chair and go out there and do it myself” — is a duet between a male dancer and McDonald. I watched her rehearse the piece at the beginning of this year. It was the first time I’d been in a room with an actual diva. There was a space-­heater quality to her presence in the studio. She was sort of dreamily sashaying around one hip at a time, chewing her cheek, looking up, into her head. When the scene started, she was captivating to see do her thing. I tried to break down what was technically different about it, what it was in her performance — even now, early in rehearsals, in a room — that made you think of the word “elevated,” that she was elevating everything. It was the cock of her head, the intensity of her gaze. But not really. Those were just effects. Not long before the show was to debut, I had a chance to speak with McDonald about her character, Lottie Gee, a woman who fascinated us both, it emerged, because she was so unknown despite having once been humongously famous. I was interested for reasons having to do with private musical-­­historical preoccupations, while McDonald was interested because she’d been entrusted with embodying Gee onstage in front of tens of thousands of people, but we had a frustration in common. Gee is one of those figures — one of the countless, when you’re talking about this world of early black music and dance — whose biographies begin with phrases like “Details remain obscure.” With digging, she can be recovered somewhat. More than most. She was a star. I sent McDonald everything I was able to find. It was still spotty, but when there’s nothing, every little item in a small-town newspaper is a mountain. Lottie Gee liked to tell people that she was from Kentucky — and it’s true, she grew up in a house in Newport, Ky. — but Newport is a satellite town to Cincinnati, and that’s what she was in reality, a Cincinnati girl (like Mamie Smith, who grew up an all-­but-­literal stone’s throw across the Ohio River from Gee and would probably have known her as a girl). Around 1905, she got her start singing with a jubilee choir, one of the dozens of choral troupes that formed in the wake of the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ global success. From there she went into musical theater: Cole and Johnson (they were another of the important teams, like Williams and Walker). She was a chorus girl, a “dancing pick” (a “pickaninny,” in blackface). But she had something, a “presence of mind” onstage, that got her noticed by Aida Overton Walker. The great one took Gee on as an understudy and protégée, and her career took off. But what McDonald zoomed in on, in the documents about Gee, was how much the woman had already been through and sacrificed before “Shuffle Along.” “I think about the fact that she was 35 when she got the lead,” McDonald said, “and had already clawed her way through vaudeville. I realized: She was 35 when she made her debut. An ingenue at 35. Talking about being in the chorus all those years, wanting to get to the front. And the fact that she was always so impeccably dressed. There is a pain, and the sense that she’s going to miss an opportunity, and that she’s trying to desperately stake her rightful claim on what is hers.” McDonald stopped short of reading Gee as a character to pity. Gee had an extraordinary career. She worked with Sidney Bechet and Doc Cheatham and was a mentor to Josephine Baker. She lived into her 80s, remaining much loved and respected in the arts community of Los Angeles, where she died in 1973. She was, somehow — impossibly, criminally — never recorded. Neither was her “Shuffle” co-star Florence Mills, who was according to most witnesses one of the great stage singers of her age. Gee’s obituary mentions that “she popularized such melodies as ‘Love Will Find the Way’ and ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’ in the Miller-­Lyles, Sissle-­Blake production ‘Shuffle Along.’ ” McDonald singled out one facet of Gee’s personality — her “diva” qualities, like frequently canceling shows for illnesses real and imagined, for instance — as having been the thing that “frightened” her when taking the role. She didn’t relate to that, she said, and worried that as a result she’d be superficial or performative in her representation of how a diva behaved. It was when she understood that the diva, as a type, operates principally out of fear, that Gee’s behavior opened up to her somewhat. For an actress who has gone public, as McDonald did a couple of years ago, about her own past struggles with depression and a youthful suicide attempt, there’s no way it didn’t feel personal to read about Gee’s own episodes of mental instability. Gee once had a huge nervous breakdown on a ship on the way to China. She spent at least a year recovering in a sanitarium in California. She also seems to have suffered from what today would have been considered severe phobia. An unusual article that appeared in The Boston Herald in 1922 describes her behavior on opening night, the first night of the epic run of “Shuffle” in New York. Gee is quoted: I used to be an awful superstitious little fool. The least little thing I did made me quake, because somebody or other had once told me something dreadful would happen to me as a result of it. If I sneezed on a rainy day I’d never see a sunny one. Well, my life was simply a bundle of “ifs” and nerves. So one day I decided I’d had about enough of that kind of thing. It was getting too great a hold on me and I simply had to overcome it. And I soon had the opportunity. The night we opened at the Sixty-­Third Street Music Hall, New York, I did something that even the least superstitious of persons has a sneaking little belief in — I broke a mirror. Now the act is almost irreparable, but they do say that if you quickly pick up the pieces of the broken glass and look in them three times over your left shoulder, the spell is somewhat broken and no ill luck can happen. Which is what I started frantically to do. But just in time I caught myself. No, I said, I will not do it. That moment was one of the biggest in my life. I simply let the mirror lie there. “What I’m realizing about her,” McDonald said, “is that I don’t have to go searching as far out, to find the roots of her character, as I thought I would. It made me weep, I so identified with her.” “Shuffle Along” was such a mammoth success — and became a minor industry so quickly after opening — that it seems as though it must have lasted forever, but the original gang of creators who put it together split up less than two years after it opened on Broadway. This was the falling out between Sissle and Blake (the writers of the songs) and Miller and Lyles (the writers of the book). It came down to money: The songs were making a lot of it, through recordings and sheet music. The book wasn’t making much of anything. Miller and Lyles thought everything should be split down the middle; Sissle and Blake disagreed. Some of the cast went one way, some the other, some wandered off. By the end (the last “true” “Shuffle” performance happened on June 23 in Atlantic City), relations were so strained between the two sides that some people walked offstage during “Auld Lang Syne.” Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake in an ad for their musical ‘‘In Bamville,’’ which was renamed ‘‘The Chocolate Dandies’’ before opening in New York in 1924. They wrote the music for “Shuffle Along.” CreditThe archives of Robert Kimball The vaudeville comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, who wrote the book for ‘‘Shuffle Along’’ and appeared in blackface in 1921. CreditSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library The four creators of “Shuffle Along” in a publicity still in 1921. CreditThe archives of Robert Kimball By 1930, Gee had gone back to vaudeville. She was in Baltimore with a show called “Harlem Vanities.” An anonymous (tragically anonymous) reporter with the local Afro-­­American caught up with her and did the best article ever written about her, one of just a couple that bring you close. She was in her mid-40s at that point. To read the article after having despaired for months of ever knowing anything about her was like having her spirit show up at a séance. Although she can still hear the plaudits of Broadway and the music halls of Europe ringing in her ears, a memory that many a performer would love to cherish, pretty diminutive Lottie Gee, star of many musical successes, puckers her lips and pouts because she has never tasted any real happiness. “You’ll think me dreadfully old-­fashioned and trite when I say that home and children are the only things in the world that can bring a woman supreme happiness,” declared Miss Gee between puffs on a scented cigarette, “but that is true, and the older a woman gets the more she realizes it.” ... “Married?” she asked in answer to my question. ... “If you won’t insist upon knowing his name, I’ll confess that I was married once — to a musician, but we parted before ‘Shuffle Along,’ long before anybody ever heard of me. All my later successes have been empty affairs. But why worry about that?” She flickered the ashes from her cigarette with an air of nonchalance. ... “How do I like Baltimore?” she repeated, the smile disappearing suddenly from her face. “Oh, Baltimore is all right, I guess, only I hate to play here because it always brings back unpleasant memories. It was here many years ago that we parted. No, I don’t care for Baltimore.” When I spoke with McDonald about that article, I said something that gave away an assumption I’d made, namely that Gee is talking about her first husband at the end of this interview, when she says, “we parted.” She was married — three times, in fact, before she died — but this would have been her first husband, a musician named Wilson (Peaches) Kyer. But McDonald stopped me. “I think she’s talking about Eubie there,” she said. Meaning Eubie Blake, the songwriter for “Shuffle Along” — the real love of her life, people said. You think so? I asked. “Yes,” she said, “Eubie was from Baltimore.” That was true. Kyer, on the other hand — the man to whom she was still quite married when she and Blake started getting together — was from Philadelphia. Thirty-­four years later, a reporter tracked down Eubie Blake and asked him about Lottie Gee. It was 1964 in The Pittsburgh Courier. “ ‘Lottie?’ Blake responded. ‘Well, Lottie hasn’t been doing so good. Her health seems to have gone bad on her. Of course, she’s 78 now, you know.’ ” The answer suggests that he kept in touch or at least kept tabs on her. As for the fact that he knew her age to the year (she was born in 1886), it speaks for itself. “I will always believe,” she told that interviewer in Baltimore back in 1930, “that if Miller and Lyles and Sissle and Blake had stuck together, the colored stage would have been entirely different.” As for the pioneers Bert Williams and George Walker, their story would end with all the pathos Williams had hoped for. Sadly, horribly, it was toward the end of the “Bandanna Land” tour — and in the very midst of performing “Bon Bon Buddy” — that Walker had his first stroke. He had not been well for some time. Syphilis: It struck a number in the theatrical generation that came before “Shuffle Along.” They were all working very hard and having an enormous amount of fun, and there was no such thing as penicillin when you caught the dreaded “bad blood.” There was an arsenic-­based remedy, which could be effective, but it was arsenic-­based. As he sang the song, Walker began to sing “in a thick-­lipped manner” and forgot the lyrics. Soon after that, his career was over, and soon after that his life. Williams went on after Walker’s death to a whole third phase in his career, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies. There, too, he broke racial barriers. His would-be co-stars threatened to quit; they didn’t want to appear on the same bill with a black man. The director told them, “I can replace every one of you, except the man you want me to fire.” The power Williams evidently had — of making people laugh whether they wanted to or not — afforded a kind of protection. In those last years he grew more famous than ever but was mostly doing shtick. In the end he, too, suffered an onstage collapse. He was in a show called “Under the Bamboo Tree.” He went down in Detroit. The audience mistook his fall for a gag and was laughing as they carried him off. I was tempted to read his death, at least as it related to “Shuffle Along,” as a tragedy. He had fought to open doors: Others would enjoy walking through them. But this turned out rather beautifully not to have been the case. In 1947 (more than 25 years after the show debuted), the composer Noble Sissle remembered in a guest column for The New York Age that it had been only “the great heritage left by Bert Williams and George Walker” that “had made it possible for F.E. Miller, Aubrey Lyles, Eubie Blake and myself to birth ‘Shuffle Along.’ Few people know, but Bert Williams playing in Ziegfeld Follies and [being] the only Negro playing Broadway at that time was literally a father to the four of us during the birth of ‘Shuffle Along’ and gave us every blessing and advice at his masterly command. None came more often than he to see our show or laughed more heartily or applauded it more vociferously.” John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for the magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. url https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/shuffle-along-and-the-painful-history-of-black-performance-in-america.html Cast of Shuffle Along White Studio/©NYPL for the Performing Arts Black History on Broadway: Celebrating the Legacy of Shuffle Along The groundbreaking musical revue was the first all-Black musical hit on Broadway and helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance. By Marc J. Franklin February 23, 2021 Following a tour through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Shuffle Along made its groundbreaking Broadway premiere May 23, 1921. Making a home in a multipurpose performance space, the musical played a record 504 performances at the 63rd Street Musical Hall. More than just another show on Broadway, Shuffle Along helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance, showcasing the excellence in Black culture through Black art. Additionally, the production marked the first time the orchestra of an audience was integrated on Broadway. Featuring music by Eubie Blake, lyrics by Noble Sissle, and a book by Aubrey Lyles and Flournoy Miller, the revue tells the story of two corrupt men running for the mayor of Jimtown, though the plot was a loose device to showcase the singing and dancing from the cast. Though it featured Black performers in blackface, a racist but common tradition that provided an avenue for Blacks to perform onstage in the 19th century, the musical marked the first time Broadway featured a production entirely written, directed, produced, and starring Black artists, notably providing a launching pad for Josephine Baker, Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, and more. Shuffle Along returned to Broadway in 1933, 1952, and most recently in 2016 with a George C. Wolfe-helmed revival. Featuring a retooled book by Wolfe, the adaptation presented the original 1921 musical while detailing the events that catalyzed the songwriting team. Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed played 38 previews and 100 performances before closing July 24, 2016, earning 10 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. The revival starred Audra McDonald as Lottie Gee, Brian Stokes Mitchell as F.E. Miller, Billy Porter as Aubrey Lyles, Brandon Victor Dixon as Eubie Blake, Joshua Henry as Noble Sissle, Adrienne Warren as Gertrude Saunders/Florence Mills, and Amber Iman as Eva/Mattie Wilkes/Madame-Madame alongside Brooks Ashmanskas, Phillip Attmore, Darius de Haas, Afra Hines, Curtis Holland, Adrienne Howard, Kendrick Jones, Lisa LaTouche, J. C. Montgomery, Erin N. Moore, Janelle Neal, Brittany Parks, Arbender Robinson, Karissa Royster, Christian Dante White, Joseph Wiggan, Pamela Yasutake, and Richard Riaz Yoder. The production featured scenic design by Santo Loquasto, costume design by Ann Roth, lighting design by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, and sound design by Scott Lehrer with stage management by Lisa Dawn Cave and J. Jason Daunter. URL https://playbill.com/article/black-history-on-broadway-celebrating-the-legacy-of-shuffle-along

thank you @umbrarchist for inspiring this. I have known of gutenberg for years and used it but never thought to go through its library for Black literature. Books in African American Writers (sorted by popularity) https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/6 Books in African American Writers (sorted alphabetically) https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/6?sort_order=title Books in African American Writers (sorted alphabetically by author) https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/6?sort_order=author Books in African American Writers (sorted by release date) https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/6?sort_order=release_date I haven't gone through the books , I have merely listed ther front pages , but I will go through them and make various points later. What is the oldest Black written book you have read? I have read part of the kemet book of the dead, the oldest black book from the global black populace i can think of. The oldest Black DOS book I read is every tongue has to confess by zora neale hurston as it contains the best collection of black fiction/fantasy that is also enslaved narratives. Most enslaved narratives are biographical, they don't deal with fiction or fantasy. It will be interesting to see if any of the Black DOS enslaved narratives are part of gutenberg. I will have to do this later:) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_narrative

Thank you frederick mangones fmangones@yahoo.com Sans Souci Palace + citadelle la ferriere - as is today, built by henri christophe when king of haiti, the northern section of haiti. I have the plans for the palace+ citadelle, but i will not present it yet

The lesson in Percy Julian's story isn't that in the usa whites stop blacks from all things but in the usa whites defer blacks from their true goals. Yes, PErcy Julian became a chemist but by his own words this was a life as a chemist he didn't envision. It was a poisoned deal between getting something remotely similar to what you want because of white power while still holding on and embracing the usa NARRATOR: Looking back in the autobiography he would never finish, Julian offered his own assessment of his life in science. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I feel that my own good country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through. Instead, I took a job where I could get one and tried to make the best of it. I have been, perhaps, a good chemist, but not the chemist that I dreamed of being. Percy Julian should had remained at Fisk and figured out how to make a foundry to make better euqipment. His first stop was Fisk University in Nashville, one of the best Negro colleges in the country. His idol, St. Elmo Brady, had studied at Fisk. But Julian chafed at the limitations of the black college system: overcrowded classrooms, inadequate libraries and poorly equipped laboratories. After two years, he was on the move again. Julian had won a scholarship to study chemistry at one of America's most famous universities. It's funny we tell children to stay away from bullies but then as adults we call ourselves coward if we leave, if your neighbors nearly burn down your house you aren't a coward for leaving PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Once the violence began, Anna and I felt we had no choice but to stay. To leave would have been cowardly and wrong. The right of a people to live where they want to, without fear, is more important than my science. I was ready to give up my science and my life to bring a halt to this senseless terrorism. Percy Julian realized as james Bladwin in the 1980s said, the nonviolent educated negro deosn't advance the black populace in the usa, the truth is they become a transparent veil for the white populace in the usa NARRATOR: By the late 1960s, Julian had come to support the more confrontational tactics of his son's generation. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: My father wrote, later, it wasn't going to be enough just to be a model citizen, to be educated, to do all the things that anybody could possibly expect of you, because none of that would ever change the fact that you still couldn't go and eat in a restaurant that didn't want to serve you. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Branded, first, unfit to spend their money for food or drink in public places along with other Americans; denied the ballot and confined to ghettoes that stifled hope and ambition, victims of murder of the mind, heart and spirit: this is the story of the American Negro. TRANSCRIPT Forgotten Genius PBS Airdate: February 6, 2007 NARRATOR: 1939: A chemist at a midwestern paint company makes a startling discovery, one that could improve the health of millions of people. The company wants him to stick to making paint, but this man has always gone his own way. He was the grandson of Alabama slaves, yet he went on to become one of America's great scientists. HELEN PRINTY (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : He had to fight to overcome the odds of being a black man in America. JOHN KENLY SMITH (Historian) : The chemical world was a club, and outsiders were not really all that welcome. PETER WALTON (Julian Laboratories Employee) : We lived, for the most part, in a highly stressed, very competitive environment. NARRATOR: Outside the laboratory, he faced challenges of a different kind. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Once the violence began, Anna and I felt we had no choice but to stay. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: My dad was angry when he came home, and clearly ready to fight. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : For more than a century we have watched the denial of elemental liberty to millions of black people in our southland. NARRATOR: He found freedom in the laboratory. His science helped unlock the secret chemistry of plants, a discovery that would help relieve one of the most crippling human diseases and plunge him into one of the fiercest battles in the history of science. GREGORY PETSKO (Chemist) : This is one of the towering figures of chemistry in 20th century and one of the great African American scientists of all time. NARRATOR: A brilliant chemist, a volatile personality, a man whose devotion to science would not be denied. WILLIE PEARSON (Sociologist) : This man was "Exhibit A" of determination and never giving up. V/O (Dramatization of Senate Hearings) : Please state your full name for the record. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : My name is Percy Julian. NARRATOR: Every spring, in Oak Park, Illinois, people from all over the village would go out of their way to see the explosion of color at the home on the corner of East and Chicago Avenues. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: The tulips just went on forever. My dad, he'd be out there in his black beret, and my sense was that he had this love affair with growing things. NARRATOR: What many passersby didn't realize was that the tulip grower was also one of America's great scientists. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Well, ladies and gentleman, essentially, I'm going to talk to you about three plants, three marvelous plants, three marvelous plants that make the words of the Psalmist come true and ring true again, "Consider the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was never arrayed like one of these." NARRATOR: It was not simply the beauty of plants that captivated Percy Julian, but their ability to produce an endless variety of powerful chemicals. In the 1930s, Julian set out to tap what he called the "natural laboratories" of plants, to make a new class of drugs that would help millions of people. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Spoiled? What do you mean spoiled? NARRATOR: Julian fought through extraordinary obstacles to make a place for himself in a profession and a country divided by race. JAMES ANDERSON (Historian) : The message from white society is very clear: it is not your achievement or your merit or your accomplishments that matter, it's the color of your skin, and because of that you're rejected. GREGORY PETSKO: Yet over and over again, he doesn't let this stop him. He presses on, sure that his vision of where he wants to go and how he wants to get there is right. JAMES SHOFFNER (Chemist) : After Percy Julian, nobody could say anymore that blacks couldn't do science, because he was at the very top of his profession. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : The story I will tell you tonight is a story of wonder and amazement, almost a story of miracles. It is a story of laughter and tears. It is a story of human beings, therefore, a story of meanness, of stupidity, of kindness and nobility. One beautiful morning, when I was 12 years old, I went berry-picking on my grandfather's farm in Alabama. I shall never forget how beautiful life seemed to me that morning, under the spell of an Alabama forest. But in the midst of that beauty, I came across a Negro body hanging from a tree. He had been lynched a few hours earlier. He didn't look like a criminal; he just looked like a scared boy. On the way back, I encountered and killed a rattlesnake. For years afterward, every time I saw a white man, I involuntarily saw the contours of a rattlesnake head on his face. Many years later, a reporter asked me what were my greatest nightmares from my childhood in the South. I told him, "White folks and rattlesnakes." NARRATOR: Percy Lavon Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899, at a time when southerners lived under a system of forced segregation called Jim Crow. JAMES ANDERSON: I think the greatest consequence of Jim Crow is fear. You knew if you said the wrong thing or went in the wrong door or drank out of the wrong water fountain...that any of those things could lead to your death. NARRATOR: To shelter his children from this oppressive atmosphere, Julian's father turned to the world of ideas. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Every penny my father could scrape together went into building a wonderful library for his children, for the public library was closed to us. My father created, in my imagination, brave new worlds to conquer. NARRATOR: As a young man, James Julian had been a schoolteacher. His wife Elizabeth was a teacher, too. They believed education offered the path to a better life for black people. Denied his own chance to go to college, James made it his mission to send his children instead, but it would not be easy. In Montgomery, and across most of the South, public schools for black children simply stopped after the eighth grade. JAMES ANDERSON: The message from white society, to black students, was that you should have just enough education to be good field hands and good laborers, cooks and maids and so forth. NARRATOR: With no high school to attend, Percy Julian completed two years at the local teacher training school for Negroes. In 1916, with barely a 10th grade education, Percy Julian became the first member of his family to live out his father's dream. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : During the hectic week of preparations, my father had taken me aside for a long talk. "This is the greatest moment of your life," he told me. "But it is also a great responsibility, for you are now beginning to create a family, a family of educated people." There they were, three generations of hope and prayer, waving to a fourth generation that was going off to college! And why? Because they had the simple faith that the last great hope of the Earth is education for all the people. NARRATOR: Julian's destination was DePauw University, a small liberal arts college in Greencastle, Indiana. DePauw had accepted a few black students since the Civil War, but expected them to know their place. JAMES ANDERSON: A black student entering a white university, if they didn't know before they arrived, they found out, pretty quickly, that they were not welcome in the university or in the community. NARRATOR: Instead of being assigned to a dorm like his white classmates, Julian was shown to an off-campus room with a slop jar for a toilet. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I soon got up enough courage to ask Mrs. Townsend what time we would have dinner, but she tersely informed me that she was not expected to give me my meals. NARRATOR: Julian wandered the streets of Greencastle for a day and a half before finding a diner that would serve a Negro. He would continue to take his meals off-campus until he learned of an opening at the Sigma Chi fraternity. In exchange for waiting on his housemates and firing their furnace, Julian could have a room in the basement. He soon felt at ease in the fraternity; the classroom was a different matter. JAMES ANDERSON: You sit in a classroom with kids who have read things that you never heard of, they've taken math courses that you haven't taken, and so one of the academic challenges is trying to hold on until you can catch up. NARRATOR: For two years Julian would take remedial classes at a local high school in addition to his normal course load. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I remember writing to my father, "I know you and Mother have always known what was best for me, but I think you made a mistake by sending me to compete with these white students. They are so brilliant that I am always hopelessly behind." NARRATOR: But by his sophomore year, Julian was gaining fast on his white classmates, thanks, in part, to the encouragement of chemistry professor William Blanchard. Blanchard had what one student called "a contagious enthusiasm for discovering the unknown." Under his tutelage, Julian began to dream of a career as a research chemist. Only one African American had ever earned a doctorate in chemistry. His name was St. Elmo Brady. Julian decided that if Brady could do it, so could he. After four years, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and first in his class. