When all is said and sung, there is nothing so interesting as the man and woman who dwell on any corner of the earth; so, before giving you any further details of our surroundings, or doings, or prospects, let me introduce you to our neighbours, so far as I have as yet the pleasure of their acquaintance. And I am glad at once to acknowledge that itisa pleasure, notwithstanding all the talk we have heard of “mean whites,” “poor, white trash,” and the like, in novels, travels, and newspapers. It may possibly be that we have been fortunate, and that our neighbours here are no fair specimens of the “poor whites” of the South. This, and the next three counties, are in the north-western corner of Tennessee, bordering on Kentucky. They are entirely mountain land. There are very few negroes in them, and they were strongly Unionist during the war. At present, they are Republican, almost to a man. There is not one Democratic official in this county, and I am told that only three votes were cast for the Democratic candidates at the last State elections. They are overwhelmed by the vote of western and central Tennessee, which carries the State with the solid South; but here Union men can speak their minds freely, and cover their walls with pictures in coloured broad-sheet of the heroes of the war,—Lincoln, Governor Brownlow, Grant and his captains. They are poor almost to a man, and live in log-huts and cabins which, at home, could scarcely be rivalled out of Ireland. Within ten miles of this place there are possibly half a dozen (I have seen two) which are equal in accommodation and comfort to those of good farmers in England. The best of these belongs to our nearest neighbour, with whom a party of us dined, at noon, the orthodox hour in the mountains, some weeks since. He is a wiry man, of middle height, probably fifty-five years of age, upright, with finely cut features, and an eye that looks you right in the face. He has been on his farm twenty years, and has cleared some fifty acres, which grow corn, millet, and vegetables, and he has a fine apple orchard. We should call his farming very slovenly, but it produces abundance for his needs. He sat at the head of his table like an old nobleman, very quiet and courteous, but quite ready to speak on any subject, and especially of the five years of the war through which he carried his life in his hand, but never flinched for an hour from his faith. His wife, a slight, elderly person, whose regular features showed that she must have been very good-looking, did not sit down with us, but stood at the bottom of the table, dispensing her good things. Our drink was tea and cold spring water; our viands, chickens, ducks, a stew, ham, with a profusion of vegetables, apple and huckleberry tarts, and several preserves, one of which (some kind of cherry, very common here) was of a lovely gold colour, and of a flavour which would make the fortune of a London pastry-cook; a profusion of water-melons and apples finished our repast; and no one need ask a better,—but I am bound to add that our hostess has the name for giving the best square meal to be had in the four counties. It would be as fair to take this as an average specimen of the well-to-do farmers’ fare here, as that of a nobleman with a French cook of the gentry at home. Our host is a keen sportsman, and showed us his flint-lock rifle, six feet long, and weighing 16 lbs.! He carries a forked stick as a rest, and, we were assured, gets on his game about as quickly as if it were a handy Westley-Richards, and seldom misses a running deer. The vast majority of these mountaineers are in very different circumstances. Most, but not all of them, own a log cabin and minute patch of corn round it, probably also a few pigs and chickens, but seem to have no desire to make any effort at further clearing, and quite content to live from hand to mouth. They cannot do that without hiring themselves out when they get a chance, but are most uncertain and exasperating labourers. In the first place, though able, to stand great fatigue in hunting and perfectly indifferent to weather, they are not physically so strong as average English or Northern men. Then they are never to be relied on for a job. As soon as one of them has earned three or four dollars, he will probably want a hunt, and go off for it then and there, spend a dollar on powder and shot, and these on squirrels and opossums, whose skins may possibly bring him in ten cents as his week’s earnings. It is useless to remonstrate, unless you have an agreement in writing. An Englishman who came here lately, to found some manufactures, left in sheer despair and disgust, saying he had found at last a place where no one seemed to care for money. I do not say that this is true, but they certainly seem to prefer loafing and hunting to dollars, and are often too lazy, or unable, to count, holding out their small change and telling you to take what you want. Temperate as a rule, they are sadly weak when wild-cat whisky or “moonshine,” as the favourite illicit beverage of the mountains is called, crosses their path. This is the great trouble on pay nights at all the works which are starting in this district. The inevitable booth soon appears, with the usual accompaniment of cards and dice, and probably a third of your men are thenceforth without a dime and utterly unfit for work on Mondays, if you are lucky enough to escape dangerous rows amongst the drinkers. The State laws give summary methods of suppressing the nuisance, but they are hard to work, and though public sentiment is vehemently hostile to whisky, the temptation proves in nine cases out of ten too strong. The mountaineers are in the main well-grown men, though slight, shockingly badly clothed, and sallow from chewing tobacco; suspicious in all dealings at first, but hospitable, making everything they have in the house, including their own beds, free to a stranger, and generally refusing payment for lodging or food. They are also very honest, crimes against property (though not against the person) being of very rare occurrence. The other day, a Northern gentleman visiting here expressed his fears to a native farmer, who, after inquiring whether there were any prisons and police in New England, what these were for, and whether his interrogator had locks to his doors and his safes, and bars to his window-shutters, remarked, “Wal, I’ve lived here man and boy for forty year, and never had a bolt to my house, or corn-loft, or smoke-house, and I’ll give you a dollar for every lock you can find in Scott county.” The cattle, sheep, and hogs wander perfectly unguarded through the forest, and I have not yet heard of a single instance of a stolen beast.