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : At commencement time, my great-grandmother bared her shoulders, and she showed me, for the first time, the deep scars that had remained from a beating she had received when, one day, during the waning days of the Civil War, she went through the Negro quarters and cried out, "Get yourselves ready, children. The Yankees are coming. The Lord has heard our prayers!" And then, proudly, she took my Phi Beta Kappa key in her hand and said, "This is worth all the scars." NARRATOR: Encouraged by Percy's success, his father moved the whole family north to Greencastle to send the rest of the children to DePauw. Eventually, Julian's two brothers would become doctors, and his three sisters would earn master's degrees. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I shall never forget an anxious week of waiting, in 1920, to see if I would get into graduate school. I stood by as, day by day, my fellow students in chemistry said, "I am going to Illinois," "I'm going to Ohio State," or "I'm going to Michigan." "Where are you going?" they asked. And they answered for me: "You must be waiting for the Harvard plum!" I could stand the suspense no longer. I went to Professor Blanchard. And there he showed me numerous letters from men who had really meant "god" to me, great American chemists of their day. "Discourage your bright colored lad," they wrote. "We couldn't get him a job when he's done, and it'll only mean frustration. Why don't you find him a teaching job in a Negro college in the South? He doesn't need a Ph.D. for that." JAMES ANDERSON: What happened to Julian was something that would have been common throughout the land. To have a good college education was way beyond anything that one would expect for an African American. And so there's the sense that he'd had enough. "Stop here. Be content with this. Go back and teach your people." NARRATOR: In 1920, Julian reluctantly returned to the south to teach, but he clung to the dream of earning his Ph.D. At 21, he was embarking on a quest that would last more than 10 years. His first stop was Fisk University in Nashville, one of the best Negro colleges in the country. His idol, St. Elmo Brady, had studied at Fisk. But Julian chafed at the limitations of the black college system: overcrowded classrooms, inadequate libraries and poorly equipped laboratories. After two years, he was on the move again. Julian had won a scholarship to study chemistry at one of America's most famous universities. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : No Negro has yet obtained his master's degree in chemistry at Harvard, and so I'm up against a hard situation again. JAMES ANDERSON: When Julian arrived at Harvard, in 1922, the racial climate was probably worse than it had been at any point in the 20th century. NARRATOR: President Abbott Lawrence Lowell had set the tone by banning black students from the dorms in Harvard Yard. Julian sailed through his first year and earned his master's degree in the spring of 1923. He continued his studies for three more years but left Harvard without his doctorate. Years later, he would bitterly tell friends he had been denied the teaching assistantship he needed to stay in school. JAMES ANDERSON: If you were going to be a teaching assistant and teach white students, that was a no-no. That's just hardly acceptable at that time and that place. If you were denied that, you were also denied the opportunity to finance your education. NARRATOR: Julian spent an unhappy year teaching at a small black college near Charleston, West Virginia. Then his fortunes turned. He was invited to join the faculty at the nation's most distinguished black university: Howard University, in Washington, D.C. He was replacing St. Elmo Brady, who was returning to Fisk. Julian went straight to work, designing a new chemistry building and honing a distinctive lecture style. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I should warn you that scientists are traditionally poor speakers, because they have a hard time letting go of their gobbledy-gook. "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home," becomes impossible when you must call the ladybird "coccinella bipunctata." NARRATOR: Despite his growing stature at Howard, Julian was still determined to earn his Ph.D. In 1929, he finally got his chance. He won a fellowship that allowed him to take a leave from Howard to study at the University of Vienna, in Austria. He was about to begin a lifelong inquiry into the chemistry of plants. GREGORY PETSKO: For thousands of years, long before there was such a thing as a science of chemistry, people were fascinated by plants, because they knew that plants contained substances that could affect people. Coffee will keep you awake. Tobacco contains something that will calm your nerves. Foxglove contains an extract that'll affect your heart. And the whole goal of chemistry in the early part of the 20th century was to understand what these natural products were, to characterize their chemical structures, and figure out how to make them. This was called "natural products chemistry." It was the main branch of chemistry. And in 1929, Vienna, in Austria, was the seat of natural products chemistry. And that's why Percy Julian went there. NARRATOR: Julian arrived at Vienna's Chemische Institut with huge crates of ground glassware, items the Viennese students had heard about but never seen. BERNHARD WITKOP (National Academy of Sciences Member) : The unpacking became a big ceremony surrounded by fellow students, who "oohed" and "aahed" about the wonders that came out of these crates. NARRATOR: Among the onlookers was Josef Pikl, a chemist who would become one of Julian's closest friends and collaborators. They had come to Vienna to study under the renowned scientist Ernst Späth. Späth was a giant in the field of natural products chemistry. He had a particular interest in a family of compounds called alkaloids. GREGORY PETSKO: Of all the natural products, the ones that fascinated people the most were the alkaloids, because they seemed the most powerful. A thimbleful of some alkaloids would bring down an elephant. NARRATOR: It's believed that many alkaloids evolved to protect plants from organisms that might eat or harm them, but these same compounds can have unexpected effects on people. GREGORY PETSKO: We now know, for example, that it's an alkaloid, caffeine, that's responsible for the stimulant effect of coffee beans. We also know that it's an alkaloid called nicotine that's the calming influence in tobacco plants. Other alkaloids are things like morphine, strychnine, cocaine. A whole host of things that we now know are drugs turn out to be plant alkaloids. NARRATOR: By 1929, it was known that an alkaloid from the root of a common Austrian shrub called Corydalis cava was effective in treating pain and heart palpitations. Späth asked Julian to find out why. DAGMAR RINGE (Chemist) : And so the question was which compound, which precise compound in this tuber, is responsible for the biological effect that one is seeing? NARRATOR: Isolate the active ingredient in Corydalis cava, and then identify its chemical structure: this was the challenge Julian would have to meet to earn his Ph.D. Free, at last, of teaching and administrative duties, he threw himself into his research as never before. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : For the first time in my life, I represent a creating, alive and wide-awake chemist. I recognize that publications and research will be, for me, as natural a thing as going to bed and eating a meal. Truly, I was the luckiest guy in all the world to land here. NARRATOR: Just outside the laboratory was a vibrant world that Julian was eager to explore. A fellow student, Edwin Mosettig, took the American under his wing. Soon Julian was joining the Mosettig family for ski trips, swims in the Danube and the opera. BERNHARD WITKOP: The mother of Edwin Mosettig was a famous musician, and the Mosettig house was a center for social activity. So, in that way, Percy got access to layers of the society that were inaccessible in America. Black persons in Europe were very rare, and Percy, for the first time in his life, fully unfolded, because he was admired there. NARRATOR: For Julian, the sense of freedom was exhilarating. In letter after letter, he described his busy social life to colleagues back at Howard. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And now a little news: I have the prettiest girl in Vienna. You have never gazed on such beauty. Monday night, we were in the opera and heard Beethoven's Fidelio . Nature makes its demands, so I've made a date with my little German sweetheart. They didn't lie when they talked of beautiful Viennese women. Afterwards, we went to the sweetest wine cellar you ever saw and drank 'til 3 a.m. NARRATOR: But at 7:55 each morning, Julian was back in the laboratory, working under the watchful eye of a man so severe he would immediately fail a student he considered lazy or untalented. The pressure was mounting on Julian to isolate the elusive alkaloids on which his dissertation depended. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : The last two months, I have passed through a hellish siege of work. Reaction upon reaction, and yet I stand at the door and knock, as it were. I don't know a damned thing. NARRATOR: The alkaloids that puzzled Julian, like most of the molecules of life, are made, primarily, of carbon. GREGORY ROBINSON (Chemist) : Carbon is really the Super Glue of the chemical world, in the sense that carbon can bond to itself in almost an infinite number of ways. DAGMAR RINGE: In this model, for instance, I can make a chain of carbons that continues, practically, infinitely. However, it can also come together into a ring structure, in this case a six-carbon ring structure. NARRATOR: The carbon ring is one of nature's fundamental building blocks, found in an endless variety of compounds. Members of the alkaloid family all have one or more nitrogen atoms. But otherwise their structures vary widely, which presented Julian with a formidable challenge. NED HEINDEL (Chemist) : He was working in some very difficult chemistry. When you don't know anything about what the structure is of the material you're isolating, you have to tear your molecule apart, atom by atom, and try to deduce the structure. DAGMAR RINGE: It's like finding a needle in a haystack. It requires stubbornness. It requires focus. It requires repeating, over and over, the same kinds of processes, until the answers come out. NARRATOR: Slowly the answers did come. In his second year, Julian finally identified the active alkaloid in Corydalis cava, his first chemical triumph. This work with Späth would be the foundation of his future career. BERNHARD WITKOP: When Ernst Späth was asked about his student, Percy Julian, he characterized him and said, "Ein ausserordentlicher Student wie ich in meiner Laufbahn noch nie gehabt habe," "an extraordinary student, the likes of which I have never had before in my career as a teacher." NARRATOR: Julian returned to America, in the fall of 1931, with the doctorate he had pursued for more than a decade. The years in Vienna had dramatically increased his self-confidence. But they had also sown the seeds of a personal catastrophe that awaited him at Howard. Back in Washington, Julian set out to turn Howard into a center for true chemical research, something his predecessor had been unable to do. Burdened with teaching responsibilities, St. Elmo Brady had not published a single research paper in the 15 years since earning his Ph.D. Julian was determined this would not happen to him. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I am going to give every damned ounce of my energy towards plans to flood the chemical market with as much research as the day's hours and my strength will allow. NARRATOR: He brought Josef Pikl over from Vienna, and the two went straight to work on a series of papers. When their first was accepted for publication, Julian proudly noted it was the first with a black chemist as senior author. Percy Julian was now America's preeminent black chemist and, at Howard, one of President Mordecai Johnson's rising stars. But Johnson had made many enemies in his five years at Howard. Soon Julian would be caught up in university politics, with disastrous results. The trouble began when Julian, at the president's request, goaded a white chemist named Jacob Shohan into resigning. Shohan retaliated by releasing to the local black press the letters Julian had written to him from Vienna. Julian's accounts of his romances, his criticism of faculty members, suddenly it was all public, ammunition to be used against Julian and Johnson by the president's enemies. Just as Julian's letters began to appear in the press, there was another bombshell. His laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson, charged he had found his wife and Julian together. Lawsuits flew between Julian and Thompson. When Thompson was fired for going public with his charges, he released the letters that Julian had written to him from Vienna. Through the summer of 1932, the Baltimore Afro-American published letter after letter from the man the newspaper dubbed "Howard's Prize Letter-Writer." Finally, under pressure from Johnson and the Board of Trustees, Julian resigned. It was the middle of the Great Depression. Julian was a chemist without a laboratory, a black man without a job. Only a year after his triumphant return from Vienna, the career he'd worked so hard to build was in ruins. When all seemed lost, Julian's mentor, William Blanchard, threw him a lifeline, bringing him back to DePauw as a research fellow to supervise lab sections. It was a big step down from full professor and department chairman, but he had a lab again, and his research partner, Josef Pikl, would join him at DePauw. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : In much of my life I've had to pick up the broken fragments of chance and turn them into opportunity. NARRATOR: Over the next three years, 11 of the student projects Julian supervised would lead to papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society . NED HEINDEL: Eleven undergraduate papers published in JACS , out of a student body of that size, was not only unusual for the 1930s, it would be unusual now. Julian took the talent in those students and put that institution on the map for undergraduate research. NARRATOR: DePauw's newest instructor left a powerful impression on undergraduate Ray Dawson. RAY DAWSON (DePauw Alumnus) : He put on a grand show. He would come into his lectures, in his white lab jacket, with a flourish. He was oratorical in a way some great scientist from London or Berlin might be. It was just a show, but a very good one. NARRATOR: Julian had finally found fulfillment, a place where he could teach and research. But when the local American Legion assailed the school for hiring a Negro who had been dismissed from Howard University, Julian was forced to stop teaching. He could stay on as long as his research grant lasted, but his days at DePauw were numbered. Everything he'd work for was about to collapse again. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I decided I had to do things that would make people take more notice of me. NARRATOR: What he did was take on a high-stakes research project, one that would either make him or break him. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : It all began with a simple little bean, the Calabar bean. It was a beautiful, purple bean when I first got it. But it is not only beautiful in its appearance, but also in the laboratory it has within it. NARRATOR: Chemists had been fascinated by the Calabar bean ever since British missionaries brought it back from Africa in the mid-1800s. From the bean, they had isolated an alkaloid called physostigmine—used to treat glaucoma—but no one had been able to synthesize the complex molecule. GREGORY PETSKO: Synthesis is the process of making a natural product, or some other substance, artificially, in the lab, one step at a time, from extremely simple building blocks. NARRATOR: Synthesis was the highest calling for a chemist in the 1930s. A successful synthesis could bring great medical benefits, by making a scarce natural product more widely available. Just as important, it proved beyond a doubt that the chemist understood how the molecule was put together. NED HEINDEL: There were very few alkaloids that had been made from scratch in Julian's time. The synthesis of physostigmine would bring recognition to whoever achieved it. And that's what Percy Julian set out to do. NARRATOR: But Julian was not alone. At Oxford University, another chemist was at work on his own synthesis. His name was Robert Robinson. NED HEINDEL: Sir Robert Robinson was sort of the dean of organic chemists in England. He was a much-respected creator of molecules, a trainer of many Ph.D. students. He was the premier organic chemist of his time. NARRATOR: Moving step-by-step toward a final synthesis, Robinson had already published nine papers on physostigmine in Britain's leading chemical journal. NED HEINDEL: It's a little bit of intimidation. The world is supposed to know, "I've got this domain; you stay out of it." NARRATOR: But to Julian, Robinson's approach seemed clumsy. Convinced there was a simpler way, he set out to beat the Englishman to the synthesis. A high-profile scientific victory would be just the thing to get his career back on track, but it wouldn't be easy. Physostigmine was unlike any molecule that had been synthesized before. NED HEINDEL: It bristled with spots around the molecule where methyl groups were hanging, that's a carbon with three hydrogens. There are actually four of these, and getting them in the right place is essential to making nature's molecule. It was a formidable chemical challenge for anybody to tackle in the early 1930s. NARRATOR: Julian tackled it the way all chemists do: one step at a time. GREGORY PETSKO: When you synthesize a molecule, you start with very small substances, substances you can buy or that you know how to make already. You then start assembling those into fragments of the thing that you're hoping to make in the end; they're called "intermediates." And what you're doing is you're following a particular path. This path takes you from the simple starting substances all the way to the final product, the natural product. NARRATOR: To build his molecule, Julian drew on a battery of techniques for manipulating atoms. NED HEINDEL: One can heat something to a very high temperature; that usually gets the atoms vibrating and makes new bonds possible. You can oxidize something—you can add oxygen to it. You can take oxygen out of a molecule; that's a reduction. We can expose it to pressure. Sometimes, we can expose it to light, to cajole the atoms to do what we want. NARRATOR: At each step, Julian had to verify that he'd actually made the compounds he intended to. For this, he relied on a device called a combustion train. NED HEINDEL: This technique takes an organic molecule which contains carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and burns it. NARRATOR: By weighing the resulting gases, Julian could tell what atoms were present and in what ratio. GREGORY PETSKO: How much carbon does it have? How much hydrogen does it have? How much nitrogen does it have? If your compound has the right ratio, you're a long way towards being sure you've made what you thought you made. NED HEINDEL: And then you repeat this process of purification and of analysis for each intermediate, until you finally get to the natural product. NARRATOR: Julian was under tremendous pressure to complete the research, pressure compounded by events in his personal life. He was engaged. His fiancée was the woman who'd been at the center of the Howard scandal, the former wife of his laboratory assistant, Robert Thompson. Born Anna Roselle Johnson, she was a member of a prominent African American family from Baltimore. She had graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was now working toward a Ph.D. in sociology. RAY DAWSON: They'd already set, I believe, two wedding dates, which he had canceled, and she told him that this was the last time. Unless he kept the new latest date, she would break off their engagement. And he was quite upset by this, but he had no choice but to proceed, because we were only a few weeks away from the end. NARRATOR: In 1934, Julian and Pikl sent off their first paper on physostigmine, outlining a new approach to the synthesis. Julian attacked Robinson in the beginning lines of the paper. NED HEINDEL: To have a young upstart taking on the pope of organic chemistry in England, naming him, and coupling the words "failure" and "embarrassing" and "low yield" is almost unbelievably aggressive. GREGORY ROBINSON: In many regards, that was a pivotal point in Julian's career. If he were wrong, he could effectively, almost, write off any research career at that point. NARRATOR: Working around the clock, Julian and Pikl synthesized a compound that was one step removed from physostigmine. Since that last step was already known, this would count as a complete synthesis. But before they could publish, Robinson struck again with his own synthesis of the same compound. The race was over. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : The shock was almost unbearable. We were not the first, just the "me toos." Why did he, of so much fame, who didn't at all need the glory, have to snatch the prize from us? Suddenly, my eye caught something. "Look, Josef, he's made a big blunder." Our crystals melted at about 39° Celsius, body temperature. Indeed, we were able to melt them by closing them in our armpits. His compound melted not at body temperature, but almost 50 degrees higher. "He hasn't got it!" I cried. NED HEINDEL: The melting point of a molecule is a fingerprint. If Julian's melting point is correct then Robinson's can't be, and these can't be the same substance. And Julian quickly grasps on that and says, "You've got the wrong compound." NARRATOR: Julian hurriedly wrote an addendum to their next paper. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : "We believe that the English authors are in error." Josef was a very unhappy man. "If we are wrong, we are irretrievably ruined," he said. It hit like a bombshell. Telegrams came in from all over the world. My old professor, Kohler of Harvard, he wrote: "I pray that you are right. If not, the future may be dark for you." NED HEINDEL: Part of what he's just done here is a go-for-broke plan. He's working as an underpaid assistant in a liberal arts college. He desperately needs a break. NARRATOR: Now the pressure was on Julian and Pikl to prove they were right. RAY DAWSON: Percy was a bundle of nerves, but, yet, he had this underlying drive that didn't permit him to stop, to run away, to give up. NARRATOR: To confirm his synthesis, Julian needed to take one final melting point. DAGMAR RINGE: When chemists took a melting point, they would put some crystals into a capillary tube, strap that capillary tube to a thermometer, and then place the complete assembly into an oil bath. They're looking to determine the exact moment when the crystals begin to melt. NARRATOR: To claim victory over Robinson, Julian had to show that another set of crystals from his synthesis melted at the same temperature as their natural counterpart, 135 degrees. NED HEINDEL: This has got to be the ultimate high. "I've taken on the master, and I've beaten him." NARRATOR: The physostigmine papers were immediately recognized as a milestone in American chemical history, an early example of what chemists call "total synthesis," the complete assembly of a complex molecule from basic chemical building blocks. NED HEINDEL: Julian's pathway to physostigmine is so simple that it can be summarized in essentially two publications. Chemists look at them and marvel at..."How did he do that in so elegant of a sequence?" JAMES SHOFFNER: To call a process "elegant" means that the synthesis is achieved in the minimal amount of steps necessary in order to bring about a product. And so that's really to give it the highest accolade that you can give, that it is elegant. NARRATOR: In 1935, Percy finally married Anna in a private ceremony on Christmas Eve. As his bride went back east to finish her doctorate, Julian looked forward to new career opportunities his triumph would bring. On the strength of the physostigmine work, William Blanchard had recommended his protégé for a permanent faculty position at DePauw. DONALD "JACK" COOK (Former DePauw Chemistry Chairman) : If DePauw had recognized Percy's capabilities and put him on the staff at that time, it would have been a historical event. It didn't happen. NARRATOR: Julian applied to other universities, with the same result. JAMES ANDERSON: Most institutions would not even tolerate, for a second, having an African American in the role of a teacher or a faculty. WILLIE PEARSON: This was during a time of rampant scientific racism. There were a number of scholars at Harvard and other institutions that were doing scientific studies and reporting that African Americans did not have the capacity to do science, because they were actually an inferior race. NARRATOR: In early 1936, Julian's research grant ran out. Now, with no hope of an academic career, he turned his attention to industry. America's leading chemical corporation, DuPont, had invited Julian and Pikl for an interview. DuPont executives offered Pikl a job. To Julian, he later recalled, they offered an apology: "We didn't know you were a Negro." JOHN KENLY SMITH: The world of chemical research and development in industry, in this period, was overwhelmingly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men, and outsiders were not really all that welcome. NARRATOR: At Julian's insistence, Pikl took the job at DuPont and spent the rest of his career there. Julian returned to the job hunt. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Day by day, as I entered these firms, presented my credentials and asked for a job, the answer almost seemed like it had been transmitted by wire from one firm to the other. It ran like this: "We've never hired a Negro research chemist before. We don't know how it would work out." NARRATOR: Finally, Julian caught a break. The Institute of Paper Chemistry, in Appleton, Wisconsin, was prepared to make him an offer. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And then they were informed by city attorneys that an old Appleton statute forbade Negroes from being housed in Appleton overnight. This, in the Year of our Lord, 1936! But in that meeting, sat a board member, an Irishman named William J. O'Brien. NARRATOR: O'Brien was vice president of the Glidden Company. He'd been looking for a sharp chemist to run the company's new Chicago laboratory. He offered Julian the job of Director of Research. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I had already wired Anna, several times, that I had landed jobs, so this time I was a little more cautious: "Am considering offer Glidden Company in research at $5,000." Her reply came back: "What do you mean `considering?'" JOHN KENLY SMITH: The fact that Percy Julian was hired to be the director of a laboratory, not just a member of a laboratory, is truly remarkable and unprecedented. JAMES SHOFFNER: That was 10 years before Jackie Robinson. You know? And we look toward the Jackie Robinson example as being pivotal in opening up not just baseball, but a whole lot of other opportunities for black people. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And so I came to Chicago and started in on another fascinating plant, the soybean. NARRATOR: Neither Julian, nor anyone else in 1936, had any idea what a powerhouse the soybean would become. Today the soybean is one of the pillars of American agriculture, second only to corn among the major crops. Seventy million acres of farmland are planted in soy, with an annual harvest worth more than $20 billion. Soy is used in a wide range of products, from food and medicine to paper and plastics. TODD ALLEN (Soybean Farmer) : It's a very widely used commodity. If you go down to the grocery store and look at the label, you'll find soybean oil in there somewhere. Soybeans originally came into this country from China, as a hay crop for grazing, for beef cattle. But, also, it manufactures its own nitrogen, and back in the 1920s, well, then everybody needed that, because we didn't have a lot of commercial fertilizer back then. But then, as our machinery developed, we learned that we could cut and process these soy beans and break them down into feed for our animals and soy oil for human consumption. NARRATOR: But soybeans really took off in the 1930s, when industry discovered the plant, thanks, in part, to the efforts of an unlikely champion: automaker Henry Ford. Ford planted thousands of acres of soybeans, and alongside his Dearborn auto plant, he built a soybean laboratory and processing factory. JOHN KENLY SMITH: Ford sets up a laboratory in the early 1930s, hires a young, self-trained chemist to run the laboratory, and they begin doing lots of experiments trying to figure how you could use soybeans in making cars. NARRATOR: Out of his lab came new soybean-based auto paints, lubricating oils and soybean-based plastics that Ford turned into steering wheels, gearshift knobs and dent-proof fenders. V/O (Film Clip) : Industrial chemists are working to find new uses for soybean oil and soybean meal. NARRATOR: Soon other industrialists were following Ford's lead, building soybean processing plants across the Midwest. One of the first to embrace the "miracle bean" was Percy Julian's new boss, Adrian Joyce of the Glidden Company. Under Joyce, Glidden had grown from a single paint store in Cleveland into one of the nation's leading paint manufacturers. JOHN KENLY SMITH: But Joyce didn't stop there. He diversified into a wide range of products. Durkee Famous Foods was a Glidden brand. He also moved into soybean processing. NARRATOR: Convinced the soybean would be critical to Glidden's future, Joyce set up a new Soya Products Division in Chicago. The first assignment for his new research director: isolate the protein of the soybean, something that had never been done on an industrial scale. Julian plunged into his new job, keenly aware that people were watching to see how this black chemist would measure up. PETER WALTON: The people in the plant were always mindful of a white laboratory coat, a blur that might swoop down at any moment. HELEN PRINTY: He would pester you at many times. He would keep, you know, wanting to know what was new, every half an hour, almost. RISHER WATTS (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : And he expected you to tell him something different every time he came in there, something that was favorable. NARRATOR: But for more than a year, the news was not favorable. RISHER WATTS: In chemistry, things don't ever go the way you plan it, because you've got reactions that are very critical; even a little variation in temperature, in concentration and time, and everything will give you a bad outcome. NARRATOR: Eventually, Julian's chemists found just the right combination of time, temperature and acidity to pull the protein out of the soybean. Julian's "Alpha protein" was the first vegetable protein produced in bulk anywhere in America. It made millions for Glidden as a new industrial paper coating. Later it would be a key ingredient in one of the first water-based, or "latex" house paints, Glidden's Spred Satin. V/O (Paint Commercial) : Get new Spred house paint. NARRATOR: After Alpha protein, Adrian Joyce urged Julian to turn his attention to other parts of the soybean. JOHN KENLY SMITH: Joyce was always trying to figure out every possible use for everything you have. Find out, "is there some chemical in here that we otherwise might be throwing down the drain, that we might be able to make money out of?" NARRATOR: Julian drove his staff to turn the soybean inside out. ARNOLD HIRSCH (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : Julian wanted everyone to perform to the best of their ability, and he did everything in his power to motivate people to do that. JAMES LETTON (Julian Laboratories Production Manager) : I always thought he was a master psychologist. I think he was very much aware of what he was doing and who he was doing it to. RISHER WATTS: His purpose was to get the best out of you. I think that's what it was all about. NARRATOR: The chemistry invented by Julian and his team led to scores of new products. From soybean oil came lecithin, to make chocolate smoother, new salad oils and shortenings for Durkee, and a new non-spattering margarine. HELEN PRINTY: Always when you were working on one thing, there was another thing coming up. You were always thinking ahead of time, what was the next big thing? NARRATOR: From soybean meal came plastics, linoleum, plywood glue, high-protein livestock feed and dog food. HELEN PRINTY: He was brilliant. He would set out a research project, and he would write the introduction and the description of the work, and a conclusion. He did everything except do the experiment. GENE WOROCH (Glidden Chemist) : And there would be a statement, something to the effect that, "The problem is solved; all that remains to be done is..." And many of us used to cringe at this, because it would be our responsibility to get this to work, and sometimes it didn't work. RISHER WATTS: He was very demanding. And that was on a daily basis, I mean, because he had his hands on everything that went on. V/O (Film Clip) : Yes, there's magic in this Cinderella crop, and we've hardly scratched the surface. NARRATOR: The stream of products coming out of Julian's lab joined the flood of household and industrial goods from Dow, DuPont and other companies whose chemistry was changing the way Americans lived. V/O (Film Clip) : ...nylon stockings, introduced in 1938. There's barely a minute of your time on Earth that is not in some way made secure and comfortable through chemistry. JOHN KENLY SMITH: There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for chemicals in the 1930s. V/O (Film Clip) : Here are the headquarters of a group of super-sleuths, engaged in solving some of the major mysteries of the universe. They take molecules apart and put them together again, in a different form, to make new and incredible things. NARRATOR: People saw the industry as sort of the leading edge of high technology, of providing goods and services that were going to make people's lives better and to keep the economy growing. V/O (Film Clip) : The nation's industrial skyline parted in the middle, to make room for the growing chemical industry. NARRATOR: Glidden's new soybean division was a success. Julian's reward was a raise that allowed him to be reunited with Anna. For the first three years of their marriage, she had been back east, earning her Ph.D. and working in the Washington public schools. Now she joined Percy in Chicago, at last. As the couple settled into their new home, in the Westside community of Maywood, Anna learned just how driven her husband could be when it came to chemistry. "Science can be a hard taskmaster," she would remember. "Dinner can be at seven or 11, as far as the true disciple of chemistry is concerned." Glidden was delighted with Julian's chemistry, but Julian was becoming restless. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I was itching to get away from dog foods, paint and oleomargarine, and to tackle nature again with more exacting methods. HELEN PRINTY: Doctor Julian loved chemistry. He used to take the people that were working on the products for the Glidden Company and sneak us off and do other things that he was interested in, on the side. NARRATOR: Julian was especially interested in a compound called progesterone. V/O (Medical Film Clip) : New ways of controlling fertility have begun to suggest... NARRATOR: Discovered in 1934, progesterone was called the "pregnancy hormone," because it plays a central role in preparing a woman's uterus for childbirth. HELEN PRINTY: Apparently, Mrs. Julian had had a couple of miscarriages. And doctors at that time had found that progesterone was essential to carrying a child to term. WOMAN IN LABOR (Medical Film Clip) : The pains are getting harder. NARRATOR: In the 1930s, nearly one out every six pregnancies in America ended in miscarriage or premature birth. DOCTOR (Medial Film Clip) : Relax, your baby is almost here now. NARRATOR: Hundreds of thousands of babies were lost each year. Julian realized that progesterone offered new hope. He and other chemists began looking for ways to make the hormone for pregnant women at risk. Progesterone is one of a class of compounds called steroids, which scientists were just beginning to realize played many key roles in the body. GREGORY PETSKO: They were involved in reproduction. They were involved in sexual development. They were involved in the response to injury and growth. And yet despite this enormous range of different physiological effects, these compounds all seemed to have similar chemical structures. DAGMAR RINGE: The group of molecules that we call steroids all share a common framework, composed of these four-ring systems right here: a six-membered ring, fused to a second six-membered ring, fused to a third six-membered ring, fused to a five-membered ring. NARRATOR: Dozens of steroid molecules are made by the body, ranging from cholesterol to digestive fluids to sex hormones, such as progesterone and testosterone. The anabolic steroids used by some athletes today are simply modified forms of the natural male hormone. NED HEINDEL: Once it was recognized that the family of materials we call steroids had such an impact on human health, there became a global push: "Can we get these materials? Can we make them available?" And, "What sources do they come from? NARRATOR: Chemists first tried isolating steroids from animal extracts like horse urine, but the process required vast amounts of raw material and yielded only tiny amounts of steroids. GREGORY PETSKO: The breakthrough, in making steroids available, was the realization that you could take substances from plants that could form the starting point for the synthesis of steroids. That would give you a leg up on the process. NARRATOR: In the mid-1930s, scientists had discovered that plants have steroids too, with the same four carbon rings found in animal steroids. DAGMAR RINGE: It was only a very small leap to realize that one could convert a plant steroid into an animal steroid. NARRATOR: The idea that plants made chemicals similar to human steroids was something Julian already knew. Back at DePauw, while researching physostigmine, Julian had set aside a dish of Calabar bean oil. A few days later, he found white crystals in the oil. Searching the literature, he found that these crystals were a plant steroid called stigmasterol. Small amounts of stigmasterol were also found in soybean oil, and Julian now had plenty of that at Glidden. He was confident that he could convert it into progesterone, if he could find a way to extract this stigmasterol from the oil. But Julian was not the only one who saw the potential of making steroids from plants. In 1938, a chemist named Russell Marker found a way to convert steroids from sarsaparilla root into progesterone, by chemically snipping off the "side chain" of extra atoms from the plant steroid. It was breakthrough chemistry, but progesterone made from sarsaparilla root was too expensive to be practical. The race was on for a cheaper source. GREGORY PETSKO: I think that both Percy Julian and Russell Marker understood the medical implications of what they were trying to do, that they knew if those natural products could be provided in quantity, that the face of medicine would be changed. NARRATOR: Marker published paper after paper, documenting his search for a plant that would yield cheap progesterone. Julian saw his chance slipping away. There wasn't much time for this kind of research amid the daily demands of his job. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : One day the phone rang, and the fellow said, "Doc, something's happened. Some water's leaked into Soybean Oil Tank No. 1, and it's spoiled. "Spoiled?" I said. "Spoiled? What do you mean spoiled?" Now, you understand, this tank contained 100,000 gallons of refined soybean oil bound for the Durkee Famous Foods plant. If it were ruined, Glidden would be out $200,000. And such a blunder might cost me my job, so I was over there in a jiffy. NARRATOR: Julian found the giant tank fouled with white sludge. But his despair vanished in a flash of recognition: there were crystals in the sludge at the bottom of the tank. They were stigmasterol, the same crystals he'd found in the dish of Calabar oil. Now he realized what had forced the stigmasterol out of both oils, water. JACK COOK: You couldn't destroy a 100,000-gallon tank of soybean oil to get this steroid out, but when you add a little water to it, it falls out. It precipitates. It separates on its own. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And it was this little accidental discovery—the kind that characterize the development of science so often—that led to a practical method for the isolation of steroids from soybean oil. NARRATOR: Now a step ahead of Marker, Julian developed an industrial process for converting stigmasterol into progesterone in bulk. NED HEINDEL: Julian did not discover the primary chemistry that took stigmasterol over to progesterone—that came out of a German group five years earlier—but he was the first person to realize that it could be scaled up. A company that's in the paint business suddenly becomes a player in the human sex hormone game. NARRATOR: In 1940, Julian sent a one-pound package of progesterone to the Upjohn pharmaceutical company. Shipped under armed guard and valued at nearly $70,000, it was the first commercial shipment of an artificial sex hormone produced anywhere in America. Testosterone and other artificial sex hormones soon followed, bringing millions of dollars in unexpected revenue to Glidden. Despite his growing stature, Julian was barred from a major hormone conference held at an exclusive resort in Maryland. Only after three days of protest by his white colleagues was he finally admitted. Within a year, Julian would face a new challenge: his rival, Russell Marker, had discovered a giant yam in Mexico. It was even richer in steroids than soybeans. In 1944, Marker and two partners formed a company called Syntex to make hormones from the yam. For the rest of the decade, Syntex and Glidden would produce most of the world's supply of artificial sex hormones. GREGORY PETSKO: I think the decision to make substances like steroids from plants, rather than from animal tissues, was a landmark in the history of medicine as well as the history of chemistry. It meant that you could take steroids that before were so rare that you barely knew what they were, and you could inject them into animals or people and see their effects on a variety of conditions. The possibilities that that opened up almost were limitless. NARRATOR: The work of Julian and Marker would lay the foundation for a whole new class of medicines, including the birth control pill and a wonder drug that would soon take the world by storm. By the mid-1940s, Julian's work at Glidden had won him national acclaim. With the outbreak of World War II, his Alpha protein became the chief ingredient in "bean soup," a fire-fighting foam credited with saving thousands of servicemen's lives. He was even featured in Reader's Digest , one of America's most popular magazines. HELEN PRINTY: It was the beginning of white America's exposure to Dr. Percy Julian, and how he had to fight to overcome the odds of being a black man in America. And, in the context of the times, it made him a symbol. JAMES SHOFFNER: Here was a person who looked like me, who was not only in the field, but succeeding magnificently at the top of his profession. That was profound. NARRATOR: Julian was named to the boards of half a dozen colleges and universities. He was showered with awards and honorary degrees and sought after as a public speaker. The NAACP awarded him its prestigious Spingarn Medal, previously given to W.E.B. Du Bois, George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson and Thurgood Marshall. And the Chicago Sun-Times named him "Chicagoan of the Year." As Julian's stature grew, so did his personal responsibilities. Anna had given birth to a son, Percy Jr., in 1940, and a daughter, Faith, four years later. With so many demands on Percy's time, Anna shouldered the parenting duties. "For the children," she later wrote, "an after-dinner visit with their father was a rare treat." PERCY JULIAN, JR.: I hardly remember a weekend when he didn't work, but the time you had was quality time. NARRATOR: By the end of the 1940s, the family had outgrown their Maywood home. The Julians began looking for a bigger one in a neighborhood that suited their new social status. They set their sights on Oak Park, one of Chicago's most affluent and exclusive suburbs. The village was home to doctors, lawyers and wealthy businessmen. It had a reputation as a town for the educated and enlightened. VIRGINIA CASSIN (Oak Park, Illinois Resident) : It's always been a community that was...had a little sense of its importance as far as being, perhaps, a cut above others. V/O MAN (Radio) : Thanks to our good friends, the makers of Broadcast Brand corned beef hash. NARRATOR: Oak Park even had its own radio show, familiar to listeners all over America as Breakfast with the Johnsons . V/O CHILD (Radio) : Daddy, I have to give a report in school, so I'm going to give it to you. CLIFF JOHNSON (CBS radio host) : These days, they'd call it reality radio, and that's what it was; 7:30 in the morning, Monday through Friday. The microphones were all over the house. The children would wander in, and the milkman would come in. We talked about us and the world around us. NARRATOR: The world around the Johnsons was cultured, privileged and white. The few African Americans who lived in Oak Park worked as servants and laborers. ROBERTA L. RAYMOND (Sociologist) : When the Julians came along, I'm sure that this was a shock to many people who lived in Oak Park. Here they are, two very well educated people, both with Ph.D.s, he, a very successful chemist and businessman, and they purchased a house, a large house, on a large lot. CLIFF JOHNSON: There was some nasty tongue-wagging going on: "Who do these people think they are that they can move in here and take over our neighborhood?" NARRATOR: Trouble began even before the Julians could move in. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: My dad was out of town, and my mom got a call from the Oak Park Fire Department. "Something has occurred at the house," this is the fire department, "could you please come." Even as a 10-year-old I knew that this was arson. There was no attempt to hide this, to make it look like an accident. I see these bottles, these huge bottles, and I could smell gasoline. The stairs were soaked all the way up to the second floor. I think my mother was scared. But if she was, she didn't show it. They lit the fuse on the outside. The door caught on, but it was sealed so well that the flames couldn't get under the door. But had the bottles caught, the flames would have gone right up the stairwell—a natural chimney—and the house could've been a total loss. And I looked at my mom, and I said, "Why would anybody do this?" And she explained it: they didn't want us to live there and didn't want us to live there because of the color of our skin. NARRATOR: Now Percy Julian, accomplished, affluent, ambitious, was face to face with the same violence African Americans all over Chicago were encountering as they tried to move into white neighborhoods. VERNON JARRETT (Newspaper Reporter) : After the war, when the ghetto was bursting at the seams and people trying to move out, every first Negro, they said, to move in a block was going to catch hell. A mob would be out there to greet you. I've seen it, covered it. NARRATOR: There were no mobs in Oak Park, but the arson was a clear warning that some in the community would stop at nothing to keep the Julians out. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: The arson attempt did not succeed in intimidating my mom and dad. Nor could it have. They were simply not intimidatable. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Once the violence began, Anna and I felt we had no choice but to stay. To leave would have been cowardly and wrong. The right of a people to live where they want to, without fear, is more important than my science. I was ready to give up my science and my life to bring a halt to this senseless terrorism. NARRATOR: The Julians moved in. And when a few months passed with no further trouble, Percy and Anna felt confident enough to go out of town, leaving the children with a babysitter. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: The first my parents saw of it was when they saw it in the paper the next day, with me pointing to the hole in the ground. CLIFF JOHNSON: I'll never forget the morning my daughter Sandra said, "Daddy, they bombed my friend Percy Julian's house last night." And then she said, "Daddy, why did they do that? Why would they bomb their house?" I put on a record, because I didn't have the answer. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: My dad was angry when he came home, I mean really angry, and clearly ready to fight. He looked at this as an attempt to murder his kids. For him, there was nothing redeemable about them at all. I'm taking this in like there's no tomorrow. And actually, you know how everything has a good side? The good side was, as a kid I got to spend more time with my dad, and got to stay up late,'cause we'd sit in the tree outside. He'd sit there with a shotgun. And we'd talk about why someone would want to do this and how wrong it was and how stupid it was. NARRATOR: The Julians would continue to receive threatening letters for years after. No one was ever arrested. Many Oak Park residents were horrified at the violence against the family. VIRGINIA CASSIN: I think people were shocked that anyone should be treated that way. And there were people who came forward to say, there are a lot of us that don't feel that way. CLIFF JOHNSON: There was at least 200 or more people that marched right up in front of the Julian house on East Avenue and said "He stays, he stays." NARRATOR: Even as events in Oak Park threatened to upend his personal life, a new scientific challenge was drawing Percy Julian into one of the great medical dramas of the 20th century. At the center was one of the oldest and most painful of human diseases, rheumatoid arthritis. CHARLES PLOTZ (Rheumatologist) : Arthritis is a generic word for inflammation of the joints, and encompasses a lot of different diseases. But the disease that truly inflames the joint and causes destruction of the cartilage and the bone within the joint is rheumatoid arthritis. NARRATOR: Scientists had been seeking a cure for rheumatoid arthritis for hundreds of years. But by the middle of the 20th century those efforts had yielded only a bizarre assortment of mostly ineffective treatments: chin slings, gold injections, mineral baths, cobra venom, bee stings, even electricity. CHARLES PLOTZ: People would swear by them, but nothing, over the long run, worked. NARRATOR: The situation changed dramatically at the 1949 annual meeting of American rheumatologists. Philip Hench, of the Mayo Clinic, presented a film showing how arthritis patients responded to a new drug, called Compound E, and later named "cortisone." CHARLES PLOTZ: They were severely crippled, having to drink by holding a cup in both hands. And Philip Hench gave them an injection, and within 12 to 24 hours, the same patients were having no difficulty at all. It was one of the most astonishing things that has ever happened in medicine. You didn't need a double-blind study. You just saw it happen. And the audience stood up and cheered. Well, every patient with rheumatoid arthritis immediately wanted to be put on this magic drug. NARRATOR: The problem was there was none to be had. Hench had performed his tests with a few precious grams of cortisone sent to him by Lewis Sarett, a young chemist at Merck. Sarett had worked for years to synthesize cortisone from the bile of slaughtered oxen. But his chemical pathway was the most complex ever attempted in industry, requiring more than 30 steps. And thousands of cattle carcasses would be needed to make enough cortisone to treat a single patient for a year. To treat the millions suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, scientists would need to find more a plentiful starting material and simplify the process of producing cortisone. Chemists from all over the world sprang to the challenge, launching one of the most intensive research efforts in the history of medicine. Julian threw himself into the effort. JOHN KENLY SMITH: The only reason that Glidden is in the great cortisone race is because of Percy Julian. He knows this chemistry, and so he can establish a position for them. The American pharmaceutical industry, after World War II, is not the giant that we know of today. This business is really just getting going, so there is room for entrepreneurs in this period. NARRATOR: One of those entrepreneurs was Carl Djerassi, then a young chemist at Syntex, the small Mexican company that made hormones from yams. CARL DJERASSI (Syntex Chemist) : Julian and I were competitors, and we were in this race with people at Harvard, and at Oxford, and in Zurich, and at Merck, and, I mean, all the major companies. It was one time when basic research in industry competed on equal terms with that in universities. NARRATOR: The prize these chemists were after was not actually a drug but a natural hormone. Cortisone is one of the many hormones made by the adrenal glands, two small organs that lie atop the kidneys. Small amounts of cortisone are always circulating in the bloodstream, controlling the body's responses to stress and inflammation, but much larger doses of cortisone were needed to relieve the symptoms of arthritis. Julian hoped to make cortisone from soybeans, just as he had the sex hormones. Like progesterone, cortisone had the same four interlocking rings of carbon known as the steroid nucleus, but cortisone has an unusual feature: one of its oxygen atoms is in what chemists call position 11. Julian set out to make cortisone by first synthesizing an almost identical compound called Reichstein's Substance S, or Compound S. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Look at the two formulae. Compound S differs from cortisone by one lone little oxygen atom. And it couldn't possibly be so strikingly different in properties, I thought. And if it is, why in the devil, did nature have to put so much in the adrenal glands? Well, if you really think nature is smart, your guess would be that it's there as a reservoir from which the adrenals can make cortisone as the body needs it, by simply sticking in this one oxygen atom. NARRATOR: Julian hoped to convert Compound S into cortisone, as the body does, but he knew that inserting that one oxygen atom in exactly the right place would not be a simple matter. GREGORY PETSKO: In the body, there's a special enzyme that knows how to do this, and does it, very elegantly, in a simple reaction. But to do this chemically, in the lab, in large quantities, was fiendishly difficult. DAGMAR RINGE: In the laboratory, in order to add any atom to this carbon atom requires severe conditions, high heat, high pressure, very reactive reagents that will attack this atom. The difficulty with those conditions is that they will attack every other carbon atom on this skeleton as well. GREGORY PETSKO: You want to put the oxygen only in that position. It doesn't do you any good to put it there if, simultaneously, you put it somewhere else where it's not supposed to be. NARRATOR: Chemists across the world faced the same challenge. Whatever material they started with, plant or animal, they had to find a way to insert that one oxygen atom into just the right position. This was the single biggest obstacle to making cortisone. As Julian struggled to find a solution, Glidden executives were losing patience with his Compound S approach. GREGORY PETSKO: It's hard to read another chemist's mind, but I think that Julian probably knew that this was so close to the final structure of cortisone, that if he could make Substance S in large quantities, inexpensively, he would, eventually, or someone would, eventually, find a way to insert that troublesome oxygen into the 11 position, because that was the only remaining step needed to convert that substance into the full-blown hormone, cortisone. NARRATOR: But the problem of inserting that one oxygen atom continued to frustrate chemists for more than two years. The cortisone shortage became a crisis, as the price topped $4,000 an ounce, one hundred times the price of gold. CHARLES PLOTZ: I would get requests from all over the country, "Can't you get me some cortisone? Can't you get me a little cortisone for me? For my aunt? For my patient?" And I couldn't get it, for me or for anybody. NARRATOR: Finally, in the summer of 1951, four teams of chemists announced they had found new ways to make cortisone. The winners included teams from Harvard, Merck and Syntex. CARL DJERASSI: We got an enormous amount of publicity, including LIFE magazine and places like this, and that put Syntex on the scientific map. NARRATOR: But the chemists' glory was short-lived. Six months later, they were upstaged by a surprising discovery from scientists at Upjohn, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. V/O (Film Clip) : From laboratories in Michigan comes the new process for making unlimited quantities of cortisone. CARL DJERASSI: That bubble of conceit and pride and pleasure was completely punctured, when we discovered there were these yokels in Kalamazoo who, in one step, did something that took us 15 steps—very clever steps—to do. NARRATOR: These so-called "yokels" had discovered a common mold that could effortlessly insert an oxygen atom into the 11 position. GREGORY PETSKO: Upjohn figured out that they could do it by a fermentation process. In other words, it wasn't done in a chemistry lab at all. It was done by a microorganism that possessed an enzyme that was capable, just like the human body is capable, of attaching an oxygen in exactly the right place. NARRATOR: Upjohn's discovery was the breakthrough that would end the cortisone shortage. Its mold could work its oxygen-inserting magic on a range of steroid materials, including Julian's Compound S. GREGORY PETSKO: All of a sudden, Substance S was very important. This compound, that didn't have any particular important biological activities of its own, became ideal as a starting material to produce cortisone. And Julian was sitting on the process to make that. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Many well-meaning people have exaggerated my contribution to the chemistry of the cortisone family of drugs. I've even read somewhere that I was "the discoverer of cortisone." Not so. But we made a good choice, indeed, in choosing to synthesize Compound S as our first endeavor. Cortisone could now be made from Compound S simply by dumping it into a tank, throwing in a microorganism and fishing out cortisone after the organism has done its work. NARRATOR: But Julian's Compound S was not the only material Upjohn's mold could transform into cortisone. CARL DJERASSI: Suddenly, Upjohn came to Syntex—I still remember, because I was there—and said, "Would you quote us the cost of progesterone at a ton level." Well, we were completely flabbergasted. At that time, still, the world demand was a few hundred kilos. NARRATOR: The request could mean only one thing: Upjohn had decided to produce cortisone from progesterone made by Syntex, not from Julian's Compound S. Syntex had a big advantage: its starting material, the Mexican yam, was a richer source of steroids than the soybean, so cortisone made this way was cheaper. But other companies were also gearing up to produce cortisone. Julian could still win their business, if he abandoned soybeans and made Compound S from the Mexican yam. But when Julian appealed to Glidden's chairman to make the switch, the answer was, "No." PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I begged him to hold on; we could set up a simple yam processing plant in Mexico, and with Glidden's influence we could soon be masters of the field. But he had other plans for me in paint and varnish chemistry, new paint to prevent icing on airplane propellers, new shortenings that didn't spatter. JOHN KENLY SMITH: I think the steroid work that Julian was doing was just one of those little businesses that no longer were seen as important to the company and its future direction. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : They sent me to Europe, for a vacation, to forget about it. And, on my return, the chairman announced that Glidden was going out of the steroid business altogether. HELEN PRINTY: This was a blow to the heart of Doc. And he said he didn't know whether he'd be able to stand that, because if there was no steroid research, there was nothing that he could really interest himself in. NARRATOR: Joyce licensed Compound S to Pfizer and Syntex and ordered Julian to teach their chemists how to use the process he'd invented. HELEN PRINTY: And things just kept getting worse and worse and worse, until finally it just became untenable for him. NARRATOR: In late 1953, Percy Julian walked away from the job into which he'd put the most productive years of his life. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And when I left Glidden, I left behind 109 patents, for which I received $109 and other valuable considerations. NARRATOR: One of those patents was for Compound S. Just as Julian predicted, it went on to become a key ingredient in the production of cortisone, helping to make the drug available to millions at a reasonable price. GREGORY PETSKO: The fact that Julian could do what he did, while working in a paint company, strikes me as just remarkable. He didn't just do these things because glory would be his, if he succeeded. There always is, in Julian's work, this sense of aiming for something big, because it's going to be useful for people. NARRATOR: But to fulfill his ambition Julian would now have to reinvent himself as a businessman in one of the most cutthroat industries in America. Within a few months Julian was back on his feet as president of his own chemical company in Franklin Park, outside Chicago. HELEN PRINTY: We had left the Glidden Company and moved out to this place that was loaded with rats and mice and everything else. You couldn't eat your lunch without a mouse coming out. PETER WALTON: Working conditions, I guess, would be considered primitive. NARRATOR: But for Julian it was the chance of a lifetime. After 18 years at Glidden, he was his own boss, free to focus on work that excited him. His plan for success was simple: Julian Laboratories would make steroid intermediates, compounds that were often just one step short of a finished product. The big pharmaceutical companies would buy them, because Julian could make them faster and cheaper than they could. From his old friends at Upjohn, Julian quickly landed a contract for $2 million worth of progesterone. More business followed from Ciba, Pfizer, Merck and others. There was just one obstacle: Syntex, the Mexican company that now dominated the hormone business. Syntex controlled the supply of the Mexican yam, or barbasco, root. Julian needed an extract from the root to make his intermediates cheaply, but Syntex refused to sell him any. It was a setback that threatened the company. PETER WALTON: Having put it all on the line with these major pharmaceutical companies, he had to deliver the goods, had to. NARRATOR: To get around Syntex, Julian would have to build his own $300,000 barbasco processing plant in Mexico. PETER WALTON: Dr. Julian didn't have the necessary capital himself. The conventional...normal banking sources were off limits to people of color, period. NARRATOR: Using personal savings and money from friends and private investors, Julian was able to build the plant. But then, another roadblock: the Mexican government, closely tied to Syntex, refused him a permit to harvest the barbasco root. His expensive Mexican factory was useless. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And there we stood, with our beautiful plant, our beautifully lighted water tower with Laboratorios de Julian de Mexico emblazoned on it, a mausoleum. I sat in a hotel in Mexico City wondering whether I should shoot my brains out. PETER WALTON: There was enormous pressure on Dr. Julian, because the financial stakes were huge, were huge. He had everything invested, between Franklin Park and Mexico, and so this was a pressure, pressure time. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : And then a strange thing happened. There was a knock on the door, and in came a man named Abraham Zlotnik, a man that I had helped out of Hitler's Germany. Abe said he was sure the yam grew in Guatemala, and he volunteered to make an expedition for me. I told him I was broke, ruined. I didn't know when I could pay him back. But he said, "You've already paid me back." NARRATOR: Zlotnik was as good as his word. His expedition found the barbasco root in Guatemala. Julian now had the raw material he needed to achieve his goal: making steroid drugs available to all who needed them. JAMES LETTON: He always talked about being able to lower the cost of some of these anti-inflammatory agents, these steroids, so that the common man could buy them. NARRATOR: Even if it meant lower profits for Julian Laboratories. One year his chemists found a way to quadruple the yield on a product on which they were barely breaking even. JAMES LETTON: I thought, personally, that that was a good opportunity to recover some profits from the low yields of the previous year. Instead, he dropped the price of this stuff from $4,000 a kilo down to about $400 a kilo. And I couldn't understand why he would do that. HELEN PRINTY: He wanted to make money, but he also wanted things to be available for people. NARRATOR: Much of Julian's own money was still tied up in his idle Mexican plant. To make good on that investment he would have to resolve some unfinished business with an old rival. V/O MAN (Senate Hearing Dramatization) : Would Dr. Percy Julian come forward? NARRATOR: Julian believed Syntex had used its influence with the Mexican government to keep his factory from opening. After other American companies made similar charges, the Senate held public hearings in 1956. Julian was the star witness. HOLLABAUGH (Senate Hearing Dramatization) : Was there any company in Mexico objecting to your getting a permit? PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : It became very evident that the Syntex Company was objecting to the permit. In fact, Dr. Somlo told me he would fight to the last to keep me and anyone else out of Mexico. NARRATOR: As a result of the "wonder drug" hearings, the Justice Department took action against Syntex. Julian was finally able to open his Mexican plant, but the mounting pressures of running a business left him little time to savor the hard-won victory. Every month there were shipments to make and severe financial penalties for missed deadlines. PETER WALTON: We lived, for the most part, in a highly stressed, very competitive environment—a small company, limited resources, and dealing with a huge industry. EARL DAILEY (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : There were many occasions where 2, 3:00 in the morning would come, and you'd still be in the laboratory, working. PETER WALTON: When I complained about the lack of sleep, Dr. Julian advised me that sleep could be dangerous for my health. I could die in my sleep, and "while you're contemplating that, go back out to the plant and continue to work. We have a shipment to get out." JAMES LETTON: But there was an unusual sense of loyalty that made people work and want to see him and the company successful. How else could you get a crew to work 24 hours a day? This sort of thing. NARRATOR: And successful it was. Julian Laboratories would eventually make its founder a millionaire, one of the wealthiest black businessmen in America. For his chemists, the reward was an opportunity hard to find anywhere else: a chance to work in their chosen field. JAMES LETTON: When I was looking for a job, some people made excuses, and then there were some that just said, "We don't hire you people." TOM WEST (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : They told me that I was too well qualified to take a job. I felt that they were saying, "Come back maybe another time. Come back when you're white." NARRATOR: Scores of chemists, unwelcome elsewhere, would use their years with Julian as a springboard to careers in industry and academia. PETER WALTON: I'm proud to say that our laboratories in Franklin Park employed more black chemists than any other facility in America. On the other hand, for such a small organization to have such a significant role in true integration is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in America. NARRATOR: Outside Julian's lab, America was still a nation divided by race, and Julian was constantly reminded of it, even at meetings of the American Chemical Society. EDWARD MEYER (Glidden Chemist) : When we went to the meeting he said, "Ed, grab me by the arm, when we go in, so people will know that we're together." Because he was afraid they'd...being a black man, they'd throw him out. NARRATOR: Neither wealth nor fame could insulate Julian from bigotry. But with success came the chance to do something about it. Increasingly, he set aside his science to fight for racial equality. He joined the NAACP and the Urban League in their battle against discrimination in jobs and housing. He led a national fundraising campaign to support civil rights lawyers. And in speech after speech, he preached that education and the pursuit of excellence, the hallmarks of his own life, were the keys to black advancement. But many younger African Americans were impatient with traditional tactics and rejected the sermons of Julian's generation. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Our children and our grandchildren saw all of this and suffered for their oft-times "Uncle Tom" parents who seemed to be doing nothing about it. Finally, their pent up agony exploded on us. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: I would say, "Explain this to me: how is it that this is all going to change?" He would say, "Well, it will. There are lawyers, and they are going to fight for change. And if you set an example, things will change." Well, I don't have forever. NARRATOR: In the1960s, Julian's son drove to Nashville to join the effort to desegregate the city's lunch counters. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: On the one hand, he was very proud, but on the other, he was very scared. One time he said to me, "You know, this is not a game. These people are playing for real." And my response was, "So are we." NARRATOR: The '60s were an awakening for Julian. He came to see that the nation could not afford to wait for the old ways to work. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : For more than a century, since the end of slavery, we have watched the denial of elemental liberty to millions of black people in our southland. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: I think he saw that things were moving so fast, that if the country didn't change, there was going to be serious, serious trouble. NARRATOR: By the late 1960s, Julian had come to support the more confrontational tactics of his son's generation. PERCY JULIAN, JR.: My father wrote, later, it wasn't going to be enough just to be a model citizen, to be educated, to do all the things that anybody could possibly expect of you, because none of that would ever change the fact that you still couldn't go and eat in a restaurant that didn't want to serve you. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : Branded, first, unfit to spend their money for food or drink in public places along with other Americans; denied the ballot and confined to ghettoes that stifled hope and ambition, victims of murder of the mind, heart and spirit: this is the story of the American Negro. NARRATOR: Percy Julian's own story now entered its final chapter. Born in 1899, he was now in his 70s and a proud grandfather. KATHERINE JULIAN, M.D. (Percy Julian's Granddaughter) : I definitely was aware that my grandfather was special. I remember playing with a doll that had been sent to him by a woman, and the story was told me why it had been sent. She had such bad arthritis that she couldn't use her hands. And after using cortisone, she was able to knit this doll and sent it to him. And I remember holding the doll and playing with the doll, and realizing that he had helped her, and that that was something that was really special. NARRATOR: For his contributions to humanity, Julian received 18 honorary degrees and more than a dozen civic and scientific awards. BERNHARD WITKOP: There was hardly any college that didn't try to honor itself by naming Percy Julian as an honorary Ph.D., because that was the time when people tried to make up for past injustice. NARRATOR: Julian's longtime friend Bernhard Witkop envisioned a higher honor. He secretly began a campaign to elect Julian to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. It was an uphill battle. BERNHARD WITKOP: We had, sometimes, prejudicial talk in the Academy, by old timers. Some were very famous people and Nobel laureates who couldn't get used to the new situation. NARRATOR: Witkop persisted, and in 1973, Julian received an unexpected phone call from the Academy's home secretary. BERNHARD WITKOP: He said, "Sir, may I inform you that you have just been elected a member of the National Academy. Congratulations." NARRATOR: Julian was only the second African American to be elected. It was the crowning recognition of 40 years of chemical research. NED HEINDEL: If you look at Percy Julian's career, you can say, if this man had not been black, he could have been a chaired professor at any Ivy or Big Ten institution. The breadth of his understanding of chemistry, and his fire in the belly to produce so many results in such a short period of time, this is Nobel Laureate stuff. NARRATOR: Looking back in the autobiography he would never finish, Julian offered his own assessment of his life in science. PERCY JULIAN (Dramatization) : I feel that my own good country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through. Instead, I took a job where I could get one and tried to make the best of it. I have been, perhaps, a good chemist, but not the chemist that I dreamed of being. NARRATOR: In April 1975, a week after his 76th birthday, Percy Julian died of cancer. His pallbearers included the chemists who had been his friends and colleagues. Every year, the U.S. Postal Service issues a commemorative stamp to honor an African American leader. In 1993, the choice was Percy Julian. HELEN PRINTY: As a human being, I think that he was a source of inspiration to many, many, many people. NARRATOR: In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian's synthesis of the glaucoma drug physostigmine as one of the top 25 achievements in the history of American chemistry. The plaque is housed in the new Percy Julian Science Center at DePauw. GREGORY ROBINSON: For him to have accomplished what he did, with the resources that he had, is still amazing. NARRATOR: Across the world today, millions of people benefit from steroid medications based on the chemistry of plants. Some of these drugs are still made from soybeans, using chemical steps much like those Percy Julian pioneered. GREGORY PETSKO: Here was a man who not only had to overcome the disadvantages of his race, but who, throughout his entire life, was in a situation that was never ideal for doing the big things he was trying to do. Looking over his life, one has a sense that here is a man of great determination. And it's a determination not just to succeed, but a determination to make a difference, to make a contribution. JAMES ANDERSON: His story is really a contradictory one; it's two stories. It is a story of great accomplishments, of heroic efforts and overcoming tremendous odds. But it's also a story of talent squandered, of potential stifled. It's a story about this country. It's a story about who we are and what we stand for, and the challenges that have been there, and the challenges that are still with us. url https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/forgotten-genius/ teachers materials https://web.archive.org/web/20070302111834/http://www.teachersdomain.org/exhibits/pj07-ex/index.html

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THE 1805 CONSTITUTION OF HAITI SECOND CONSTITUTION OF HAITI (HAYTI) MAY 20, 1805. PROMULGATED BY EMPEROR JACQUES I (DESSALINES) The document below was printed in the New York Evening Post, July 15, 1805. It was transcribed into the version below by Bob Corbett on April 4, 1999. I did not translate it, only transcribed. It was printed in 1805 in English. There is no mention in the newspaper who translated it. But, given that Henri Christophe was involved in the publication and that he had a strong liking of English, perhaps he is responsible. Unless American English has changed in this regard, I suspect a British translator given the use of "colour" and "honour" in the document. It is not the complete constitution, but close. Articles 40-44 are absent. The document mentions that these are "interior regulations respecting the ministries," otherwise it is all here. I have followed the published document in all capitalization and grammar and noted a few spelling oddities. The Constitution, Haiti's second, was promulgated on May 20, 1805. The reader should note that at this time the entire island of Hispaniola was under the rule of Haiti (Hayti), thus the mention of islands that are today part of the Dominican Republic. The original newspaper is in the library of Bob Corbett. ============================ CONSTITUTION OF HAYTI We, H. Christophe, Clerveaux, Vernet, Gabart, Petion, Geffard, Toussaint, Brave, Raphael, Roamin, Lalondridie, Capoix, Magny, Daut, Conge, Magloire, Ambrose, Yayou, Jean Louis Franchois, Gerin, Mereau, Fervu, Bavelais, Martial Besse… As well in our name as in that of the people of Hayti, who have legally constituted us faithfully organs and interpreters of their will, in presence of the Supreme Being, before whom all mankind are equal, and who has scattered so many species of creatures on the surface of the earth for the purpose of manifesting his glory and his power by the diversity of his works, in the presence of all nature by whom we have been so unjustly and for so long a time considered as outcast children. Do declare that the tenor of the present constitution is the free spontaneous and invariable expression of our hearts, and the general will of our constituents, and we submit it to the sanction of H.M. the Emperor Jacques Dessalines our deliverer, to receive its speedy and entire execution. Preliminary Declaration. Art. 1. The people inhabiting the island formerly called St. Domingo, hereby agree to form themselves into a free state sovereign and independent of any other power in the universe, under the name of empire of Hayti. 2. Slavery is forever abolished. 3. The Citizens of Hayti are brothers at home; equality in the eyes of the law is incontestably acknowledged, and there cannot exist any titles, advantages, or privileges, other than those necessarily resulting from the consideration and reward of services rendered to liberty and independence. 4. The law is the same to all, whether it punishes, or whether it protects. 5. The law has no retroactive effect. 6. Property is sacred, its violation shall be severely prosecuted. 7. The quality of citizen of Hayti is lost by emigration and naturalization in foreign countries and condemnation to corporal or disgrace punishments. The fist case carries with it the punishment of death and confiscation of property. 8. The quality of Citizen is suspended in consequence of bankruptcies and failures. 9. No person is worth of being a Haitian who is not a good father, good son, a good husband, and especially a good soldier. 10. Fathers and mothers are not permitted to disinherit their children. 11. Every Citizen must possess a mechanic art. 12. No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein. 13. The preceding article cannot in the smallest degree affect white woman who have been naturalized Haytians by Government, nor does it extend to children already born, or that may be born of the said women. The Germans and Polanders naturalized by government are also comprized (sic) in the dispositions of the present article. 14. All acception (sic) of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks. Of the Empire 15. The Empire of Hayti is one and indivisible. Its territory is distributed into six military divisions. 16. Each military division shall be commanded by a general of division. 17. These generals of division shall be independent of one another, and shall correspond directly with the Emperor, or with the general in chief appointed by his Majesty. 18. The following Islands are integral parts of the Empire, viz. Samana, La Tortue, La Gonave, Les Cayemites, La Saone, L'Isle a Vache, and other adjacent islands. Of the Government 19. The Government of Hayti is entrusted to a first Magistrate, who assumes the title of Emperor and commander in chief of the army. 20. The people acknowledge for Emperor and Commander in Chief of the Army, Jacques Dessalines, the avenger and deliverer of his fellow citizens. The title of Majesty is conferred upon him, as well as upon his august spouse, the Empress. 21. The person of their Majesties are sacred and inviolable. 22. The State will appropriate a fixed annual allowance to her Majesty the Empress, which she will continue to enjoy even after the decease of the Emperor, as princess dowager. 23. The crown is elective not hereditary. 24. There shall be assigned by the state an annual income to the children acknowledge by his Majesty the Emperor. 25. The male children acknowledged by the Emperor shall be obliged, in the same manner as other citizens, to pass successively from grade to grade, with this only difference, that their entrance into service shall begin at the fourth demi brigade, from the period of their birth. 26. The Emperor designates, in the manner he may judge expedient, the person who is to be his successor either before or after his death. 27. A suitable provision shall be made by the state to that successor from the moment of his accession to the throne. 28. The Emperor, and his successors, shall in no case and under no pretext whatsoever, have the right of attacking to their persons any particular or privileged body, whether as guards of honour, or under any other denomination. 29. Every successor deviating from the dispositions of the preceding article, or from the principles consecrated in the present constitution shall be considered and declared in a state of warfare against the society. In such a case, the counselors of state will assemble in order to pronounce his removal, and to chose one among themselves who shall be judged the most worthy of replacing him; and if it should happen that the said successor oppose the execution of this measure, authorized by law, the Generals, counselor of state, shall appeal to the people and the army, who will immediately give their whole strength and assistance to maintain Liberty. 30. The Emperor makes seals and promulgates the laws; appoints and revokes at will, the Ministers, the General in Chief for the Army, the Counselors of State, the Generals and other agents of the Empire, the sea offices, the members of the local administrations, the Commissaries of Government near the Tribunals, the judges, and other public functionaries. 31. The Emperor directs the receipts and expenditures of the State, Surveys the Mint of which he alone orders the emission, and fixes the weight and the model. 32. To him alone is reserved the power of making peace or war, to maintain political intercourse, and to form treaties. 33. He provides for the interior safety and for the defense of the State: and distributes at pleasure the sea and land forces. 34. In case of conspiracies manifesting themselves against the safety of the state, against the constitution, or against his person, the Emperor shall cause the authors or accomplices to be arrested and tried before a special Council. 35. His Majesty has alone the right to absolve a criminal and commute his punishment. 36. The Emperor shall never form any enterprize (sic) with the views of making conquests, nor to disturb the peace and interior administration of foreign colonies. 37. Every public act shall be made in these terms: "THE EMPEROR I. OF HAYTI, AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ARMY BY THE GRACE OF GOD, AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF THE STATE." Of the Council of State. 38. The Generals of Division and of Brigade, are of right members of the Council of State, and they compose it. Of the Ministers 39. There shall be in the Empire two ministers and a secretary of state. The ministers of finances having the department of the interior, and the minister of war having the marine department. 40-44. [Interior regulations respecting the ministry.] Of the Tribunals. 45. No one can interfere with the right which every individual has of being judged amicably by arbitrators of his own choosing whose decisions shall be acknowledged legal. 46. There shall be a justice of peace in each commune. Any suit amounting to more than one hundred dollars shall not come within his cognizance. And when the parties cannot conciliate themselves at his tribunal, they may appeal to the tribunals of their respective districts. 47. There shall be six tribunals established in the cities hereafter designated, viz. At St. Marc, at the Cape, at Port au Prince, Aux Cayes, Lanse-a-Vaux, and Port-de-Paix… The Emperor determines their organization, their number, their competence and the territory forming the district of each. These tribunals take cognizance of all affairs purely civil. 48. Military crimes are submitted to special councils and to particular forms of judgement. 49. Particular laws shall be made for the national transactions, and respecting the civil officers of the state. Of Worship 50. The law admits of no predominant religion. 51. The freedom of worship is tolerated. 52. The state does not provide for the maintenance of any religious institution, nor or any minister. Of the Administration 53. There shall be in each military division a principal administration, whose organization and inspection belongs essentially to the minister of finances. General Dispositions. Act. 1. To the Emperor and Empress belong the choice, the salary, and the maintenance of the persons composing their court. 2. After the decease of the reigning Emperor, when a revision of the constitution shall have been judged necessary, the council of state will assemble for that purpose, and shall be presided by the oldest member. 3. The crimes of high treason, the dilapidations of the ministers and generals shall be judged by a special council called and presided by the emperor. 4. The armed force is essentially obedient: no armed body can deliberate. 5. No person shall be judged without having been legally heard in his defense. 6. The house of every citizen is an inviolable asylum. 7. It cannot be entered but in case of conflagration, inundation, reclamation from the interior, or by virtue of an order from the emperor, or from any other authority legally constituted. 8. He deserves death who gives it to his fellow. 9. Every judgment to which the pain of death or corporal punishment is annexed shall not be carried into execution until it has been confirmed by the emperor. 10. Theft shall be punished according to the circumstances which may have preceded, accompanied or followed it. 11. Every stranger inhabiting the territory of Hayti shall be, equally with the Haytians, subject to the correctional and criminal laws of the country. 12. All property which formerly belonged to any white Frenchmen, is incontestably and of right confiscated to the use of the state. 13. Every Haytian, who, having purchased property from a white Frenchman, may have paid part of the purchase money stipulated in the act of sale, shall be responsible to the domains of the state for the remainder of the sum due. 14. Marriage is an act purely civil, and authorized by the government. 15. The law authorises (sic) divorce in all cases which shall have been previously provided for and determined. 16. A particular law shall be issued concerning children born out of wedlock. 17. Respect for the chiefs, subordination and discipline are rigorously necessary. 18. A penal code shall be published and severely observed. 19. Within each military division a public school shall be established for the instruction of youth. 20. The national colours shall be black and red. 21. Agriculture, as it is the first, the most noble, and the most useful of all the arts, shall be honored and protected. 22. Commerce, the second source of the prosperity of states, will not admit of any impediment; it ought to be favored and specially protected. 23. In each military division a tribunal of commerce shall be found, whose members shall be chosen by the Emperor from the class of merchants. 24. Good faith and integrity in commercial operations shall be religiously maintained. 25. The government assures safety and protections to neutral nations and friends who may be desirous of establishing a commercial intercourse with this island, they conforming to the regulations and customs of the country. 26. The counting houses and the merchandize of foreigners shall be under the safeguard and guarantee of the state. 27. There shall be national festivals for celebrating independence, the birth day of the emperor and his august spouse, that of agriculture and of the constitution. 28. At the first firing of the alarm gun, the cities will disappear and the nation rise. We, the undersigned, place under the safeguard of the magistrates, fathers and mothers of families, the citizens, and the army the explicit and solemn covenant of the sacred rights of man and the duties of the citizen. We recommend it to our successors, and present it to the friends of liberty, to philanthropists of all countries, as a signal pledge of the Divine Bounty, who in the course of his immortal decrees, has given us an opportunity of breaking our fetters, and of constituting ourselves a people, free civilized and independent. Signed H. Christophe, & (as before) Having seen the present constitution: We, Jacques Dessalines, Emperor I of Hayti, and Commander in Chief of the Army, by the grace of God, and the constitutional law of the state, Accept it wholly and sanction it, that it may receive, with the least possible delay, its full and entire execution throughout the whole of our Empire. And we swear to maintain it and to cause it to be observed in it integrity to the last breath of our life. At the Imperial Palace of Dessalines, the 20th May 1805 second year of the Independence of Hayti, and of our reign the first. DESSALINES By the Emperor, Juste Chanlatte, Sec. Gen. URL http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm

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In a speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Scotland on March 26, 1860, Frederick Douglass outlines his views on the American Constitution. I proceed to the discussion. And first a word about the question. Much will be gained at the outset if we fully and clearly understand the real question under discussion. Indeed, nothing is or can be understood. This are often confounded and treated as the same, for no better reason than that they resemble each other, even while they are in their nature and character totally distinct and even directly opposed to each other. This jumbling up things is a sort of dust-throwing which is often indulged in by small men who argue for victory rather than for truth. Thus, for instance, the American Government and the American Constitution are spoken of in a manner which would naturally lead the hearer to believe that one is identical with the other; when the truth is, they are distinct in character as is a ship and a compass. The one may point right and the other steer wrong. A chart is one thing, the course of the vessel is another. The Constitution may be right, the Government is wrong. If the Government has been governed by mean, sordid, and wicked passions, it does not follow that the Constitution is mean, sordid, and wicked. What, then, is the question? I will state it. But first let me state what is not the question. It is not whether slavery existed in the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution; it is not whether slaveholders took part in the framing of the Constitution; it is not whether those slaveholders, in their hearts, intended to secure certain advantages in that instrument for slavery; it is not whether the American Government has been wielded during seventy-two years in favour of the propagation and permanence of slavery; it is not whether a pro-slavery interpretation has been put upon the Constitution by the American Courts — all these points may be true or they may be false, they may be accepted or they may be rejected, without in any wise affecting the real question in debate. The real and exact question between myself and the class of persons represented by the speech at the City Hall may be fairly stated thus: — 1st, Does the United States Constitution guarantee to any class or description of people in that country the right to enslave, or hold as property, any other class or description of people in that country? 2nd, Is the dissolution of the union between the slave and free States required by fidelity to the slaves, or by the just demands of conscience? Or, in other words, is the refusal to exercise the elective franchise, and to hold office in America, the surest, wisest, and best way to abolish slavery in America? To these questions the Garrisonians say Yes. They hold the Constitution to be a slaveholding instrument, and will not cast a vote or hold office, and denounce all who vote or hold office, no matter how faithfully such persons labour to promote the abolition of slavery. I, on the other hand, deny that the Constitution guarantees the right to hold property in man, and believe that the way to abolish slavery in America is to vote such men into power as well use their powers for the abolition of slavery. This is the issue plainly stated, and you shall judge between us. Before we examine into the disposition, tendency, and character of the Constitution, I think we had better ascertain what the Constitution itself is. Before looking for what it means, let us see what it is. Here, too, there is much dust to be cleared away. What, then, is the Constitution? I will tell you. It is not even like the British Constitution, which is made up of enactments of Parliament, decisions of Courts, and the established usages of the Government. The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people. I am careful to make this statement here; in America it would not be necessary. It would not be necessary here if my assailant had shown the same desire to be set before you the simple truth, which he manifested to make out a good case for himself and friends. Again, it should be borne in mind that the mere text, and only the text, and not any commentaries or creeds written by those who wished to give the text a meaning apart from its plain reading, was adopted as the Constitution of the United States. It should also be borne in mind that the intentions of those who framed the Constitution, be they good or bad, for slavery or against slavery, are so respected so far, and so far only, as we find those intentions plainly stated in the Constitution. It would be the wildest of absurdities, and lead to endless confusion and mischiefs, if, instead of looking to the written paper itself, for its meaning, it were attempted to make us search it out, in the secret motives, and dishonest intentions, of some of the men who took part in writing it. It was what they said that was adopted by the people, not what they were ashamed or afraid to say, and really omitted to say. Bear in mind, also, and the fact is an important one, that the framers of the Constitution sat with doors closed, and that this was done purposely, that nothing but the result of their labours should be seen, and that that result should be judged of by the people free from any of the bias shown in the debates. It should also be borne in mind, and the fact is still more important, that the debates in the convention that framed the Constitution, and by means of which a pro-slavery interpretation is now attempted to be forced upon that instrument, were not published till more than a quarter of a century after the presentation and the adoption of the Constitution. These debates were purposely kept out of view, in order that the people should adopt, not the secret motives or unexpressed intentions of any body, but the simple text of the paper itself. Those debates form no part of the original agreement. I repeat, the paper itself, and only the paper itself, with its own plainly written purposes, is the Constitution. It must stand or fall, flourish or fade, on its own individual and self-declared character and objects. Again, where would be the advantage of a written Constitution, if, instead of seeking its meaning in its words, we had to seek them in the secret intentions of individuals who may have had something to do with writing the paper? What will the people of America a hundred years hence care about the intentions of the scriveners who wrote the Constitution? These men are already gone from us, and in the course of nature were expected to go from us. They were for a generation, but the Constitution is for ages. Whatever we may owe to them, we certainly owe it to ourselves, and to mankind, and to God, to maintain the truth of our own language, and to allow no villainy, not even the villainy of holding men as slaves — which Wesley says is the sum of all villainies — to shelter itself under a fair-seeming and virtuous language. We owe it to ourselves to compel the devil to wear his own garments, and to make wicked laws speak out their wicked intentions. Common sense, and common justice, and sound rules of interpretation all drive us to the words of the law for the meaning of the law. The practice of the Government is dwelt upon with much fervour and eloquence as conclusive as to the slaveholding character of the Constitution. This is really the strong point and the only strong point, made in the speech in the City Hall. But good as this argument is, it is not conclusive. A wise man has said that few people have been found better than their laws, but many have been found worse. To this last rule America is no exception. Her laws are one thing, her practice is another thing. We read that the Jews made void the law by their tradition, that Moses permitted men to put away their wives because of the hardness of their hearts, but that this was not so at the beginning. While good laws will always be found where good practice prevails, the reverse does not always hold true. Far from it. The very opposite is often the case. What then? Shall we condemn the righteous law because wicked men twist it to the support of wickedness? Is that the way to deal with good and evil? Shall we blot out all distinction between them, and hand over to slavery all that slavery may claim on the score of long practice? Such is the course commended to us in the City Hall speech. After all, the fact that men go out of the Constitution to prove it pro-slavery, whether that going out is to the practice of the Government, or to the secret intentions of the writers of the paper, the fact that they do go out is very significant. It is a powerful argument on my side. It is an admission that the thing for which they are looking is not to be found where only it ought to be found, and that is in the Constitution itself. If it is not there, it is nothing to the purpose, be it wheresoever else it may be. But I shall have no more to say on this point hereafter. The very eloquent lecturer at the City Hall doubtless felt some embarrassment from the fact that he had literally to give the Constitution a pro-slavery interpretation; because upon its face it of itself conveys no such meaning, but a very opposite meaning. He thus sums up what he calls the slaveholding provisions of the Constitution. I quote his own words: — “Article 1, section 9, provides for the continuance of the African slave trade for the 20 years, after the adoption of the Constitution. Art. 4, section 9, provides for the recovery from the other States of fugitive slaves. Art. 1, section 2, gives the slave States a representation of the three-fifths of all the slave population; and Art. 1, section 8, requires the President to use the military, naval, ordnance, and militia resources of the entire country for the suppression of slave insurrection, in the same manner as he would employ them to repel invasion.” Now any man reading this statement, or hearing it made with such a show of exactness, would unquestionably suppose that he speaker or writer had given the plain written text of the Constitution itself. I can hardly believe that the intended to make any such impression. It would be a scandalous imputation to say he did. Any yet what are we to make of it? How can we regard it? How can he be screened from the charge of having perpetrated a deliberate and point-blank misrepresentation? That individual has seen fit to place himself before the public as my opponent, and yet I would gladly find some excuse for him. I do not wish to think as badly of him as this trick of his would naturally lead me to think. Why did he not read the Constitution? Why did he read that which was not the Constitution? He pretended to be giving chapter and verse, section and clause, paragraph and provision. The words of the Constitution were before him. Why then did he not give you the plain words of the Constitution? Oh, sir, I fear that the gentleman knows too well why he did not. It so happens that no such words as “African slave trade,” no such words as “slave insurrections,” are anywhere used in that instrument. These are the words of that orator, and not the words of the Constitution of the United States. Now you shall see a slight difference between my manner of treating this subject and what which my opponent has seen fit, for reasons satisfactory to himself, to pursue. What he withheld, that I will spread before you: what he suppressed, I will bring to light: and what he passed over in silence, I will proclaim: that you may have the whole case before you, and not be left to depend upon either his, or upon my inferences or testimony. Here then are several provisions of the Constitution to which reference has been made. I read them word for word just as they stand in the paper, called the United States Constitution, Art. I, sec. 2. “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included in this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons; Art. I, sec. 9. The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think fit to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding tend dollars for each person; Art. 4, sec. 2. No person held to service or labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from service or labour; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due; Art. I, sec. 8. To provide for calling for the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.” Here then, are those provisions of the Constitution, which the most extravagant defenders of slavery can claim to guarantee a right of property in man. These are the provisions which have been pressed into the service of the human fleshmongers of America. Let us look at them just as they stand, one by one. Let us grant, for the sake of the argument, that the first of these provisions, referring to the basis of representation and taxation, does refer to slaves. We are not compelled to make that admission, for it might fairly apply to aliens — persons living in the country, but not naturalized. But giving the provisions the very worse construction, what does it amount to? I answer — It is a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding States; one which deprives those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representation. A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State, as a basis of political power under the Constitution. Therefore, instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encourages freedom by giving an increase of “two-fifths” of political power to free over slave States. So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote. I come to the next, that which it is said guaranteed the continuance of the African slave trade for twenty years. I will also take that for just what my opponent alleges it to have been, although the Constitution does not warrant any such conclusion. But, to be liberal, let us suppose it did, and what follows? Why, this — that this part of the Constitution, so far as the slave trade is concerned, became a dead letter more than 50 years ago, and now binds no man’s conscience for the continuance of any slave trade whatsoever. Mr. Thompson is just 52 years too late in dissolving the Union on account of this clause. He might as well dissolve the British Government, because Queen Elizabeth granted to Sir John Hawkins to import Africans into the West Indies 300 years ago! But there is still more to be said about this abolition of the slave trade. Men, at that time, both in England and in America, looked upon the slave trade as the life of slavery. The abolition of the slave trade was supposed to be the certain death of slavery. Cut off the stream, and the pond will dry up, was the common notion at the time. Wilberforce and Clarkson, clear-sighted as they were, took this view; and the American statesmen, in providing for the abolition of the slave trade, thought they were providing for the abolition of the slavery. This view is quite consistent with the history of the times. All regarded slavery as an expiring and doomed system, destined to speedily disappear from the country. But, again, it should be remembered that this very provision, if made to refer to the African slave trade at all, makes the Constitution anti-slavery rather than for slavery; for it says to the slave States, the price you will have to pay for coming into the American Union is, that the slave trade, which you would carry on indefinitely out of the Union, shall be put an end to in twenty years if you come into the Union. Secondly, if it does apply, it expired by its own limitation more than fifty years ago. Thirdly, it is anti-slavery, because it looked to the abolition of slavery rather than to its perpetuity. Fourthly, it showed that the intentions of the framers of the Constitution were good, not bad. I think this is quite enough for this point. I go to the “slave insurrection” clause, though, in truth, there is no such clause. The one which is called so has nothing whatever to do with slaves or slaveholders any more than your laws for suppression of popular outbreaks has to do with making slaves of you and your children. It is only a law for suppression of riots or insurrections. But I will be generous here, as well as elsewhere, and grant that it applies to slave insurrections. Let us suppose that an anti-slavery man is President of the United States (and the day that shall see this the case is not distant) and this very power of suppressing slave insurrections would put an end to slavery. The right to put down an insurrection carries with it the right to determine the means by which it shall be put down. If it should turn out that slavery is a source of insurrection, that there is no security from insurrection while slavery lasts, why, the Constitution would be best obeyed by putting an end to slavery, and an anti-slavery Congress would do the very same thing. Thus, you see, the so-called slave-holding provisions of the American Constitution, which a little while ago looked so formidable, are, after all, no defence or guarantee for slavery whatever. But there is one other provision. This is called the “Fugitive Slave Provision.” It is called so by those who wish to make it subserve the interest of slavery in America, and the same by those who wish to uphold the views of a party in this country. It is put thus in the speech at the City Hall: — “Let us go back to 1787, and enter Liberty Hall, Philadelphia, where sat in convention the illustrious men who framed the Constitution — with George Washington in the chair. On the 27th of September, Mr. Butler and Mr. Pinckney, two delegates from the State of South Carolina, moved that the Constitution should require that fugitive slaves and servants should be delivered up like criminals, and after a discussion on the subject, the clause, as it stands in the Constitution, was adopted. After this, in the conventions held in the several States to ratify the Constitution, the same meaning was attached to the words. For example, Mr. Madison (afterwards President), when recommending the Constitution to his constituents, told them that the clause would secure them their property in slaves.” I must ask you to look well to this statement. Upon its face, it would seem a full and fair statement of the history of the transaction it professes to describe and yet I declare unto you, knowing as I do the facts in the case, my utter amazement at the downright untruth conveyed under the fair seeming words now quoted. The man who could make such a statement may have all the craftiness of a lawyer, but who can accord to him the candour of an honest debater? What could more completely destroy all confidence in his statements? Mark you, the orator had not allowed his audience to hear read the provision of the Constitution to which he referred. He merely characterized it as one to “deliver up fugitive slaves and servants like criminals,” and tells you that this was done “after discussion.” But he took good care not to tell you what was the nature of that discussion. He have would have spoiled the whole effect of his statement had he told you the whole truth. Now, what are the facts connected with this provision of the Constitution? You shall have them. It seems to take two men to tell the truth. It is quite true that Mr. Butler and Mr. Pinckney introduced a provision expressly with a view to the recapture of fugitive slaves: it is quite true also that there was some discussion on the subject — and just here the truth shall come out. These illustrious kidnappers were told promptly in that discussion that no such idea as property in man should be admitted into the Constitution. The speaker in question might have told you, and he would have told you but the simple truth, if he had told you that he proposition of Mr. Butler and Mr. Pinckney — which he leads you to infer was adopted by the convention that from the Constitution — was, in fact, promptly and indignantly rejected by that convention. He might have told you, had it suited his purpose to do so, that the words employed in the first draft of the fugitive slave clause were such as applied to the condition of slaves, and expressly declared that persons held to “servitude” should be given up; but that the word “servitude” was struck from the provision, for the very reason that it applied to slaves. He might have told you that the same Mr. Madison declared that the word was struck out because the convention would not consent that the idea of property in men should be admitted into the Constitution. The fact that Mr. Madison can be cited on both sides of this question is another evidence of the folly and absurdity of making the secret intentions of the framers the criterion by which the Constitution is to be construed. But it may be asked — if this clause does not apply to slaves, to whom does it apply? I answer, that when adopted, it applies to a very large class of persons — namely, redemptioners — persons who had come to America from Holland, from Ireland, and other quarters of the globe — like the Coolies to the West Indies — and had, for a consideration duly paid, become bound to “serve and labour” for the parties two whom their service and labour was due. It applies to indentured apprentices and others who have become bound for a consideration, under contract duly made, to serve and labour, to such persons this provision applies, and only to such persons. The plain reading of this provision shows that it applies, and that it can only properly and legally apply, to persons “bound to service.” Its object plainly is, to secure the fulfillment of contracts for “service and labour.” It applies to indentured apprentices, and any other persons from whom service and labour may be due. The legal condition of the slave puts him beyond the operation of this provision. He is not described in it. He is a simple article of property. He does not owe and cannot owe service. He cannot even make a contract. It is impossible for him to do so. He can no more make such a contract than a horse or an ox can make one. This provision, then, only respects persons who owe service, and they only can owe service who can receive an equivalent and make a bargain. The slave cannot do that, and is therefore exempted from the operation of this fugitive provision. In all matters where laws are taught to be made the means of oppression, cruelty, and wickedness, I am for strict construction. I will concede nothing. It must be shown that it is so nominated in the bond. The pound of flesh, but not one drop of blood. The very nature of law is opposed to all such wickedness, and makes it difficult to accomplish such objects under the forms of law. Law is not merely an arbitrary enactment with regard to justice, reason, or humanity. Blackstone defines it to be a rule prescribed by the supreme power of the State commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong. The speaker at the City Hall laid down some rules of legal interpretation. These rules send us to the history of the law for its meaning. I have no objection to such a course in ordinary cases of doubt. But where human liberty and justice are at stake, the case falls under an entirely different class of rules. There must be something more than history — something more than tradition. The Supreme Court of the United States lays down this rule, and it meets the case exactly — “Where rights are infringed — where the fundamental principles of the law are overthrown — where the general system of the law is departed from, the legislative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness.” The same court says that the language of the law must be construed strictly in favour of justice and liberty. Again, there is another rule of law. It is — Where a law is susceptible of two meanings, the one making it accomplish an innocent purpose, and the other making it accomplish a wicked purpose, we must in all cases adopt that which makes it accomplish an innocent purpose. Again, the details of a law are to be interpreted in the light of the declared objects sought by the law. I set these rules down against those employed at the City Hall. To me they seem just and rational. I only ask you to look at the American Constitution in the light of them, and you will see with me that no man is guaranteed a right of property in man, under the provisions of that instrument. If there are two ideas more distinct in their character and essence than another, those ideas are “persons” and “property,” “men” and “things.” Now, when it is proposed to transform persons into “property” and men into beasts of burden, I demand that the law that completes such a purpose shall be expressed with irresistible clearness. The thing must not be left to inference, but must be done in plain English. I know how this view of the subject is treated by the class represented at the City Hall. They are in the habit of treating the Negro as an exception to general rules. When their own liberty is in question they will avail themselves of all rules of law which protect and defend their freedom; but when the black man’s rights are in question they concede everything, admit everything for slavery, and put liberty to the proof. They reserve the common law usage, and presume the Negro a slave unless he can prove himself free. I, on the other hand, presume him free unless he is proved to be otherwise. Let us look at the objects for which the Constitution was framed and adopted, and see if slavery is one of them. Here are its own objects as set forth by itself: — “We, the people of these United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” The objects here set forth are six in number: union, defence, welfare, tranquility, justice, and liberty. These are all good objects, and slavery, so far from being among them, is a foe of them all. But it has been said that Negroes are not included within the benefits sought under this declaration. This is said by the slaveholders in America — it is said by the City Hall orator — but it is not said by the Constitution itself. Its language is “we the people;” not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people; not we the horses, sheep, and swine, and wheel-barrows, but we the people, we the human inhabitants; and, if Negroes are people, they are included in the benefits for which the Constitution of America was ordained and established. But how dare any man who pretends to be a friend to the Negro thus gratuitously concede away what the Negro has a right to claim under the Constitution? Why should such friends invent new arguments to increase the hopelessness of his bondage? This, I undertake to say, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that the constitutionality of slavery can be made out only by disregarding the plain and common-sense reading of the Constitution itself; by discrediting and casting away as worthless the most beneficent rules of legal interpretation; by ruling the Negro outside of these beneficent rules; by claiming that the Constitution does not mean what it says, and that it says what it does not mean; by disregarding the written Constitution, and interpreting it in the light of a secret understanding. It is in this mean, contemptible, and underhand method that the American Constitution is pressed into the service of slavery. They go everywhere else for proof that the Constitution declares that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; it secures to every man the right of trial by jury, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus — the great writ that put an end to slavery and slave-hunting in England — and it secures to every State a republican form of government. Anyone of these provisions in the hands of abolition statesmen, and backed up by a right moral sentiment, would put an end to slavery in America. The Constitution forbids the passing of a bill of attainder: that is, a law entailing upon the child the disabilities and hardships imposed upon the parent. Every slave law in America might be repealed on this very ground. The slave is made a slave because his mother is a slave. But to all this it is said that the practice of the American people is against my view. I admit it. They have given the Constitution a slaveholding interpretation. I admit it. Thy have committed innumerable wrongs against the Negro in the name of the Constitution. Yes, I admit it all; and I go with him who goes farthest in denouncing these wrongs. But it does not follow that the Constitution is in favour of these wrongs because the slaveholders have given it that interpretation. To be consistent in his logic, the City Hall speaker must follow the example of some of his brothers in America — he must not only fling away the Constitution, but the Bible. The Bible must follow the Constitution, for that, too, has been interpreted for slavery by American divines. Nay, more, he must not stop with the Constitution of America, but make war with the British Constitution, for, if I mistake not, the gentleman is opposed to the union of Church and State. In America he called himself a Republican. Yet he does not go for breaking down the British Constitution, although you have a Queen on the throne, and bishops in the House of Lords. My argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this: It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slaveholding States, and withdraw it from the power in the Northern States which is opposed to slavery. Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. While in the Union it will meet with both. Its hope of life, in the last resort, is to get out of the Union. I am, therefore, for drawing the bond of the Union more completely under the power of the Free States. What they most dread, that I most desire. I have much confidence in the instincts of the slaveholders. They see that the Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders. They see, moreover, that if there is once a will in the people of America to abolish slavery, this is no word, no syllable in the Constitution to forbid that result. They see that the Constitution has not saved slavery in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, or Pennsylvania; that the Free States have only added three to their original number. There were twelve Slave States at the beginning of the Government: there are fifteen now. They dissolution of the Union would not give the North a single advantage over slavery, but would take from it many. Within the Union we have a firm basis of opposition to slavery. It is opposed to all the great objects of the Constitution. The dissolution of the Union is not only an unwise but a cowardly measure — 15 millions running away from three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders. Mr. Garrison and his friends tell us that while in the Union we are responsible for slavery. He and they sing out “No Union with slaveholders,” and refuse to vote. I admit our responsibility for slavery while in the Union but I deny that going out of the Union would free us from that responsibility. There now clearly is no freedom from responsibility for slavery to any American citizen short to the abolition of slavery. The American people have gone quite too far in this slaveholding business now to sum up their whole business of slavery by singing out the cant phrase, “No union with slaveholders.” To desert the family hearth may place the recreant husband out of the presence of his starving children, but this does not free him from responsibility. If a man were on board of a pirate ship, and in company with others had robbed and plundered, his whole duty would not be preformed simply by taking the longboat and singing out, “No union with pirates.” His duty would be to restore the stolen property. The American people in the Northern States have helped to enslave the black people. Their duty will not have been done till they give them back their plundered rights. Reference was made at the City Hall to my having once held other opinions, and very different opinions to those I have now expressed. An old speech of mine delivered fourteen years ago was read to show — I know not what. Perhaps it was to show that I am not infallible. If so, I have to say in defence, that I never pretended to be. Although I cannot accuse myself of being remarkably unstable, I do not pretend that I have never altered my opinion both in respect to men and things. Indeed, I have been very much modified both in feeling and opinion within the last fourteen years. When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This had brought me to other conclusions. When I was a child, I thought and spoke as a child. But the question is not as to what were my opinions fourteen years ago, but what they are now. If I am right now, it really does not matter what I was fourteen years ago. My position now is one of reform, not of revolution. I would act for the abolition of slavery through the Government — not over its ruins. If slaveholders have ruled the American Government for the last fifty years, let the anti-slavery men rule the nation for the next fifty years. If the South has made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice. If 350,000 slaveholders have, by devoting their energies to that single end, been able to make slavery the vital and animating spirit of the American Confederacy for the last 72 years, now let the freemen of the North, who have the power in their own hands, and who can make the American Government just what they think fit, resolve to blot out for ever the foul and haggard crime, which is the blight and mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the whole United States. REFERRAL https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1860-frederick-douglass-constitution-united-states-it-pro-slavery-or-anti-slavery/ Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 from James MAdison https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/debcont.asp