There is a rough water-mill on a creek close by, called Back’s Mill, which was run by the owner for years—until he sold it a few months ago—on the following system. He put the running gear and stones up, and above the latter a wooden box, with the charge for grinding meal marked outside. He visited the mill once a fortnight, looked to the machinery, and took away whatever coin was in the box. Folks brought their corn down the steep bank if they chose, ground it at their leisure, and then, if they were honest, put the fee in the box; if not, they went off with their meal, and a consciousness that they were rogues. I presume Buck found his plan answer, as he pursued it up to the date of sale.
In short, sir, I have been driven to the conclusion, in spite of all traditional leanings the other way, that the Lord has much people in these mountains, as I think a young English deacon, lately ordained by the Bishop of Tennessee, will find, who passed here yesterday on a buggy, with his young wife and child, and two boxes and ten dollars of the goods of this world, on his way to open a church mission in a neighbouring county. I heard yesterday a story which should give him hope as to the female portion, at any rate, of his possible flock. They are dreadful slatterns, without an inkling of the great Palmerstonian truth that dirt is matter in itswrongplace. A mountain girl, however, who had, strange to say, taken the fancy to go as housemaid in a Knoxville family, gave out that she had been converted, and, upon doubts being expressed and questions asked as to the grounds on which she based the assurance, replied that she knew it was all right, because now she swept underneath the rugs.
When one gets on stories of quaint and ready replies in these parts, one “slops over on both shoulders.” Here are a couple which are current in connection with the war, upon which, naturally enough, the whole mind of the people is still dwelling, being as much occupied with it as with their other paramount subject, the immediate future development of the unbounded resources of these States, which have been really opened for the first time by that terrible agency. An active Secessionist leader in a neighbouring county, in one of his stump speeches before the war, had announced that the Southerners, and especially Tennessee mountain men, could whip the white-livered Yanks with pop-guns. Not long since, having been amnestied and reconstructed again to a point when he saw his way to running for a State office, he was reminded of this saying at the beginning of his canvas. “Wal, yes,” he said, “he owned to that and stood by it still, only those mean cusses [the Yanks] wouldn’t fight that way.”
The other is of very different stamp, and will hold its own with many world-wide stories of graceful compliments to former enemies by kings and other big-wigs. General Wilder, one of the most successful and gallant of the Northern corps commanders in the war, has established himself in this State, with whose climate and resources he became so familiar in the campaign which ended under Look-out Mountain, and has built up a great iron industry at Chatanooga, in full sight of the battlefields from which 14,000 bodies of Union soldiers were carried to the national cemetery. Early in his Southern career he met one of the most famous of the Southern corps commanders (Forrest, I believe, but am not sure as to the name), who, on being introduced, said, “General, I have long wished to know you, because you have behaved to me in a way for which I reckon you owe me an apology, as between gentlemen.”
Wilder replied in astonishment that to his knowledge they had never met before, but that he was quite ready to do all that an honourable man ought. “Well now, General,” said the other, “you remember such and such a fight (naming it)? By night you had taken every gun I had, and I consider that quite an ungentlemanly advantage to take, anyhow.” By the way, no man bears more frank testimony to the gallantry of the Southern soldiers than General Wilder, or admits more frankly the odds which the superior equipment of the Federals threw against the Confederate armies. His corps, mounted infantry, armed with repeating rifles, were equal, he thinks, to at least three times their numbers of as good soldiers as themselves with the ordinary Southern arms. There are few pleasanter things to a hearty well-wisher, who has not been in America for ten years, than the change which has taken place in public sentiment, indicated by such frank admissions as the one just referred to. In 1870, any expression of admiration for the gallantry of the South, or of respect or appreciation of such men as Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, or Johnson, was received either silently, or with strong disapproval. How it is quite the other way, so far as I have seen as yet, and I cannot but hope that the last scars of the mighty struggle are healing up rapidly and thoroughly, and that the old sectional hatred and scorn lie six feet under ground, in the national cemeteries:—
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the inland rivers run red;
We have buried our anger for ever,
In the sacred graves of the dead.
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the Judgment Day;
Love and tears for the blue!
Tears and love for the gray!
No man can live for a few weeks on these Cumberland Mountains, without responding with a hearty “Amen!”
Nothing would satisfy our Forester but that some of us should ride over with him, some nine miles through the forest, to see Glades, the farm upon which he has been for the last eight years. He led the way, on his yellow mare, an animal who had nearly given us sore trouble here. The head stableman turned all the horses out one day for a short run, and she being amongst them, and loving her old home best, went off straight for Glades through the woods, with every hoof after her. Luckily, Alfred, the Forester’s son, was there, and guessing what was the matter, just rode her back, all the rest following. The ride was lovely, glorious peeps of distant blue ranges, and the forest just breaking out all over into golds, and vermilions, and purples, and russets. We only passed two small farms on the way, both ramshackle, and so the treat of coming suddenly on some one hundred acres cleared, drained, with large, though rough, farm buildings, and bearing the look of being cared for, was indescribably pleasant. Mrs. Hill and her son Alfred received us, both worthy of the head of the house; more I cannot say. They run the farm in his absence with scarcely any help, Alfred having also to attend to a grist and saw mill in the neighbouring creek. There were a fine mare and filly in the yard, as tame as pet dogs, coming and shoving their noses into your pockets and coaxing you for apples. The hogs are good Berkshire breed, the sheep Cotswolds. The cows (it is the only place where we have had cream on the mountains), Alderney or shorthorns. The house is a large log-cabin, one big room, with a deep, open fireplace, with a great pine-log smouldering at the back across plain iron dogs, a big hearth in front, on which pitch-pine chips are thrown when you feel inclined for a blaze. The room is carpeted and hung with photographs and prints, a rifle and shot gun, and implements of one kind or another. A small collection of books, mostly theological, and founded on two big Bibles, two rocking and half a dozen other chairs, a table, and two beds in the corners furthest from the fire, complete the furniture of the room, which opens on one side on a deep verandah, and on the other on a lean-to, which serves for kitchen and diningroom, and ends in a small, spare bedroom. A loft above, into which the family disappeared at night, completes the accommodation. I need not dwell on our supper, which included tender mutton, chickens, apple-tart, custard pudding, and all manner of vegetables and cakes. Mrs. Hill is as notable a cook as her husband is a forester. After supper we drew round the big fireplace, and soon prevailed on our host to give us a sketch of his life, by way of encouragement to his three young countrymen who sat round, and are going to try their fortunes in these mountains:—
“I was born and bred up in one of Lord Denbigh’s cottages, at Kirby, in Warwickshire. My father was employed on the great place, that’s Newnham Paddocks, you know. He was a labourer, and brought up sixteen children, not one of whom, except me, has ever been summonsed before a justice, or got into any kind of trouble. I went to school till about nine, but I was always longing to be out in the fields at plough or birdkeeping; so I got away before I could do much reading or writing. But I kept on at Sabbath School, and learnt more than I did at the other. The young ladies used to teach us, and they’d set us pieces and things to learn for them in the week. My Cæsar (the only ejaculation Amos allows himself; he cannot remember where he picked it up), how I would work at my piece to get it for Lady Mary! I’ve fairly cried over it sometimes, but I always managed to get it, somehow. After a bit, I was taken on at the house. At first, I did odd jobs, like cleaning boots and carrying messages; and then I got into the garden, and from that into the stable, and then for a bit with the keepers, and then into livery, to wait on the young ladies. So you see I learnt something of everything, and was happy, and earning good wages. But I wanted to see the world, so I took service with a gentleman who was a big railway contractor. I used to drive him, and do anything a’most that he wanted. I stayed with him nine years, and ’twas while going about with him that I met my wife here. We got married down in Kent, thirty-six years ago. Yes (in answer to a laughing comment by his wife), I wanted some one to mind me in those days. That poaching trouble came about this way. I had charge for my master of a piece of railway that ran through Lord————‘s preserves, in Wales. There were very strict rules about trespassing on the lines then, because folks there didn’t like our line, and had been putting things on it to upset the trains. One day I saw two keepers coming down the line, with a labourer I knew between them. He was all covered with blood, from a wound in his head. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘what’s the matter now?’ ‘I’ve been out of work,’ he said, ‘this three weeks, and I was digging out a rabbit to get something to eat, when they came up and broke my head.’ From that time the keepers and I quarrelled. I summonsed them, and got them fined for trespassing on the line; and then they got me fined for trespassing on their covers. We watched one another like hawks. I’d often lie out at night for hours in the cold, in a ditch, where I knew they’d want to cross the line, and then jump up and catch them; and they’d do the same by me. Once they got me fined £3: 10s. for poaching. I remember it well. I was that riled, I said to the justices right out, ‘How long do you think it’ll take me, gentlemen, to pay all that money, with hares only 1d. apiece?’ Then I went in for it. I remembered the text, ‘What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ I did it. I used to creep along at night, all up the fences, and feel for the places where the hares came through, and set my wires; and I’d often have ten great ones screaming and flopping about like mad. And that’s what the keepers were, too. I’ve given a whole barrowful of hares away to the poor folk of a morning. Well, I know (in answer to an interpellation of Mrs. Hill), yes, ’twas all wrong, and I was a wild chap in those days. Then I begun to hear talk about America, and all there was for a man to see and do there, so I left my master, and we came over, twenty-seven years ago. At first I took charge of gentlemen’s gardens, in New York and New Jersey. Then we went to Miscejan, where I could earn all I wanted. Money was of no account there for a good man in those days, but the climate was dreadful sickly, and we had our baby; the first we had in twelve years, and wanted to live on bread and water, so as we could save him. So we went up right amongst the Indians, to a place they call Grand Travers, a wonderful healthy place, on a lake in the pine-forest country, as it was then. I went on to a promontory, where the forest stood, not like it does here, but the trees that thick, you had scarce room to swing an axe. Well, it was a beautiful healthy place, and we and baby throve, and I soon made a farm; and then folk began to follow after us, and before I left, there were twenty-three saw-mills, cutting up from 80,000 to 150,000 feet a day, week in and out. They’ve stripped the country so now, that there’s no lumber for those mills to cut, and most of them have stopped. I used to have a boat, with just a small sail, and I’d take my stuff down in the morning, and trade it off to the lumber-men, and then sail back at night, for the wind always changed and blew back in the evenings, most part of the year. Well, then, the war came, and for two years I kept thinking whether I oughtn’t to do my part to help the Government I’d lived under so long. Besides, I hated slavery. So in the third year I made up my mind, and ’listed in the Michigan Cavalry. I took the whole matter before the Lord, and prayed I might do my duty as a soldier, and not hurt any man. Well, we joined the Cavalry, near 60,000 strong down in these parts; and I was at Knoxville, and up and down. It was awful, the language and the ways of the men, many of them at least, swearing, and drinking, and stealing any kind of thing they could lay hands on. Many’s the plan for stealing I’ve broken up, telling them they were there to sustain the flag, not to rob poor folks. I spoke very plain all along, and got the men, many of them any way, to listen. I got on famously, too, because I was never away plundering, and my horse was always ready for any service. An officer would come in, after we had had a long day’s work, to say a despatch or message must go, and no horse in our company was fit to go but mine, so the orderly must have him; but I always said no, I was quite ready to go myself, but would not part company from my horse. The only time 1 took what was not mine was when we surprised a Confederate convoy, and got hold of the stores they were carrying. There they were lying all along the roads, greatcoats and blankets, and meal bags, and good boots, with English marks on them. My Cæsar, how our men were destroying them! I got together a lot of the poor, starving folk out of the woods that both sides had been living on, and loaded them up with meal and blankets. My Cæsar, how I loved to scatter them English boots! They never had seen such before. No, sir (in reply to one of us), I never fired a shot all that time, but I had hundreds fired at me. I’ve been in the rifle-pits, and now and again seen a fellow drawing a bead on me, and I’d duck down and hear the bullet ping into the bank close above. They got to employ me a good deal carrying despatches and scouting. That’s how I got took at last. We were at a place called Strawberry Plains, with Breckenridge’s division pretty near all round us. I was sent out with twelve other men, to try and draw them out, to show their force and position; and so we did, but they were too quick for us. Out they came, and it was a race back to our lines down a steep creek. My horse missed his footing, and down we rolled over and over, into the water. When I got up, I was up to my middle, and, first thing I knew, there was a rebel, who swore at me for a G—d d———Yankee, and fired his six shooter at me. The shot passed under my arm, and before he could fire again an officer ordered him on, and gave me in charge. I was taken to the rear, and marched off with a lot of prisoners. The rebels treated me as if I’d been their father, after a day or two. I spoke out to them about their swearing and ways, just as I had to our men; and I might have been tight all the time I was a prisoner, only I’m a temperance man. They put me on their horses on the march, and I was glad of it, for I was hurt by my roll with my horse, and had about the chest. After about six days I got my parole, with five others. They were hard pressed then and didn’t want us toting along. Then we started north, with nothing but just our uniforms, and they full of vermin. The first house we struck I asked where we could find a Union man about there. They didn’t know any one, didn’t think there was one in the county. I said that was bad, as we were paroled Union soldiers,—and then all was changed. They took us in and wanted us to use their beds, which we wouldn’t do, because of the vermin on us. They gave us all they had, and I saw the women, for I couldn’t sleep, covering us up with any spare clothes they’d got, and watching us all night long. They sent us on to other Union houses, and so we got north. I was too ill to stay north at my old work, so I sold my farm, and came south to Knoxville, where I had come to know many kind, good people, in the war. They were very kind, and I got work at the improvements on Mr. Dickenson’s farm (a model farm we had gone over), and in other gentlemen’s gardens. But I didn’t get my health again, so eight years ago I came to this place on the mountains, which I knew was healthy, and would suit me. Well, they all said I should be starved out in two years and have to quit, but before three years were out I was selling them corn and better bacon than they’d ever had before. Some of ’em begin to think I’m right now, and there’s a deal of improvement going on, and if they’d only, as I tell ’em, just put in all their time on their farms, and not go loafing round gunning, and contented with corn-dodgers and a bit of pork, and give up whisky, they might all do as well as I’ve done. I should like to go back once more and see the old country; but I mean to end my days here. There’s no such country that I ever saw. The Lord has done all for us here. And it seems like dreams, that I should live to see a Rugby up here on the mountains. I mean to take a lot in the town, or close by, and call it Newnham Paddocks. So I shall lay my bones, you see, in the same place, as it were, that I was reared in.”