MY THOUGHTS AS I VIEWED 11:52 Johnson- all of liberal arts + humanities are interconnected ,no one has to be put into a little box 15:34 Barnes- Bradbury wrote martin chronicles not for sputnik but in edgar rice buroughs barsum, a poet writing science fiction. 20:11 Barnes- got to do what i wanted to do when i was a kid 22:41 Barnes- Bradbury never lost that connection to the imagination of child while having the discipline of adult 24:00 Johnson- how do we get rid of what critics or similar beat out of us 27:00 Johnson+Barnes - you never do anything routine, everything is new, you never step into the same water twice 32:25 Johnson- Bradbury and the pulp writers were prolific, they precede comic books It wasn't looking back. You had deadlines and don't focus on their work being precious but working in the moment 34:04 Barnes- stories about Bradbury begins 35:04 Barnes- his mother would burn his work so frightened that he would be an artist, based on his father's artistic fate 39:01 Barnes- received two letters of inspiration from Bradbury 45:09 Barnes- Leo and Diane Dillon and Ray Bradbury keeping him believing in his imagination as an artist 47:33 Barnes- some of your tears are my own 48:30 Barnes- it is a joy , a treasure, to do what you wanted when you were a child and walked a path side others that those you feel are better are kind, even for a moment. 50:01 Barnes- stories about Bradbury ends 52:03 Johnson- How did Barnes side Tananarive go into Afrofuturism 53:37 Barnes- reply- I have to write stories that Barnes wanted to see 57:34 Barnes- the world is better than my dad's time singing backup from nat king cole,so can I survive till the world gets better. 1:02:15 Barnes- I am a hoe but I like what i write 1:03:25 Questions from audience -wrote on cards 1:04:56 What book from either of you is the most significant to you lions blood from barnes , Oxherding Tale from johnson 1:10:04 is naming something reductive? language is mandatory, reductive while necessary 1:14:15 why is chip delaney out of fashion the history of the genre of science fiction from physics +chemistry at its origins with little character development, to the 1960s where philosophy with intricate characterizations occured. But Delaney style was fatiguing to readers, and the later writers embraced storytelling+science+imagination 1:21:08 Is anti peace being promoted in graphic novels or the arts? One with more ideas has more ways to hurt you, not just a billyclub 1:21:50 How to relate child self to adult self? meditation in buddhist tradition, multigenerational healing 1:24:35 what are you studying or reading? 1:25:37 any words for aspiring graphic artists + novelists? Barnes - the six step process of lifewriting 1)write at least one sentence every day 2)one to four short stories every month 3)finish and submit them all 4) do not rewrite except to editorial request 5) read ten times as much as you write 6) repeat process one hundred times not one has failed to publish by story 26 Johnson- keep a writers workbook you can see your lifetime, put anything that peeks your interest. an archeology

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Video TRANSCRIPT - my thoughts in the comments 0:28 all right good evening my name is Dr Jason ockerman 0:34 I'm a faculty member at the uh in the IUPUI School of liberal arts 0:40 and I'm the director of the Ray Bradbury Center what is the Ray Bradbury Center it is a 0:47 one of the larger single author archives in the United States it's also a small Museum we have 0:53 recreated Ray Bradbury's basement office with entirely original artifacts and we do offer tours to the public on 1:00 occasion so please follow us on social media if you'd ever like to come and see the collection 1:06 on behalf of the Bradbury Center and the school of liberal arts I want to welcome you to our literary Festival Festival 1:13 451 Indy we have events throughout the month of September to celebrate our literary 1:20 Heroes two of mine are going to be taking the stage uh in in just a moment to encourage people the festival 1:27 encourages people to cultivate an active reading life and to celebrate the humanities our 1:33 Festival references Ray Bradbury's most famous work Fahrenheit 451. 1:38 a cautionary tale about the consequences of the cultural devaluation of literacy 1:45 his words you don't have to burn books to destroy a culture just get people to 1:51 stop reading have only become more poignant and relevant today 1:56 that's why we felt that a festival like Festival four or five when Indy was necessary so thank you so much for for being here 2:04 tonight and being part of it hopefully you picked up some note cards 2:10 as you're listening to the speakers today please write down your questions and I think these two aisles here if I'm 2:18 wrong somebody will correct me okay I got the thumbs up from the boss so these 2:23 two aisles here you'll be able to approach a microphone and address your questions so please stick around for the Q a sometimes that's the best part 2:30 although I think everything about tonight's going to be great we also want to thank the aw Clues foundation for sponsoring tonight's 2:36 event and for sponsoring the entire Festival um that lasts the entire month of 2:41 September their generosity made this Festival possible uh in your programs 2:47 tonight there's a short survey if you could fill that out and turn it into one of our team members at our information 2:53 table uh in the lobby that would be super helpful for us we do have to do a grant report for Clues and your your 3:01 response to the event tonight would go a long way in helping us craft that report we definitely appreciate it 3:08 before introducing our speakers I want to share a brief land acknowledgment 3:13 IUPUI acknowledges our location on the traditional on the traditional and 3:18 ancestral territory of the Miami padawatami and Shawnee people 3:24 we honor the heritage of native peoples what they teach us about the stewardship of the earth and their continuing 3:31 efforts today to protect the planet founded in 1969 IUPUI stands on the 3:39 historic homelands of native peoples and more recently that of a vibrant a vibrant black community also unjustly 3:47 displaced where we sit tonight Madame Walker theater is one of the last vestiges of 3:53 that Vibrant Community as the present stewards of the land we honor them all as we live work and study 4:01 at IUPUI today people in this state who teach about the 4:07 injustices of the past are under attack and I want to affirm tonight that we 4:13 stand with our public Educators our public libraries and librarians 4:18 we honor their expertise we will never correct the injustices of 4:24 the present if we fail to acknowledge our past especially the parts that make us uncomfortable 4:30 if there are Educators and Librarians in the art in our audience tonight would 4:35 you please raise your hand so we can honor you [Applause] 4:46 thank you thank you for what you do um you know tonight in part we honor Ray 4:53 Bradbury a great author who spent his life standing up for public libraries because knowledge 4:59 should be free and accessible to everyone no matter what 5:06 we stand against any attempt to whitewash our history the old adage that 5:12 those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it rings true but I would add it seems clear that 5:18 those who actively try to prevent history from being taught intend to 5:23 repeat it we will not let that happen so tonight the red Bradbury Center is 5:29 thrilled to partner with our friends at the center for Africana studies and culture and presenting a night with two 5:35 legendary authors Dr Charles Johnson and Stephen Barnes 5:41 tonight's event will be moderated by my dear friend and colleague Dr lasatien 5:47 executive director of the center for Africana studies and culture Dr Les the stage is yours my friend 6:02 good evening good evening good evening everyone thank you for coming out um a little little housekeeping before 6:08 we get started because we are breathing rarified air here tonight so I want to 6:14 acknowledge uh in in right in the front here to also legendary writers uh Ms 6:21 Sharon Skeeter and also miss Tanner nariev do right here in the front 6:29 and big thanks to to Jason uh and the the staff and and Folks at the Bradbury 6:36 Center for putting this on and also giving us an opportunity to play a role in it um some colleagues from Liberal 6:43 Arts are sitting right there shout out to y'all hello um and also our Dean 6:49 um let me say oh and look Rob Robbin uh our other colleague but our Dean is also 6:55 in the house here tonight as well uh Tammy Idol so I'd like to bring up uh Mr Barnes and Dr Johnson if they could hear 7:02 me to come on up and we'll get started let's give a round of applause 7:17 you wanted the right I'm gonna go to the right thank you 7:24 all right welcome welcome welcome thank you thank you both for being here greatly appreciated I think it's um it's 7:33 always good uh to introduce uh folks uh to who we have this August panel that 7:40 we're in here tonight so if you wouldn't mind if we just get started Jump Right In but also I think there might be 7:48 people in the house that would want to know uh about uh who we are are sitting 7:54 with tonight no I'm always curious about who I'm sitting with especially when I'm sitting 8:00 alone in a room exactly okay there we go so you know what I forgot to say what 8:05 did you forget to say we have Mr Maurice Broadus in the house tonight as well yay 8:10 foreign yes that's right yes yes so if you don't 8:17 mind I will start with uh the youngest of us um 8:23 [Music] okay if you don't mind um because uh you know uh I think it's 8:29 it it's it's very important for us to understand um the value uh in in the work you've 8:35 done uh in the literary World um but also you know in Academia and and 8:42 it's you know and some of these other other places if you don't mind just giving us giving a brief brief bio a 8:48 little bit about yourself okay uh you got 30 minutes 8:54 um first I want to say this is a joyful occasion for me to be on the stage with 8:59 this gentleman but especially that gentleman on the end we have collaborated on any number of projects in the past 9:07 most recently the Eightfold Path yeah uh which is uh award-winning as it turns 9:13 out uh graphic novel all of it all the credit goes to Steve they're all of his 9:18 stories okay I came on and I I you know I took 9:24 the ride with you and it was like anything we do together um a great pleasure we have a lot of 9:30 overlap you know I did a book in 1988 called 9:36 um being in race black writing since 1970. and in the last chapter it's a 9:43 survey of black writers uh up to 1970 in the last chapter I I mentioned this guy 9:50 I keep running across um his you know he's a martial artist and he writes science fiction 9:58 um he's a black dude too I'm thinking that's me that's me but then I really no 10:04 it's this character over here Stephen Barnes who um has been my hero for a 10:09 very long very long time um my history my journey 10:15 and to creativity had it was truly influenced by the man who did this book 10:20 he was in and the Art of writing uh brave adverry but I come to this 10:28 from being a journalist and a cartoonist that 10:33 was my first love my first Passion was drawing in high school I became a 10:39 professional illustrator when I was 17 I did some illustrations for a magic Company catalog in Chicago and 10:47 um I saved that dollar by the way too that I got paid it's framed and there were times I was I was gonna 10:54 use it because I was so broke in grad school but I started out as a as a Cartoonist and a journalist 11:02 and along the way read you know voraciously of course you know cartoons 11:08 do read a lot so we can get ideas from all kinds of different you know sources and it was around the time when I was 18 11:15 I got exposed to philosophy and decided one of these days I I have to get a 11:20 doctorate in philosophy I just have to and one of the lights I discovered is 11:25 how much Bradberry admired Socrates and Marcus Aurelius you know among the uh 11:32 the stoics right so so my journey took me from drawing to to scholarship and 11:40 then to writing at a certain point uh you know novels and short stories and 11:46 essays and and other things uh one of the things I want to emphasize which I'm sure most of you know already but I have 11:53 to remind myself of it repeatedly is all of the the liberal arts in the 11:58 humanities are interconnected one thing will lead you to another thing 12:04 you know if you might want to get up one day and draw but then the next day you 12:10 might want to get up and start a short story and the third day you might want to get up and write an essay on a 12:17 question that's been troubling you about the mind-body relationship there is no reason why any of us should have to 12:25 allow anybody to put us in a little box and say this is all that you do you know 12:31 if you see my name crop up with something it'll be Charles Johnson novelist but that's not the only thing I do so all of these Arts feed each other 12:39 you know create creatively and I when I was young looking at Bradbury's movies reading his short stories I felt that 12:47 Spirit you know of openness and the excitement that just comes from doing 12:52 something not as Bradbury said for money or fame first is for the love of doing 12:59 it you get money in Fame later if you get it well that's fine but that's not your motivation your motivation is the 13:06 fact that when you create you're creating yourself 13:11 with every canvas with every novel with every story with every poem you're 13:18 realizing your own individual inherent potential as a human being who can 13:24 through craft give a gift to the world of beauty goodness and Truth goodness and beauty 13:31 that may enrich the lives of others that's why I think we create and why we 13:36 honor this guy now shut up [Applause] 13:45 goodbyes if you wouldn't mind just no I was uh relatively poor kid grew up in a broken 13:52 home in South Central Los Angeles and I knew that the world that was presented to me was not the real world I knew that 13:59 there were some things that were said to me about who I was and what my potential was and what my people were that was not 14:04 accurate so I as many people did I think a large number of people in the science fiction fantasy fanish Community are 14:11 people who grew up feeling like the world was not the world inside them that they connected with was not the same as 14:17 the world that they saw and that they looked to the Stars they looked to the past they looked to other worlds and 14:23 other winds to get a sense of in some ways what might be truer that science 14:29 fiction is a fiction of ideas and Concepts that you know what if if only 14:35 if this goes on often anchored to physics but sometimes about 14:40 the human heart but usually if there are two questions that are Central to philosophy those questions are probably 14:46 who am I and what is true what is it to be human and what is the world that human beings perceive and science fiction approached it in one way fantasy 14:54 approaches it in another fantasy is not about the world of physics it's about the world of symbols and the human heart 15:01 and the way these things interact it's about the Poetry what's happening kind of between the atoms kind of between the 15:09 events so whereas science fiction has to be both internally and externally consistent connected to physics as I 15:16 said fantasy has to only be internally consistent that within this we're 15:21 talking about human heart human perception and what are we and how do we feel this 15:30 Bradbury Drew my attention I was reading voraciously at that time because I was 15:35 looking for you know that question who am I and what is true so am I slept in a 15:41 bedroom with the walls aligned with books and Ray Bradbury was interesting because he 15:47 wrote he was published in science fiction magazines but he was not writing about what if in that way it wasn't 15:53 interested in the physics of the situation he was interested in the Poetics of it as if he were a fantasy 15:58 writer he was about where is the human heart in all of this so the Martian Chronicles were not it was not what 16:05 Voyager landed on or whatever it was that were our first Rovers I forget what the name of was he was interested in 16:12 Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars he was interested in barsum you 16:19 know he was not he was interested in the Poetics of Science and because of that 16:24 he touched my heart he was a poet writing science fiction stories being published in science fiction magazines but you weren't going to learn anything 16:30 about science by reading Ray Bradbury which you were going to learn about was what is it to be human what is it to see 16:36 the stars what is it to yearn for a meaning to our lives you know what what 16:42 are we in the vastness of the universe and that really touched this young kid 16:48 trying to figure out who he was that the vision of the universe in that sense was so large the individual political or 16:56 philosophical differences that that deviled us on Earth are meaningless once 17:01 you start backing up you know when astronauts talk about how when they were in orbit they looked down at the world 17:07 and there were no divisions of Nations and they had a spiritual experience where they said the first day everybody 17:12 was pointing out the city they came from you know the next day when they were talking about the the the the 17:18 International Space Station they were talking about what nations they came from the next day after that they were 17:24 talking about the continent and then by the fourth day they're just looking at the world and those individual 17:30 differences dissolved when you look at the world in terms of a sound of thunder 17:36 going back 100 million years or forward into the future the problems that we 17:41 have right now politically or in terms of nations in the in the the the joining 17:47 together of just different groups of people who've been separated by large amounts of geography 17:52 all that stuff disappears the question of what is the difference between this civilization and that Civilization 17:58 it might be a thousand years of development but a thousand years of development is 18:04 nothing in terms of the 13.7 billion years that this universe has existed 18:09 it's nothing at all those differences dissolve and when that was the world 18:14 that I wanted to live in a world in which those differences that were necessary because the human mind works 18:20 in terms of what is similar as opposed to what is different we're very that dualism created a lot of our science and 18:27 so forth and so on but ultimately getting caught in the middle of that you are not this because of that you are 18:34 this because of this if you feel caught in that then taking that larger perspective can feel like taking a 18:40 breath of fresh air for the first time of stepping outside anything anyone ever said about who you were or what your 18:46 potential was and being lost in the Poetry of experience so my connection to 18:53 Bradberry was that I sought The Poetry in the mundane the the unusual in the in 19:00 the daily and he went went there every time he went there from his earliest 19:06 stories which were often what are called biter bit stories where somebody does a 19:11 bad thing and they are destroyed by the consequences of their action in these old you know uh pulp magazines you know 19:19 and stories of ghastlys and murderers and ghosts and goblins I just ate that 19:25 up because I I would read him and I would read other people wrote the same thing but Bradbury was always about 19:31 something more than the events and the actions there we go absolutely absolutely so you know who I am growing 19:40 up in the shadow of giants one of whom was the man that we come here to honor today 19:45 is a kid who grew up in South Central Los Angeles wanted to be a science fiction writer found a great mentor in 19:52 Larry Niven who's one of the great science fiction writers of the 20th century took me under his wing showed me how to do it gave me opportunities I was 19:59 able to build a life I published over three million words and you know the New York Times bestseller list in this award 20:04 and that one that's all fine but the important thing is I got to spend my life doing the thing I dreamed of as a 20:11 kid that was the reward just to be able to do that to be able to every day talk 20:17 to the little kid inside me and say I've kept the faith and for him to look at me and say Dad you sure did that is worth 20:24 you there is nothing I would exchange that for and and Ray Bradbury was one of 20:30 The Shining lights that said it was possible to get all the way there and never sell yourself out yeah can I add 20:37 something to that of course um one of the things Bradbury gives us it 20:43 gave me as a young person I hear you saying Brad baby gave it to you too as a 20:49 sense of mystery and wonder about this existence in which we find ourselves the whole thing with the view 20:56 from The Sciences right from the solar system moving all the way out to galaxies as our problems seem so 21:04 infinitesimally small and trivial and race so small and trivial when we you 21:10 know take that perspective um so science fiction has an intellectual discipline 21:18 um allows us to dream you know one of my colleagues um the late Joanna Russ 21:24 once pointed out that the female man yeah yeah 21:30 um and at UW University of Washington she she once wrote that a woman wrote to 21:35 her um about why she loved science fiction she lived in a in a kind of ordinary 21:42 town you know very very boring and conformist but science fiction what she 21:47 really found appealing were the Landscapes the 21:53 landscape's so different from the ones that she was living in right it opened up the imagination science fiction has 22:01 always served that purpose I think well you know Ray Bradbury if I if I may add to what you're saying is that he might 22:09 quibble with something that you said there it isn't about developing your ability to dream it's about remembering it that we we go we all go quietly 22:17 insane every night but we forget that and that creativity 22:22 to a certain degree is simply opening up a pore between our unconscious minds that dream every night in the conscious 22:29 mind that that performs it does the performative part of our mind the part of us that says I am uh and the child 22:36 has that and life keeps telling the child be practical right stay here and 22:43 we'll start shutting that down Ray Bradbury never lost that thing he never 22:48 lost that connection with the child and their people will say that all there is of Genius is maintaining the creativity 22:54 of a child with the disciplined knowledge of an adult that if you can do that if you can maintain a connection 23:00 there you are going to be performing at the highest level that you are capable of performing it isn't it isn't 23:06 gaining something that you don't have it's remembering how you started it's 23:11 remembering the creativity and the aliveness and the sense of wonder that sense of Engagement that every child has 23:18 that gets squeezed out of us by the adult world yeah I know I know and 23:24 that's what we want to keep alive yes that child um Bradbury also put a lot of emphasis on 23:31 the importance of the subconscious too so I'm glad I'm glad you pointed that out 23:37 um you know we we always have to I think of you know think how do we get back to to 23:43 that innocence that that openness that we had as children before the world beat 23:49 it out of us or before critics you know beat it out of us um and and so what's that's one of the 23:56 reasons that uh Sharon skies are there and I are both practicing Buddhists 24:01 um our my practice at least gets rid of an awful lot of that conditioning 24:07 from childhood on from parents and field teachers so that I can experience the 24:13 world where that sense of newness and wonder and mystery you do have that I've 24:18 I've commented to people that one of the things I love about you is how easily you are astonished 24:25 that it's like you're constantly rediscovering yeah so you just you see it right there 24:32 oh the world is here still have that you're not numb it 24:39 hasn't been it hasn't been scabbed over your nerves are alive you're strong enough that you're not afraid to feel 24:46 okay and I think that when we lose courage you know fatigue makes cowards of us all often as we age or as we get 24:52 tired or as we shape our egos to fit into the different molds that people want us to shape into we start 24:58 forgetting who we are and and that we started this life to enjoy it that that 25:04 we want that sense of joy and instead of that we sack we settle for not being afraid if at best 25:11 yeah we can't lose that you cannot yeah a human being cannot lose that and still be fully Alive one of the things I would 25:17 like to think is my capacity one of the things at least in my work as a 25:22 philosophical novel is I think that literature should liberate our perceptions liberate our perception you say 25:29 astonishment I would like to be able to look at some look at you know look at 25:34 something as if I've never seen it before it's often been said or very creative people they look at something 25:40 strange as if it's familiar and the familiar is if it's strange right so we're constantly working with 25:47 Consciousness and our perception and here every moment that we're alive is new 25:54 every single moment is alive the past I've written a lot of historical fictions and so forth but the past has 26:00 passed in the future I'm not going to worry about it because it ain't come and it never will because that's a horizon the 26:06 future that we can never reach the only moment we have right here with each other is right here right now 26:15 before I came over here I sat for a little bit of meditation I always do that I would not meet a group or a crowd 26:21 or do anything in public and so I had that chance to sit if only for 10 or 15 minutes so that I can be 26:28 here right here