I do not pretend that these were his exact words,—the whole had to be condensed to come within your space,—but they are not far off. It was now past nine, the time for retiring, when Amos told us that he always ended his day with family prayers. A psalm was read, and then we knelt down, and he prayed for some minutes. Extemporary prayers always excite my critical faculty, but there was no thought or expression in this I could have wished to alter. Then we turned in, I, after a pipe in the verandah, in one clean white bed, and two of the boys in the big one in the opposite corner. There I soon dozed off, watching the big, smouldering, white pine-log away in the depth of the chimney-nook, and the last flickerings of the knobs of pitch pine in front of it, between the iron dogs, and wondering in my mind over the brave story we had just been listening to, so simply told (of which I fear I have succeeded in giving a very poor reflection), and whether there are not some—there cannot, I fear, be many—such lives lying about in out-of-the-way corners, on mountain, or plain, or city. My last conscious speculation was whether the Union would have been saved if all Union soldiers had been Amos Hills.
I waked early, just before dawn, and was watching alternately the embers of the big log, still aglow in the deep chimney, and the white light beginning to break through the honeysuckles and vines which hung over the verandah, and shaded the wide, open window, when the clock struck five. The door opened softly, and in stepped Amos Hill in his stockings. He came to the foot of our beds, picked up our dirty boots, and stole out again, as noiselessly as he had entered. The next minute I heard the blacking brushes going vigorously, and knew that I should appear at breakfast with a shine on in which I should have reason to glory, if I were preparing to walk in Bond Street, instead of through the scrub on the Cumberland Mountains. I turned over for another, hour’s sleep (breakfast being at 6.30 sharp), but not without first considering for some minutes which of us two—if things were fixed up straight in this blundering old world—ought to be blacking the other’s boots. The conclusion I came to was that it oughtnotto be Amos Hill.
There is one inconvenience in this desultory mode of correspondence,—that one is apt to forget what one has told already, and to repeat oneself. I have written something of the white native of these mountains; have I said anything of his dark brother? The subject is becoming a more and more interesting and important one every day, through all these regions. In these mountains, the negro, perhaps, can scarcely be called a native. Very few black families, I am told, were to be found here a year or two since. My own eyes assure me that they are multiplying rapidly. I see more and more black men amongst the gangs on roads and bridges, and come across queer little encampments in the woods, with a pile of logs smouldering in the midst, round which stand the mirth-provoking figures of small black urchins, who stare and grin at the intruder on horseback, till he rides on under the gold and russet and green autumnal coping of hickories, chestnuts, and pines.
I am coming to the conclusion that wherever work is to be had, in Tennessee, at any rate, there will the negro be found. He seems to gather to a contractor like the buzzards, which one sees over the tree-tops, to carrion. And unless the white natives take to “putting in all their time,” whatever work is going will not long remain with them. The negro will loaf and shirk as often as not when he gets the chance, but he has not the same craving for knocking off altogether as soon as he has a couple of dollars in his pocket; has no strong hunting instinct, and has not acquired the art of letting his pick drop listlessly into the ground with its own weight, and stopping to admire the scenery after every half-dozen strokes. The negro is much more obedient, moreover, and manageable,—obedient to a fault, if one can believe the many stories one hears of his readiness to commit small misdemeanours and crimes, and not always small ones, at the bidding of his employers. There is one thing, however, which an equally unanimous testimony agrees in declaring that he will not do, and that is, sell his vote, or be dragooned into giving it for any one but his own choice; he may, indeed, be scared from voting, but cannot be “squared,” a singular testimony, surely, of his prospective value as a citizen. Equally strong is the evidence of his resolute determination to get his children educated. In some Southern States the children are, I believe, kept apart, but in the only school I have had the chance of seeing, black and white children were together. They were not in class, but in the front of the barn-like building, used both for church and school, having just come out for the dinner hour. There was a large, sandy, trampled place under the trees, by no means a bad play-ground, on which a few of the most energetic, the blacks in the majority, were playing at some game as we came up, the mysteries of which I should have liked to study. But the longer we stayed, the less chance there seemed of their going on, and the game remains a mystery to me still. Where these children, some fifty in number, came from, is a problem; but there they were, from somewhere. And everywhere, I hear, the blacks are forcing the running, with respect to education, and great numbers of them are showing a thrift and energy which are likely to make them formidable competitors in the struggle for existence in all states south of Kentucky, at any rate.
In one department (a very small one, no doubt), they will have crowded out the native whites in a very short time, if I may judge by our experience in this house. We number two ladies and six men, and our whole service is done by one boy. Our first experiment was with a young native, who “reared up” on the first morning at the idea of having to black boots. This prejudice, I think I told you, was removed for the moment, and he stayed for a few days. Where it was he “weakened on us” I could not learn for certain, but incline to the belief that it was either having to carry the racquets and balls to the lawn-tennis ground, or to get a fire to burn in order to boil the water for a four-o’clock tea. Both these services were ordered by the ladies, and I thought I saw signs (though I am far from certain) that his manly soul rose against feminine command. Be that as it may, off he went without warning, and soon after Amos Hill arrived, with almost pathetic apologies and a negro boy, short of stature, huge of mouth, fabulous in the apparent age of his garments, named Jeff. He had no other name, he told us, and did not know whether it signified Jefferson or Geoffrey, or where or how he got it, or anything about himself, except that he had got our place at $5 a month,—at which he showed his ivory, “some!”
From this time all was changed. Jeff, it is true, after the first two days, gave proofs that he was not converted, like the white housemaid who had learned to sweep under the mats. His sweeping and tidying were decidedly those of the sinner, and he entirely abandoned the only hard work we set him, as soon as it was out of sight from the Asylum. It was a path leading to a shallow well, which the boys had dug at the bottom of the garden. The last twenty yards or so are on a steeper incline than the part next the house, so Jeff studiously completed the few feet that were left to the brow, and never put pick or shovel on the remainder, which lay behind the friendly brow of the slope. But in all other directions, where the work was mainly odd jobs, a respectable kind of loafing, Jeff was always to the fore, acquitting himself to the best, I think, of his ability. We did not get full command of him till the arrival of a young Texan cattle-driver, who taught us the peculiar cry for the negro, by appending a high “Ho” to his name, or rather running them together, so that the whole sounded, “Hojeff!” as nearly as possible one syllable. Even the ladies picked up the cry, and thenceforward Jeff’s substitute for the “Anon, anon, sir!” of the Elizabethan waiter was instantaneous. He built a camp-oven, like those of the Volunteers at Wimbledon, and neater of construction, from which he supplied a reasonably constant provision of hot water between six and six, of course cutting his own logs for the fire. His highest achievement was ironing the ladies’ cotton dresses, which they declared he did not very badly. Most of us entrusted him with the washing of flannel shirts and socks, which at any rate were faithfully immersed in suds, and hung up to dry under our eyes. The laundry was an army tent, pitched at the back of the Asylum, where Jeff spent nearly all his time when not under orders, and generally eating an apple, of which there was always a sack, a present from some ranche-owner, or brought over from the garden, lying about, and open to mankind at large. I never could find out whether he could read. One evening he came up proudly to ask whether his mail had come, and sure enough when the mail arrived there was a post-card, which he claimed. We thought he would ask one of us to read it for him, but were disappointed. He had a habit of crooning over and over again all day some scrap of a song. One of these excited my curiosity exceedingly, but I never succeeded in getting more than two lines out of him—
Oh my! oh my! I’ve got a hundred dollars in a mine!
One had a crave to hear what came of those 100 dollars. It seems it is so almost universally. The nearest approach to a complete negro ditty which I have been able to strike is one which the Texan gives, with a wonderful roll of the word “chariot,” which cannot be written. It runs:—
The Debbie he chase me round a stump,
Gwine for to carry me home;
He catch me most at ebery jump,
Gwine for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chay-o-t,
Gwine for to carry me home.
The Debbie he make one grab at me,
Gwine, etc.,
He missed me, and my soul goed free,
Gwine, etc.
Swing low, etc.
Oh! won’t we have a gay old time,
Gwine, etc.
A eatin’ up o’ honey, and a drinkin’ up o’ wine.
Gwine, etc.
Swing low, etc.
This, sir, I think you will agree with me, though precious, is obviously a fragment only. It took our Texan many months to pick it up, even in this mutilated condition. But after all, Jeffs character and capacity come out most in the direction of boots. It. is from his attitude with regard to them that I incline to think that the Black race have a great future in these States. You may have gathered from previous letters that there is a clear, though not a well marked, division in this settlement as to blacking. Amos Hill builds on it decidedly, and would have every farmer appear in blacked boots, at any rate on Sunday. The opposition is led by a young farmer of great energy and famous temper, who, having been “strapped,” or left without a penny, 300 miles from the Pacific coast, amongst the Mexican mines, and having made his hands keep his head in the wildest of earthly settlements, has a strong contempt for all amenities of clothing, which is shared by the geologist and others. How the point will be settled at last, I cannot guess. It stands over while the ladies are still here, and I have actually seen the “strapped” one giving his wondrous boots a sly lick or two of blacking on Sunday morning. But, anyhow, the blacks will be cordially on the side of polish and the aristocracy. This one might, perhaps, have anticipated; but what I was not prepared for, was Jeffs apparent passion for boots. I own a fine, strong pair of shooting-boots, which he worshipped for five minutes at least every morning. As my last day in the Asylum drew on, I could see he was troubled in his mind. At last, out it came. Watching his chance, when no one was near, he sidled up, and pointing to them on the square chest in the verandah which served for blacking-board, he said, “I’d like to buy dem boots.” After my first astonishment was over, I explained to him that I couldn’t afford to sell them for less than about six weeks of his wages, and that, moreover, I wanted them for myself, as I could get none such here. He was much disappointed, and muttered frequently, “I’d like to buy dem boots!”—but my heart did not soften.