with all of you right now and the only moment that exists in 26:34 time not worrying about what am I going to do when we're done with this or what what was the flight light getting us 26:40 here with no sleep you know from Seattle right here right now new never like this 26:46 moment before you get up in the morning why wash your face you got the soap you know okay that has never happened before 26:54 you might think I'm doing a routine thing no not that soap not that water 26:59 not that moment and not that version of you and not that version of me you're 27:04 right you can't step in the same piece of water twice because your foot is never the same and the water has changed 27:09 that's right so it's it's that awareness that the sacred is in the mundane that 27:15 it is in this moment it that what I try to do is to Center myself and then ask 27:21 myself what is the task to do next it task may be to get out of bed and have breakfast it may be to embrace my wife 27:28 it may be to counsel my son it may be to play with the cat it might be to answer an email it might be to write a story 27:34 but all those I'm not different people when I do those things I'm the same person playing different roles so let me 27:40 be appropriate the question is can I be appropriate in this moment can I be here with this moment and the demands of this 27:47 moment with the story that I'm writing or the person that I'm speaking to or the task that I have to do be here 27:53 totally right now yes 30 of yourself isn't trapped in the past remembering 27:58 regretting 30 is not projecting into the future what you're going to do you bring back all of yourself 100 to this moment 28:06 right now whether it's writing whether it's talking to your your son or me 28:12 talking to my grandson uh you're here totally right at this moment so one of 28:18 the reasons why the martial arts have are such a great tool for learning 28:25 that because one second of not thinking about right here and you get hit in the head that's right you know so there's 28:31 nothing like a smack upside the head to wake you up no I better be here now you know you better forget about the 28:37 hamburger I had yesterday or what my wife's gonna say when I get home this guy's Gonna Knock my head off right here 28:42 right now in this instant there is no more other moment in time there is no other moment that that's it and that 28:49 that sense of being there is consistent across all arts and so this conversation 28:55 concerning getting hit in the head it's like an athlete in the zone yes in the 29:00 zone right yes so go on well no it's the dissolution of the subject object relationship there is not a you and it 29:08 there is there is a there's something that is happening here and you're not observing yourself doing it because when 29:15 you're observing yourself some of the energy that you would have put into that moment is put into creating a self to 29:20 observe and what's even worse is when people observe themselves observing themselves now you're two steps removed 29:28 yes and you've lost all the energy you need to liberate your true self so in 29:34 one sense Society will try to keep you in the place of observing yourself and judging yourself because that way you 29:40 become dependent upon Society to say that you're okay because if you're in the moment you you know you're okay 29:46 you're always okay when you're in the moment you're you're not okay once you observe yourself and start judging 29:52 yourself but when you're there and it's just happening that's when you're totally alive and that's what we look 29:59 for in sexuality in driving on the freeway in in heavy traffic in the rain 30:05 in fighting in in writing in Reading is the sense of total engagement in the 30:11 moment the eye is not observed it is it is 30:17 subsumed in the process of the interaction that that thing of the page 30:22 opening up and you fall into the page can happen only once this component skills have been 30:30 reduced to unconscious competence right right as you can tell we we've talked a lot together [Laughter] 30:37 and we have long conversations like this but this gentleman here may have I was 30:43 going to say that this is the easiest job I've never had if they were paying me 30:50 man I you know um and uh I I definitely the interesting 30:55 thing is you know the the one I think it was like the one time I got a chance to I think Jason and I were on a zoom with 31:02 you in a similar conversation happened and we were like in the chat like hey man let's just stay here they don't 31:09 notice us let's just listen and and get it so that's what I and I also would be remiss if I didn't mention that I am a 31:14 fill-in uh Dr Rhonda Henry uh was uh ill and could not make it she would have 31:20 been the person here today uh so I didn't want to lift her up and mention that as well 31:26 um so thank you first of all thank you for for that first that opening sound thank 31:32 everybody for coming see you later oh no we're still we got one more got one more so I do have one more uh thing and and 31:39 this is more specific uh you you've certainly touched on it you you showed us uh these were uh yeah yeah these uh I 31:47 I purchased uh some years ago of a complete line of Planet stories 31:53 from the late 30s to the early 50s these are the original issues and they have Brad Barry's Original Stories in them 32:00 and a lot of other people too who became famous because this is this is where he 32:06 began you know with the pulse I wanted to have the actual feel of that 32:12 um underneath my fingers see one of the beautiful things about Bradbury and the 32:17 pulp Riders to me they're prolific they they were not worried about am I 32:23 writing something that will last for the ages no Bradbury is getting 20 to 40 32:28 dollars per story he's making himself right a thousand words a day a story a 32:35 week he's got to sell um to a month in order to pay his bills 32:40 okay he is immersed in the moment these precede comic books okay by a few years 32:45 and the comic book artists were the same people you know you you were not looking back you were immersed in the moment of 32:53 creation you had a deadline to meet that's right um and and you produced all 32:58 this stuff not thinking that this might shape called culture that the characters that you're creating from Edgar Rice 33:04 Burroughs to the Marvel characters that these would be installed in popular 33:09 culture 50 cents uh you know 50 years later so that even my grandson knows 33:15 these characters right um I I admire artists who work like that 33:20 who don't think that what they're doing is precious but what they're doing is absolutely everything they can do at the 33:27 present moment yes and then you let it go and you go on to the next one yes and you go into the next one and you're 33:33 blessed to be able to have the opportunity to do that and and that certainly was going to be you know kind 33:40 of the next question I wanted to throw out there very open-ended of course but just the idea of you know Bradbury's 33:46 influence I know you've touched on a little bit but just maybe if there was any any particular specific oh I 33:52 absolutely can but yeah go you can go first or you know I can go there or whatever whatever is appropriate I want 33:58 to hear your stories about bravery okay anybody want to hear my stories about rape River okay 34:04 because he was very important in my life and I did not write this out because I know for a fact that I'm going to get 34:11 choked up so get ready for that um and I wrote down some dates just so I 34:16 could I could get as precise as I could but this is not a formal you know 34:22 scholarly thing so if any of the dates are wrong you know apologies in advance so 34:28 I I grew up and I had a dream of being the science fiction writer it was a thing 34:33 that I I really loved to do because I didn't understand math well enough to be a scientist so I did the other thing I 34:39 could wrote write poetry of the sciences and so I was a little kid growing up South Central L.A and had dreams of 34:45 being a writer and I was writing as much as possible and everything around me told me that I could not do it you know 34:51 my mom my dad was a backup singer for Nat King Cole and I was in the studio when they did the the background vocals 34:58 for Ramblin Rose yeah just watching dad and every time it's on the radio I hallucinate that I can hear my dad's 35:05 baritone and my dad's singing career ultimately floundered and 35:10 it led to a divorce and so my mom was terrified that if I followed the Arts that I would have a similar failure and 35:17 she used to tear my stories up and burn them because she was so scared that I would go down that path but I you know I 35:23 just kept going and kept going and kept going and by the time I got to college I had 35:31 um tried I knew my mom wanted me not to write and so I tried to step away from 35:36 writing I would but I was tricking myself I'd take all kind of other classes I would take you know drama and 35:43 composition and English and speech and stuff like this work in the radio station I think things adjacent to 35:49 writing without writing and then finally they had a contest a writing contest on campus 35:56 where the winner would read a story to the to the alumni and I won the I won 36:03 the contest and I read the story to the alumni and I watched them react to me 36:09 and I realized this is who I'm supposed to be that there is I would rather fail 36:15 as a writer than succeed at anything else so I dropped out of college my girlfriend at the time who later 36:23 became my wife and are living together she was an artist and I was a writer and I was taking jobs adjacent to Hollywood 36:29 trying to work my way and I was also writing stories and I was starting to send them out and I was you know getting rejected and rejected and rejected and I 36:36 I think that at some point I started getting like a fifth of a cent a word and you know getting paid in 36:42 contributors copies but I think before my first sale uh I wrote a story a 36:47 Halloween story called trick or treat about a guy who it when he was a kid he 36:55 his candy is snatched by the kids in the neighborhood they were bullies and when he becomes an adult he starts you know 37:02 the kids in the neighborhood he's living in the same house they're playing tricks on him so he plays tricks back and the 37:08 next year they play a nastier trick and they asked that he plays a nastier trick on them and it goes back and forth and 37:13 back and forth until one year he plays a trick and the kids he accidentally kills a kid and he knows it next year they're 37:20 going to kill him and so this story is called trick-or-treat and I found out that Ray Bradbury was doing an 37:28 autographing at a bookstore and so my girlfriend was an artist and I created a 37:33 a a Halloween card that contained the story and artwork and we went to his 37:39 signing and we gave it to him in an envelope that had my address on it and about six weeks later I got a letter 37:45 back from Ray Bradbury saying he loved my story and this was the first time a 37:51 professional human being a person who was doing the thing that I wanted to do let alone somebody who I admired so much 37:57 had said yeah kid maybe you've got what it takes it meant more than I can 38:03 possibly say and inspired me to keep going so I kept going I'm writing and I'm trying to do this I'm trying to do 38:09 that I'm still not succeeding very much but I was starting to make a little bit of progress my mom 38:15 who had always been terrified finally realized that there was no way I was going to give it up and so she kind of 38:21 got on the bandwagon and she found a course that was being taught at UCLA 38:27 extension by Robert Kirsch who was the literary editor of the LA Times in about 38:33 1980 let's say 1975 1975 and 38:39 uh no no this is about about 1980 about 1980. uh and so I took a class from 38:46 Robert Kirsch and it was a strange class you know it was the little blue-haired lady writing astrological poetry and it 38:52 was the guy writing this going and I was writing these strange stories and I wrote one very strange story called is 38:59 your glass half empty about a compulsive Gambler who Hawks his pacemaker and he 39:06 Kirsch looked at me and he didn't know quite what to make of the story and he said 39:11 I've Got a Friend I'd like to show this story to would you mind if I did that and I said sure go right ahead and about 39:17 six weeks later I got a note I got a letter from Ray Bradbury who was Robert kirsch's friend writing telling me again 39:24 he didn't remember the earlier story he just said hey you know kid you know this is this is good you know this you know 39:30 that you've got something go for it don't ever give up doing that Ray Bradbury inspirational thing I kind of 39:35 said I got two letters from him you know this is this is cool so let me keep going 39:41 I eventually met Larry Niven and began working with him and started getting my 39:47 career going and in about what year did you publish your first story I published 39:52 my first story in probably about 1980 1981 somewhere in there maybe 79 to 81. 39:58 somewhere in there and it was like a fifth of the center word you know and then I finally the first story that was 40:03 published in a professional magazine was called uh it's called endurance vial about an 40:12 athlete who accidentally discovers a meditation that triggers his ability to 40:17 be more of an athlete and he starts running and he can't stop you know so that I think that was my first my very 40:23 first publication and I was working with Larry Niven and I had the balls to walk 40:29 up to Larry you know at the Las Vegas science fiction thing and I said hello Mr Niven my name is Stephen Barnes and 40:35 I'm a writer and he looked at me and said all right tell me a story I I found out that from the way I'd come 40:40 on to him I had about 10 seconds to prove I wasn't an luckily I just put that story is your 40:47 glass half empty into the mail that morning so I was able to stumble out you know I 40:53 think and that led to us eventually working together in my CR in my working he gave me a chance to work on an 41:00 earlier story of his that he hadn't been able to finish to his satisfaction called the locusts which was about a 41:06 group of space colonists who go to a planet and their children begin to devolve to australopithecines and they 41:13 don't know how to deal with it and if the problem in this story who would right if the problem of the story had 41:19 been biology or a cryptozoology or 41:25 physics or astrophysics I would have been lost but luckily the problem in the story was the psychology that Larry did 41:33 not understand group psychology as well as I think he could have such that he did not understand the impact that would 41:40 have on that little Colony if these things happen he was underestimating the emotions involved so that gave me an 41:47 opening a way that I could contribute something this story and it led to a Hugo nomination and my first real 41:54 publication you know with lyrics it was like you know wow this was you know I'm on my way so one of the things that I 42:00 was asked to do in this process was there was something called the planetary society in which I was asked to be a 42:07 presenter to be an announcer so I introduced several luminaries that were there astrophysics I mean there might 42:14 have been an astronaut so forth and one of the people was Ray Bradbury so Ray walked up on stage and before he walked 42:20 up on stage I told my story about how I was he was responsible for my me getting published by giving me inspiration at a 42:28 time when I was getting rejection after rejection after rejection started to question myself and he walked up on 42:34 stage and gave me a big hug and it was just a great moment everybody applauded it was very nice about eight years after 42:40 that um I was teaching a class at UCLA 42:45 and it was a a symposium and every week we had a different notable come in one 42:51 week it was Ray Bradbury so when I went to Ray's house came to class he came to 42:56 yeah he came and talked at the Symposium he was one of the I think seven notables that we had coming there 43:03 um and before the class I took him to dinner at in Westwood and 43:12 Larry Niven had asked if he could keep me but before Larry got there 43:17 ah I for 20 years I was the only black male 43:24 science fiction writer in the world so far as I could determine chip Delaney had left the field he'd gone into 43:30 Academia and queer fiction because he couldn't make a living in science fiction I survived largely because of my 43:37 partnership my mentorship with Larry Niven because I would I do collaboration with him and I'd make enough money to be 43:43 able to keep food on the table in the roof over our head but I was starting to wonder was I losing myself 43:49 was had I sold myself out was I losing 43:55 my art and I remember I had dinner with Leo and 44:01 Diane Dillon who we were just talking about in in Greenwich Village and they 44:06 are they were the essence of art it was like we're one they work they did Art together where one would start a line 44:11 the other one would finish it and back back so far and I was sitting at that table talking to them about the career 44:19 of an artist thinking I'd get some tips for my wife who was interested in being a professional artist and I suddenly realized that I didn't care about that 44:25 but I wanted to know was had I sold myself out had I sold out 44:31 my heart and I sat there and I just poured my eyes out and I just started crying finally I realized because I was 44:38 in the presence of real artists here this this was this was for real and I felt like a fraud I felt like a phony 44:44 and I was I just you know I poured my heart out to them and I finally said it is it too late for me 44:51 and they looked at each other and Diane looked at her husband and then she reached across the table and she took my 44:57 hands and she said Steve if you can even ask that question it's 45:04 not too late well that helped but I'm sitting at the table 45:11 with Ray Bradbury my childhood Idol who somehow I had choreographed an 45:16 opportunity to to be with him and and break bread with him and speak with him and I it was pretty much the same 45:23 question it's like you know I I've been hiding behind Larry Niven and his partner Jerry Purnell I'm writing these 45:29 things and I've gotten these Awards and made this money and so forth but I feel like I don't know have 45:36 am I broken you know is it too late for me is it can I can I still touch that 45:42 part of me that that is that's sacred and he asked me of course 45:48 he said have you published and I said oh yeah I published all these 45:53 stories in about six books and this that he just started laughing he just laughs oh you are going to have no problem at 46:00 all and hearing that for the second time is what made the difference I was able to see 46:06 that that I was just on this road I did not see Rey again 46:11 for many years and then in maybe the end of 2011 or the 46:18 beginning of 2012. I would I was asked if I would make a presentation at a more 46:24 at a at a acknowledgment dinner for Ray Bradbury who was very ill he could barely speak 46:31 he was in his wheelchair and it was held at the Universal Sheraton Sometime Late 46:37 2011 or early 2012. and I got up on the stage 46:44 it was so good to see him and he was so diminished physically but 46:49 the child self was still so alive in him his eyes were still still alive and I I told the 46:57 story of how he had reached out to me when I was getting started and he'd 47:03 written these letters giving me hope ing me believe that maybe it was 47:09 possible for me to have the life that I wanted how grateful I was for a chance to say 47:16 thank you to this great man and after I finished he held out his arms and he 47:22 gave me a hug and I went home and six weeks later I got a letter from him 47:32 telling me thanking me for the words I'd said 47:38 and how it had reminded him of his own path and his own Joy in his gratitude for the life that he 47:46 had had and the fact that he'd been able to touch others in the last words in that letter were 47:53 some of your tears are my own Ray Bradbury 47:58 and about six weeks after that he passed away and I just 48:05 wanted to say there's is no greater gift in life than 48:12 being able to take a look at the child you were and the truth and the dreams that they 48:18 had it realized that you were actually able to live that life 48:24 and that there was no possible way that you could have done it alone and that being able to talk to other 48:31 people along the path who say you know you're not remotely at 48:37 their level not remotely but they don't care all they care about is are you 48:43 writing are you reading are you teaching where are you what does the territory 48:48 look like from where you are and I just wanted to say that everybody in this room 48:55 has walked a path that others wish they could walk has answered questions that other people can't even formulate yet 49:02 and you never know what a kind word or a kind act is going to mean 49:09 his actions meant the difference between life and death 49:16 for part of my soul and I could not be who I am we're not 49:22 for people who had been kind to me who saw me and saw some potential Within Me 49:31 it reached out their hand and said you're going to have no problem at all 49:38 and I think you for the chance to come here and say 49:44 publicly how much I owe those people in one specific man one great man 49:53 Ray Bradbury who changed and saved my life 50:11 I'm going to pick up on like two things that you said Steve I know in my life there were individuals 50:18 who encouraged me when I couldn't get that encouragement from anywhere else 50:23 and when you're young you're tender you know you're in your teens and um 50:30 you know I'm not gonna belabor you know and bore you with those individuals who 50:35 did that for me but that's an extremely important thing for a young person an 50:41 old person too to have somebody who gives you permission 50:46 to go that route and to trust yourself and to trust your passion that could be 50:52 a teacher you've also written about a teacher in high school who um you know 50:58 positively gave you reinforcement yes so those those teachers are 51:04 extremely important um in our lives and I've had a a a several you know uh when I was a 51:12 cartoonist and then the novelist John Gardner when I started writing novels 51:18 and he led me into the book World which I knew nothing about and then later you know when I was in philosophy with my 51:25 dissertation director who became a dear friend who's actually passing away right 51:30 now but those teachers are extraordinarily important but there's something else you said I'd like to know 51:36 I'd like you to say a bit more about you've worked with Niven yes collaboratively yes and you're wondering 51:43 what's happening to me you know where am I you know so is that the opening that 51:50 question that led you to and to Nana Reeve to afrocentrism 51:56 is that how you found your way there well okay afrofuturism yeah I'm sorry yeah 52:03 for future futurism um well all that happened is that I worked with Larry Niven and his partner 52:09 Jerry Purnell and um I learned the basics of my craft and 52:16 I already had the basics of my craft I came to them with a certain amount of skills that were developed but then they 52:21 took me to being professional I remember you know Jerry I never I don't know how many writers in world history have ever 52:27 had the experience of two world-class writers best-selling writers award-winning writers sitting on opposite sides of the room tearing apart 52:34 their work at the same time because I was working on a book with the two of them and Cornell was taking great 52:40 pleasure in this how Burns we're ripping apart barnes's precious Pros Barnes was your mother 52:47 scared by a gerund I mean he would take he took such Glee in ripping me a new 52:55 one every single time I would drive home from working with them crying sobbing 53:01 because you know just taking this battering but it was like it was like being asked to spar with the black belt 53:07 class you got your butt kicked every night but you would crawl off the mat 53:12 but you'd know if I can survive this I'm going to be a fighter so I knew if I 53:18 could survive this I will learn things that are taught in no school in the world now one of the things is that 53:23 Jerry wrote stories that Jerry wanted to read Larry Niven wrote stories Larry Niven wanted to read so in order to be 53:30 like them I didn't it wasn't writing like Larry nibbon or Jerry Purnell I had to write stories that Stephen Barnes 53:37 wanted to read what were those stories into a huge degree 53:42 there is that question what was missing from the field and what was missing was people who 53:48 looked like me right and it wasn't passive it was active insult Edgar Rice 53:54 Burroughs would write stories you know in which in which uh the 53:59 Enterprise Burrows stories were the the core of Tarzan was specifically racism 54:05 specifically the idea that a British that an English Lord gentleman raised by Apes is still a gentleman and he made 54:11 racism specific in one of his stories in the jungle Tales of Tarzan where he says 54:16 white men have imagination black men have little animals have none I mean that was specifically so you can't get 54:23 away from it but I needed those stories because I was trying to Define myself as a man where I 54:29 am in the universe so as I once said to a group that I I sacrificed my melanin 54:35 on the altar of my testosterone I mean I I wanted to be a man more than I cared 54:40 about being black I would I would add something you brought something to Parnell and and Niven that they didn't 54:46 have yes from your perspective in your history they did not have the black orientation any of that no but but I 54:52 don't know if that worked into the books not that much I mean Jerry was was by 54:58 his own uh statement took politically to the right of Attila the Hun so it was 55:05 difficult to navigate that territory but one of the things I learned was how to argue with somebody smarter than you because Jerry was just smarter than me 55:11 just you know he's you know Jerry's brain had a rocket attached to it Larry's brain had a transport a 55:19 transporter attached to it whereas I could understand how Jerry would do stuff it was just an ordinary brain with a lot more information working a lot 55:25 faster but Larry would dematerialize and materialize someplace I was just like I don't even know how you got there so 55:33 taking their lessons and then writing my own stories demanded that I write for my 55:39 own experience so I'm then dealing with the fact that you know my my first book 55:45 was a book with Larry my second book was a book with Larry my third book was a solo book and I wrote a black character 55:53 I specifically wanted to create a black hero that was Street Lethal yeah but the 55:59 book company Ace put a white guy on the cover he's very clearly described as being as dark 56:05 as Zulu and they put a white guy on the cover and my poor editor called me up and she's in tears you know Beth Meacham 56:13 is her name very nice lady not her fault she said that they had done this Susan Allison who was the head editor I don't 56:20 have as good a feeling about her because she kind of blew it off she wasn't upset well it's one of those things that 56:26 happened it was the marketing department and I talked to the marketing department oh no it's the advertising it's the art 56:32 Department I talked to the art Department the art Department said well it's the sales department and the sales 56:39 department said well the truck drivers who are going to put the books on the stands would think that this was shaft 56:45 in space and so I realized at that point I can either hate white people I'd 56:52 rather not do that did I say that out loud no 56:57 I could either hate white people or I consider that what's going on here is an 57:03 example of how human beings think that human beings feel protective of their 57:08 tribe and almost all human beings are tribal they happen to have that power Everybody wants to rule the world 57:13 everybody wants to feel that the world reflects who they are in the mirror so this is I'm just at the an unfortunate 57:21 unfortunate effect of this what do I do with it I can either use this and say 57:27 the world kicked my ass or I can say this is where we are right now my dad 57:35 working with Nat King Cole performed in in hotels in Las Vegas where he could 57:42 not stay the world has gotten better than that 57:47 it's just not as good as I would like it to be how much longer will it take and I 57:54 projected trend lines in my mind I thought it might take two generations it might take two generations it might 58:00 take another 30 to 40 years before the world is ready for the stories that I want to tell 58:07 can I survive long enough to do that and so I started a program of I am going I'm 58:14 going to stay in this field and I'm going to create my stories and I'm going to do everything I can do 58:20 because I'm going to make it first of all I'm going to write stories that the kid who started this path would have 58:25 wanted to read and I'm going to create a career path so that other people coming in will have an 58:31 easier time than I have an Octavia Butler and I were the only black people working in the field we had many 58:37 conversations about this we lived walking distance from each other and Octavia was a level above me as a writer 58:42 she was often not happy with what I wrote Because she felt I was not living up to my potential 58:48 she would write and they put green people on the covers of her books but they wouldn't put black people you know 58:53 so we had lots of interesting conversations about that what do we feel about it what are we going to do I felt 58:59 I if I can stay in here and write the stories that I want stories that would 59:05 nurture the younger person I was that no matter what happens I've not been beat 59:10 and then I found out one day that there were Scholars studying something called