Perhaps I ought rather to be giving your readers more serious experiences, but somehow the negro is apt to run one out into chaff. However, I will conclude with one fact, which seems to me a very striking confirmation of my view. All Americans are reading theFool’s Errand, a powerful novel, founded on the state of things after the war in the Kuklux times. It is written by a Southern judge, a fair and clever man, clearly, but one who has no more faith in the negro’s power to raise himself to anything above hewing wood and drawing water for the “Caucasian” than C. J. Taney himself. In all that book there is no single instance of the drawing of a mean, corrupt, or depraved negro; but the negroes are represented as full of patience, trustfulness, shrewdness, and power of many kinds.
Our opening day drew near, not without rousing the most serious misgivings in the minds of most of us whether we could possibly be ready to receive our guests. Invitations had been issued to our neighbours—friends, as we had learnt to esteem them—in Cincinnati, Knoxville, Chatanooga, whose hospitalities we had enjoyed, and who had expressed a cordial sympathy with our enterprise, and a desire to visit us. We looked also for some of our own old members from distant New England, in all probability seventy or eighty guests, to lodge and board, and convey from and back to the railway, seven miles over our new road,—no small undertaking, under our circumstances. But the hotel was still in the hands of the contractor, from whom, as yet, only the upper floors had been rescued. The staircase wanted banisters, and the hall and living-rooms were still only half-wainscotted, and full of carpenters’ benches and plasterers’ trays; while the furniture and crockery lumbered up the big barn, or stood about in cases on the broad verandah. As for our road, it was splendid, so far as it went, but some two miles were still merely a forest track, from which all trees and stumps had been removed, but that was all; and the bridge over the Clear Fork stream, by which the town site is entered, had only the first cross timbers laid from pier to pier, while the approaches seemed to lie in hopeless, weltering confusion, difficult on horseback, impossible on wheels. However, the manager declared that we should drive over the bridge on Saturday afternoon, and that the contractor should be out of the hotel by Monday midday. With this we were obliged to be content, though it was running things fine, as we looked for our guests on that Monday afternoon, and the opening was fixed for the next morning. And so it came to pass, as the manager said. Bridge and road were declared passable by the named time, though nervous persons might well have thought twice before attempting the former in the heavy omnibuses hired for the occasion; and we were able to get possession and move furniture and crockery into the hotel, though the carpenters still held the unfinished staircase.
So far so good; but still everything, we felt, depended on the weather. If the glorious days we had been having held, all would be well. The promise was fair up to Sunday evening, but at sunset there was a change. Amos Hill shook his head, and the geologist’s aneroid barometer gave ominous signs. They proved only too correct. Early in the night the rain set in, and by daybreak, when we were already astir, a steady, soft, searching rain was coming down perpendicularly, which lasted, with scarcely a break, clear through the day, and till midnight. With feelings of blank despair we thought of the new road, softened into a Slough of Despond, and the hastily thrown-up approaches to the bridge giving way under the laden omnibuses, and waited our fate. It was, as usual, better than we looked for. The morning train from Chatanooga would bring our southern guests in time for early dinner, if no break-down happened; and sure enough, within half an hour of the expected time up came the omnibuses, escorted to the hotel door by the manager and his son on horseback; and the Bishop of Tennessee, with his chaplain, the Mayor of Chatanooga, and a number of the leading citizens of that city and of Knoxville, descended in the rain. In five minutes we were at our ease and happy. If they had all been Englishmen on a pleasure-trip, they could not have taken the down-pour more cheerily as a matter of course, and pleasant, rather than otherwise, after the long drought. They dined, chatted, and smoked in the verandah, and then trotted off ingumcoats to look round at the walks, gardens, streets, and cots, escorted by “the boys.” The manager reported, with pride, that they had come up in an hour and a quarter, and without any kind ofcontretemps, though, no doubt, the new roadwasdeep, in places.