afrofuturism and I was considered to be 59:16 an afrofuturist I didn't try to be one I was just trying to write Stephen Barnes stories 59:21 casually said that you lived walking distance from Octavia but I want to point out oh yeah you know we 59:27 used to come over for dinner and I'd go over her place and then we would just sit and we'd talk writing in life she was like my big sister I was wondering 59:33 you know um you go back to what is it the 20s the 30s and you've got black no 59:39 more that that early yes um and then you fast forward a little 59:44 bit and you got chipped Delaney and yeah you he said he couldn't make a living so 59:50 he moved on incredibly um once again elegant Pro stylist amazing and and then 59:56 you have October Xavier Butler and then there's you yeah that's about it and now 1:00:01 we have a lot of people tons of sci-fi can't even count them yeah but you guys are the best you guys were the pioneers 1:00:09 you seriously you were Pioneers um which is really quite incredible when you think back about it remember Pioneers 1:00:16 get arrows in the butt you know I was just trying I was just trying to 1:00:22 be the best writer that I could be in trying to survive trying to take care of my family and trying 1:00:28 to to survive in Hollywood and I made mistakes I made mistakes I betrayed that 1:00:34 little creative spark inside me a couple of times and it hurt I mean I was just 1:00:39 you know you can only sell yourself out so much yeah you know what's even worse is if you try not to sell out and then 1:00:46 one day you sell out nobody's buying you know so that's even worse but I remember 1:00:52 one of my agents I lost or walked away from one of my agents in Hollywood because I walked in there with my heart 1:00:59 on my sleeve and I said you know I don't know what's going to happen in my career but when I leave Hollywood I want to 1:01:06 leave with my sense of Honor intact and he looked at me and he said you'll be the only one and I realized at that 1:01:13 moment he and I did not understand each other at all I need to find a new agent because I'm not going to sell my soul to 1:01:20 do this I'm going to do everything I can and I will not sell out but I will rent myself 1:01:25 you know and I will stretch as far as I can but I'm always going yeah I'm I'm I'm kind of a hoe but 1:01:36 enjoy my work 1:01:43 if I write an episode of Baywatch and I have I wrote four episodes of Baywatch 1:01:48 people say that's not science fiction I said you ever see those silicon life forms running around on the beach 1:01:53 um I found something in every episode that I could actually care about and there's 1:02:01 another story I can go into that I might tell another time where the producers did eventually end up turning on me but 1:02:07 I got revenge but that's another story that's 1:02:13 um let's let's we'll uh well first okay before I think we can open up to a 1:02:22 little bit of a q a um but before we do that of course we want to just really thank you for your 1:02:27 words and Candor have you have you said everything you wanted to see you came prepared with some comments you came 1:02:33 prepared with some comments have you expressed what you wanted to express I came prepared with you no you had some 1:02:39 comments you were almost going to write a talk to do this but instead of that you prepared some comments I just wanted to be sure that that Charles has had an 1:02:46 opportunity to express himself no no no no I'm fine okay I think it's probably a 1:02:51 good idea if you want to move to that next question yes but before we did that look at this beautiful let's thank these 1:02:57 uh these these wonderful discussions 1:03:04 respect just trying to be like you no you don't want to believe me so uh 1:03:12 what what we could do um is you know 1:03:18 the the aisles could be your your pathway or if you so choose you could 1:03:23 just kind of raise it I can't see you because of the lights so perhaps you might want to stand up over okay that 1:03:29 they just raise the house lights yeah they just did so I could see folks so if 1:03:34 you have a question if you have a comment please just raise your hand and uh I will uh 1:03:39 catch you not everybody at once there we go Tumbleweed we got one yeah 1:03:47 and you'll have to project because I don't think we have a walking mic you're a big boy oh it's over here there we go 1:03:53 okay 1:03:59 no they were right even better 1:04:07 okay so they're gonna they got questions on index cards oh I see that people wrote already yes all right all right 1:04:13 good this is good because I can read them all okay come on yeah I just get them all at 1:04:21 once 1:04:29 don't do it all right 1:04:36 all right I'm gonna start here okay we're ready okay so I think this one is 1:04:41 for both of you and so this person says that they want to say that they appreciate uh that you both came out to 1:04:47 speak with us this evening and they love hearing your story um the question is is there a book that 1:04:53 you wrote that holds the most significance to you um if so would you be okay with sharing 1:05:00 your thoughts on the story um and then there's a little statement uh 1:05:06 at the bottom it says on the day when life seems to be too much to handle with all that you do okay that's the second 1:05:12 question so just go with the first question is there a particular book that you wrote that holds the most significance to you 1:05:19 um and if so uh would you share your thoughts on the story I can do that easily okay uh most significant book for 1:05:25 me was my second novel called oxygen tale which was rejected two dozen times nobody understood it my own Mentor 1:05:34 um John Gardner did not understand it and actually was afraid of the Buddhism that was in this 1:05:41 novel which is in the form of a slave narrative philosophical novel no form of a slave narrative with access to Western 1:05:48 and Eastern philosophy and my editor didn't understand it for my first book and um but that was critical 1:05:54 had I not done that book all the other books that I've done 26 1:06:00 after you know total 27 I would not have done it I had to do that book and once I 1:06:07 did that book I understood some things about myself I wrote the book to free myself of my 1:06:15 passion in reading of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism from my teens so I'm going to write this book you know and I'm 1:06:21 going to be free of it got to the end of the book I realized no this is the beginning for me so everything I've done has been in a 1:06:28 way referenced back to Oxford and tail which has a Bradbury connection because there is a soul catcher a slave Hunter 1:06:35 and Coors of Adam who has tattoos all the black people that he captures 1:06:42 are killed he gets tattoos on his body that where where is that going to come from except the Illustrated Man right 1:06:48 we're not which I read when I was younger so that that was a critical book for me I'll say that much 1:06:55 um yeah so that's mine for me it would almost certainly be 1:07:01 lions blood which Lion's blood you know which uh was my statement on race 1:07:08 relations in America uh basically it was it took me six years of research and I 1:07:14 basically created an alternate history which was an alternate America that was colonized by Islamic Africans bringing 1:07:20 in this particular instance Irish slaves here and so the story it deals with a 1:07:26 young Irish boy named Aiden Odair who is kidnapped by Vikings and sold to the Moors in Spain in andalus the word 1:07:32 perspective and brought to balalistan the United States to the province of nujibouti Texas where he becomes the 1:07:39 foot boy slip of Kai ibiz who is a young Islamic nobleman and the 1:07:46 story covers their friendship for about eight years from childhood to the beginnings of adulthood and um that I 1:07:53 don't know if I'll ever work that hard on a book again I probably will not I remember what you said you invited 1:07:59 Scholars to a party yeah to ask them questions yeah I basically knew that I could spend a hundred years researching 1:08:06 and still not touch one percent of what I needed to know so I did one of the smartest things I've ever done it's probably one of the 10 smartest things 1:08:12 I've done in my life I invited a room full of the smartest people that I knew and people came from from hundreds of 1:08:18 miles in addition to my invitation and we had a pizza party all day long I fed them pizza and beer and I had graph 1:08:25 paper and butcher paper on the walls and I passed out notebooks with the basic 1:08:32 premises of the world you know the politics and the economics and so forth of this alternate universe and I had a 1:08:39 videographer following people around and all day long we theorized about this 1:08:45 world that I was trying to create and they showed me everything they showed me so many things that I had not thought of 1:08:50 that by the end of that single day I had enough research to begin the writing process that I'd done six years of 1:08:57 research before I did that party so I my attitude is you want to know enough to 1:09:03 ask the right questions of experts and if you can ask an expert the right 1:09:09 question and they say oh yes well that's you know and they go off then you know enough to write your story you this is a 1:09:15 perfect example of what they call World building yeah World building and you went on to do a sequel or at more than 1:09:22 well I I did two of them Lion's bullet in Zulu heart Zulu heart yeah 1:09:27 all right and so we have we have a good number of questions I think we can okay I'll keep it shorter no no but we're 1:09:34 good I think everybody here is enjoying uh being able to hear is this okay guys I think we're all right this is what you 1:09:40 came for it's all it's all about you you can't get you can't Prime me out of the house but once I'm out of the house I really 1:09:47 do want to serve whoever brought me out so this is your chance okay and then for anyone out there if I misread anything 1:09:53 feel free to correct me um uh given that we celebrate uh 1:09:59 creativity originality and the process of fantasy is naming things a reductive 1:10:05 Act 1:10:11 is naming things a reductive Act well that's a big epistemological 1:10:18 question of course I mean how would you answer that um to name something is given of nature that's one way you could 1:10:24 talk about this to name something is to limit it uh to whatever name you you've given it uh given to it I there's a lot 1:10:33 of ways you could take this but but naming can be extremely important um guys how to talk about I guess people 1:10:41 who are Chinese have four or five different names you know a birth name and it it I'm going to let you you feel 1:10:48 that one um it is reductive but then again all language is reductive all language is a 1:10:55 reification of of something all language is a symbol and it's possible to mistake 1:11:00 the menu for the meal you know if you go you know kind of stepping into my core zipski for a second 1:11:06 um but language is all we have you know we're communicating with people 1:11:12 he said when you go in the other room and get what do you say you know the the salty thing you know it's all you know 1:11:19 the thing that makes things taste sharper you've just use labels for things the the concept of taste you've 1:11:26 used the label for the concepts of something that is bitter as opposed to sweet as opposed to Salty all those 1:11:31 things are labels all words are nothing more than that and 1:11:37 what you do with language I remember chip Delaney in his book The Jewel hinge jaw on writing he talks about the fact 1:11:44 that every word creates an impression you know the okay is this definite article the boy okay we 1:11:51 getting a noun in here the boy ran he got a the boy ran from oh okay now we're getting a sense of direction that that 1:11:57 just as music is what happens between the notes poetry is what happens between the words 1:12:03 as you hear a word and your brain does what's called a transderivational search for the meaning of that word it's the 1:12:10 journey that people go on between the words that creates the impression of art it's like you know this note followed by 1:12:16 that note what happens in between there the negative space is what an artist is manipulating or it's the thing that we 1:12:23 don't see we see the words but we don't see the space between the words let me see the tree the trees but we don't see 1:12:28 the space between them but it's a space between them the trees punctuate that space to create a forest so the labels 1:12:35 that we use we use not necessarily to Define things but to guide Consciousness you know think about this now think 1:12:42 about this now think about this what is the journey you go on between the words that's the thing that the artist plays 1:12:49 with that people do not see and that is in some ways the most important thing and you only learn to get there by 1:12:56 concentrating on the words and then at some point you see the forest that you have created with the use of those words 1:13:03 it's one of the reasons why the first draft it's so important it just as far as I'm because it just vomited out your 1:13:09 first draft should be trash just get it out there what what Bradbury referred to as running Barefoot through the grass 1:13:16 let your first draft be done from Pure Love then 1:13:21 the rewrite process is where you're adjusting and playing with it but just 1:13:26 get that first draft out there don't try to make your first draft meaningful they'll try to make it good don't try to 1:13:32 you know make the work of the Masters just write down the music that you're hearing and adjust it later 1:13:38 and then rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite that's right that's right 1:13:45 okay and uh so um you keep mentioning trials uh Delaney 1:13:51 uh Samuel I'm sorry okay I don't know I'm well enough to you know I know who he is 1:13:58 I've read his work but I don't I don't know him see I know you know you just casually mentioned Octavia Butler so I'm 1:14:04 sure you know chip Delaney wasn't enough to come to anyway I'm stop joking around here um so this question is about uh Mr 1:14:11 Delaney why is Delaney out of fashion and the person mentioned that they loved 1:14:17 reflection of light in water I would say it's simply because different styles of writing go in and 1:14:24 out of fashion chip Delaney came into the science fiction field in the 60s was called the new wave where 1:14:30 people see the first generation of Science Fiction were people who knew science and literature you know Jules 1:14:35 Verne and H.G Wells and so forth the next generation of Science Fiction Olaf Stapleton and people like that knew the 1:14:42 work of wells and and the the Next Generation after that people like uh 1:14:47 Robert Heinlein they knew the Olaf stapletons and so forth and they were doing the same thing but by the time you 1:14:52 get to the 60s there was enough science fiction literature that it actually started coming back around instead you 1:14:59 know the that science fiction of the 30s and the 40s was justifiably mocked by 1:15:05 literary establishment because it wasn't interested in literary qualities it was interested in ideas Big Ideas you know 1:15:11 back it up to yeah to the first science fiction magazine which is what 1:15:16 if uh analog astounding uh no no it's 1:15:22 even earlier than that something planets or something the whole purpose of it was to teach young people science you talk 1:15:29 about Hugo guernsbach gernsbach gertzbach okay yeah yeah the grinsberg and that's where you get the term 1:15:34 science fiction it was to teach and be didactic right however the earlier guys 1:15:41 if I don't mischaracterize them would give us a science but they really weren't good with certain things like 1:15:47 characterization yes and and the virtues that go along with literature by the time you get to the 60s you see 1:15:55 the shift from the hard Sciences physics you know and in chemistry and all that kind of stuff to the soft Sciences yes 1:16:02 that is to say sociology and anthropology and blah blah blah so you 1:16:07 and my colleague Joan Russ was was part of that I interviewed yes she was I interviewed her and Chip Delaney because 1:16:14 we did a special issue of the Seattle review which I was at fiction editor of for 20 years devoted to science fiction 1:16:20 so I interviewed them together in the office at the University of Washington 1:16:26 um so so I want you to finish this off what happened to chip Delaney what happened to chip Delaney is that in the 1:16:33 new wave people like him and Ted sturgeon and Harlan Ellison were playing with language 1:16:39 they started playing with language and deconstructing the the relationship 1:16:45 between language and Consciousness to create effects in their work so they weren't telling you know uh 1:16:51 straight forward stories Bradbury was an early person who was grounded in the 1:16:57 pulps but used that manipulation of negative space emotionally and 1:17:03 artistically to create an effect you would put down one of the stories and say this wasn't science fiction but somehow you know I want to look at the 1:17:09 stars okay chip Delaney was in some ways well there were ways in which he was 1:17:15 limited from writing about what he really wanted to write about which was his sexuality and race and he could not 1:17:20 write about those things at that time so he would deconstruct language in concepts of race and Consciousness and 1:17:26 so forth and he was friggin brilliant he was one of the very first if not the 1:17:31 first black writer that John W Campbell who was the editor of astounding which 1:17:36 became analog would published because Campbell was a racist I mean he right there he would I know two people who 1:17:42 have letters from him where he stated straight out you can't write about an advanced application of civilization 1:17:48 because Africans aren't smart enough to create one that was and he was one of 1:17:53 the foundations of the field so Chip Delaney had to hide who he was in order to write so he hid in the world of the 1:17:59 intellect I will be so brilliant I will people when people think chip Delaney 1:18:04 they will not think black they will think brilliant he he deliberately expressed his intellect so that people 1:18:11 wouldn't notice his skin color but that where and that's my interpretation 1:18:17 that's nothing he ever said directly to me about it but that wears on you how do 1:18:22 you write stories for people and you feel in your heart they don't want to know who I really am they if they 1:18:28 acknowledge my intellect they're making me an exception oh if they were all like chip Delaney we wouldn't have a problem 1:18:33 that that eventually can turn to ashes in your mouth and lead to you asking 1:18:39 questions of Ray Bradbury and Leo and Diane Dillon um and he at some point got out of it 1:18:46 but the field moved on that the 60s broke the box that Olaf Stapleton and 1:18:52 Robert Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov created by asking us to you 1:18:57 know the 60s were a time of experimentation and drugs and love and peace and so forth and so on 1:19:03 the generation that came after the 60s took all of that for granted and they began exploring Science Fiction with 1:19:09 simultaneously a sense of the Aesthetics that lead to literature and by the 80s and the 90s you actually 1:19:17 had a body of Science Fiction where the best of the best had both mastered storytelling and the sciences and the 1:19:24 capacity to create art and so Chip Delaney was forgotten to a degree because we no longer needed 1:19:32 what it is that he had brought to the field there was a recent issue of a magazine National magazine I can't 1:19:39 remember what it was a friend told me about it I didn't read it was a long piece on Delaney it's a long piece under 1:19:45 like a genuine genius huh Delaney was a genuine genius no question about it he 1:19:51 was one of Octavius teachers okay and you know so to act to him he Octavia is 1:19:57 insane Octavia she's a good writer sometimes better than others and so for you know and he's for real you know he 1:20:02 really means that um and both of them are above my level 1:20:08 but they what they were 1:20:13 helped make the field what it is they were foundational so let's get we got 1:20:20 four more I think we could get through them we will need to potentially move a 1:20:26 little quicker a little quicker okay I'm sorry because I'm I'm getting the signs but I don't want to disrupt the flow of 1:20:33 what's Happening Here so this person says growing up reading comics there was plenty of violence but now graphic 1:20:39 novels have the power to push out I believe it's saying out peace what are 1:20:45 your thoughts on that if you could push out peace I don't even know what that means if they mean that art is going to 1:20:52 make the world more violent I disagree with that wholeheartedly okay I think that that violence comes from being you 1:20:59 know it's like the Billy Budd syndrome you know the the greater your vocabulary and the more ideas you can express 1:21:04 through language the less you have to hit people there is an inverse relationship in prisons between the size 1:21:09 of vocabulary and the violence of the crime it's been noted many times by sociologists so the people who can play 1:21:15 with ideas don't need to stab you okay okay [Laughter] 1:21:25 moving at a steady clip we're gonna get there um thank you Elders for sharing your wisdom uh with your stories and the 1:21:31 question is how do you uh nurture the connection between your adult self and your child's self 1:21:40 how do you nurture the relationship between your adult self and your child 1:21:46 self you know I'll give you a meditation that I've seen other people use I don't know 1:21:52 if anybody here meditates but you can visualize this visualize yourself 1:21:58 as your younger self what what if you had a time machine and you could this has been done in movies 1:22:04 go back and talk to your younger self on a bad day when he or she just everything 1:22:10 went wrong getting beat up and so forth visualize yourself giving yourself that 1:22:16 kid you were a hug and holding that kid for you know a 1:22:22 breath or two and telling that kid you know it's pretty bad right now 1:22:28 but you don't know what's going to happen in the future that I do and it's going to be good 1:22:33 see that's perfect you know in in my system you know our pedagogy we teach we 1:22:39 have a podcast you know the life writing podcast and www.lifewritingpodcast.com and we talk 1:22:46 about a technique called the ancient child what the ancient child okay it is 1:22:51 a technique and it's like you imagine that at one end of a string is the child 1:22:57 that you were at the other end of the string is the old the Elder you're going to be on your deathbed you know just 1:23:02 just you're gonna die tomorrow be on all ego Beyond any need to look good or any 1:23:08 of that nonsense and all you're trying to do is move with Integrity between the dreams of childhood and the knowledge of 1:23:15 what values are real that you will have on your deathbed on the other side of ego and if you use a meditation like you 1:23:22 just suggested and you visualize the child self you can ask the child what it wants you to do 1:23:28 and you can also visualize the child and the Elder simultaneously then just sit 1:23:33 back and listen to them talk to each other and they will express everything you need to live your life with Integrity I've got another variation 1:23:40 that might be interesting particularly if you have difficulties with your parents 1:23:45 with your mom or dad visualize them and also maybe when they were young yes 1:23:53 they give them a hug love it I hadn't thought about that I 1:23:58 love that that it's not original to me that's multi-generational healing yes that's great yeah no I I didn't invent 1:24:06 that it's it's a meditation that people do in in the Buddhist tradition but also 1:24:12 I do the one with my younger self every time I meditate I give younger me a hug 1:24:17 yeah I do that I've never done that with my parents though and I'm going to do that within the next 24 hours that's 1:24:23 great I love it thank you last two very quick because these are quick ones what 1:24:30 are you reading now or watching 1:24:35 um I'm studying a time and energy management system I'm not reading any well actually no I'm reading the new 1:24:41 Stephen King novel of Holly and I'm studying a time in energy management system okay thank you well on the plane 1:24:46 from Seattle which left at seven in the morning so we had to be up at four in 1:24:51 the morning and I didn't get to bed but nevertheless from Seattle to Chicago I 1:24:57 read the essays in this the uh sin and the Art of writing by Bradbury okay and 1:25:03 that that was it was great well from Atlanta to Indianapolis I read a story 1:25:09 by one of the greatest living writers a guy named Charles don't go there don't 1:25:14 go there him a story that I just finished two 1:25:20 three days ago that's right because it's about martial arts I gotta show this to Steve and you promised you'd read it on 1:25:26 the plane and you didn't I thank you yes I did thank you I worked and one word possibly one quick word yes and we're 1:25:33 gonna bring Dr ockman back up but one quick word for any aspiring uh graphic 1:25:38 novel novelists writers who that was one of the questions so I'm terrified okay if you told me for just a second I've 1:25:45 got something specific I like to say the six step process that we teach in life writing and we learned this from Ray 1:25:51 Bradbury and studying other people like this the first step is write at least one sentence a day every day just make 1:25:56 that commitment second step is right between one and four short stories every month the third step is finish those 1:26:02 stories and submit them the the fourth step is do not rewrite your stories 1:26:07 except to editorial requests once you finish them don't rewrite them go on to the next door the fifth step is you read 1:26:14 ten times as much as you write and the last step is repeat this process 100 times we teach this to our students and 1:26:21 not a single person who's following this advice has failed to publish by story 26. okay well I used to teach at the 1:26:27 University of Washington in 33 years and I give my students assignments but one of the things I got them to do that I 1:26:34 found extremely valuable is keep a writer's workbook do not let your day go by in which you 1:26:40 have a thought a perception an image that comes to you and you don't put it down in your writer support workbook you 1:26:46 see an article that you like clip it this these These are extremely valuable I have 1:26:52 writer's workbooks that cover three shelves and go back to the early 70s 1:26:57 they're like memory memory aids keep a writer's workbook blank pages put 1:27:03 anything you want to on it you know like just descriptive passages you see somebody that you run into and they're 1:27:10 dressed in a distinctive and interesting way oh they got an interesting tattoo that goes the world is yours to process 1:27:17 through perception and you put that these scraps into your writer's workbook 1:27:22 and I assure you that they will be of use to you when you're I go through my writer's 1:27:29 workbooks I see I've thought about and written something on every subject Under the Sun literally since the early 70s so 1:27:37 it triggers my memory and I see my younger self actually because what is it you're paying attention to in the 70s 1:27:44 different than the 90s it's almost like an archeology of your own Consciousness 1:27:50 what you're focusing on during a particular decade I just filled up one 1:27:55 and I was I was telling one of my friends here I'd like to go by the bookstore to see if I can get another 1:28:00 blank book because I have to have that during the course of the day put stuff 1:28:06 into it is my journal every day yeah yeah I mean writers have them if you 1:28:12 want great examples of what they look like look at Hawthorne look at Chekhov look at um no I'm not Starcher I'm 1:28:20 thinking of some of the great writers we have their workbooks they have plot 1:28:26 outlines for stories they've never written they have observations of people um it started writers and just keep it's 1:28:34 just for you not for anybody else I'd like to make one quick comment 1:28:39 that if you like the way we've been talking about writing here you might want to come to a screenwriting Workshop that my wife and 1:28:46 I are doing you can find out about it at www.hollywoodloop hole.com and what I 1:28:51 will say is ignore the price on there if you need a price where we just want good people we don't care if you can afford 1:28:57 the full price for people who we know just write us a letter and saying that you you need a break on the price we'll 1:29:02 take whatever you got what we want is people come on September 23rd and really 1:29:08 want to learn how to write and about screenwriting 1:29:13 www.hollywoodloopole.com all right and folks please uh 1:29:19 make sure you're going to the events for the the festival 451 1:29:24 um tomorrow at the cancan theater will be filming uh screening Horror in the 1:29:30 war with uh Tanana you do wonderful you have an opportunity for book signing in 1:29:35 the back here thank you thank you thank you 1:29:40 [Applause] 1:29:51 thank you all so much that was amazing that was amazing thank you thank you and 1:29:57 uh there is an opportunity to get your books signed by Steve Barnes Dr Charles 1:30:03 Johnson Sharon Skeeter antonina review there are four tables up here at the front please put on your note cards what you 1:30:10 would like them to write in your book to my left the aisle in the far left 1:30:16 your right we're going to line up over here we're going to pull the tables forward and we're going to to get your 1:30:21 book signed if you need to purchase a book in order to have it signed uh The Book Table is still up in the in the 1:30:28 foyer to the back there where I'm pointing and thank you all for a wonderful night thank you for such a a 1:30:35 stimulating discussion and uh we love you thank you [Applause]