All anxiety was over for the moment, as the Northern train, bringing our Cincinnati and New England friends, was not due till after dark. We sat down to tea in detachments from six to eight, when, if all went well, the northerners would be about due. The tables were cleared, and relaid once more for them, and every preparation made to give them a warm welcome. Nine struck, and still no sign of them; then ten, by which time, in this early country, all but some four or five anxious souls had retired. We sat round the stove in the hall, and listened to the war-stories of the Mayor of Chatanooga, and our host of the Tabard, who had served on opposite sides in the terrible campaigns in the south of the State, which had ended at Missionary Ridge, and filled the national cemetery of Chatanooga with 14,000 graves of Union soldiers. But neither the interest of the stories themselves, nor the pleasure of seeing how completely all bitterness had passed out of the narrators’ minds, could keep our thoughts from dwelling on the pitch-dark road, sodden by this time with the rain, and themauvais pasof the bridge. Eleven struck, and now it became too serious for anything but anxious peerings into the black night, and considerations as to what could be done. We had ordered lanterns, and were on the point of starting for the bridge, when faint sounds, as of men singing in chorus, came through the darkness. They grew in volume, and now we could hear the omnibuses, from which came a roll of, “John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave,” given with a swing and precision which told of old campaigners. That stirring melody could hardly have been more welcome to the first line waiting for supports, on some hard-fought battle-ground, than it was to us. The omnibuses drew up, a dense cloud rising from the drenched horses and mules, and the singers got out, still keeping up their chorus, which only ceased on the verandah, and must have roused every sleeper in the settlement. The Old Bay State, Ohio, and Kentucky had sent us a set of as stalwart good fellows as ever sang a chorus or ate a beef-steak at midnight; and while they were engaged in the latter operation, they told how from the break-down of a freight-train, theirs had been three hours late, how the darkness had kept them to a foot’s-pace, how the last omnibus had given out in the heavy places, and had to be constantly helped on by a pair of mules detached from one of the others. “All’s well that ends well,” and it was with a joyful sense of relief that we piloted such of our guests as the hotel could not hold across to their cots in the barracks at one in the morning. By nine, the glorious Southern sun had fairly vanquished rain and mist, and the whole plateau was ablaze with the autumn tints, and every leaf gleaming from its recent shower-bath. Rugby outdid herself and “leapt to music and to light” in a way which astonished even her oldest and most enthusiastic citizens, some half dozen of whom had had something like twelve months’ experience of her moods and tempers. Breakfast began at six, and ended at nine, and for three hours batches of well-fed visitors were turned out to saunter round the walks, the English gardens, and lawn-tennis grounds, until the hour of eleven, fixed by the Bishop for the opening service. The church being as yet only some six feet above ground, this ceremony was to be held in the verandah of the hotel. Meantime, Bishop and chaplain were busy among “the boys,” organising a choir to sing the hymns and lead the responses. The whole population were gathering round the hotel, some four or five buggies, and perhaps twenty horses, haltered to the nearest trees, showed the interest excited in the neighbourhood. In addition to the seats in the verandah, chairs and benches were placed on the ground below for the surplus congregation, behind whom a fringe of white and black natives regarded the proceedings with grave attention. Punctual to time, the Bishop and his chaplain, in robes, took their places at the corner of the verandah, and gave out the first verses of the “Old Hundredth.” There was a moment’s pause, while the newly-organised choir exchanged glances as to who should lead off, and the pause was fatal to them for the moment. For on the Bishop’s left stood the stalwart New Englander who had led the pilgrims of the previous evening in the “John Brown” chorus. He, unaware of the episcopal arrangements, and of the consequent vested rights of “the boys,” broke out with “All people that on earth do dwell,” in a voice which carried the whole assembly with him, and at once reduced “the boys” to humble followers. They had their revenge, however, when it came to the second hymn at the end of the service. It was “Jerusalem, the golden,” which is apparently sung to a different tune in Boston to that in use in England, so though our musical guest struggled manfully through the first line, and had almost discomfited “the boys” by sheer force of lungs, numbers prevailed, and he was brought into line. The service was a short one, consisting of two psalms, “Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle?” and “Except the Lord build the house,” the chapter of Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple, half a dozen of the Church collects, and a prayer by the Bishop that the town and settlement might be built up in righteousness and the fear and love of God, and ‘prove a blessing to the State. Then, after the blessing, the gathering resolved itself into a public meeting after American fashion. The Board spoke through their representatives, and Bishop, judge, general manager, and visitors exchanged friendly oratorical buffets, and wishes and prophecies for the prosperity of the New Jerusalem in the Southern highlands. A more genuine or healthier act of worship it has not been our good-fortune to attend in these late years.
Dinner began immediately afterwards, and then the company scattered again, some to select town lots, some to the best views, the Bishop to organise a vestry, and induce two of “the boys” to become lay readers, pending the arrival of a parson (in which he was eminently successful); the chaplain to the Clear Fork with one of “the boys’” fishing-rods, after black bass; and a motley crowd to the lawn-tennis ground, to see some set played which would have done no discredit to Wimbledon, and excited much wonder and some enthusiasm amongst natives and visitors. A cheerful evening followed, in which the new piano in the hotel sitting-room did good service, and many war and other stories were told round the big hall stove. Early the next morning the omnibuses began carrying off the visitors, and by night Rugby had settled down again to its ordinary life, not, however, without a sense of strength gained for the work of building up a community which shall know how to comport itself in good and bad times, and shall help, instead of hindering, its sons and daughters in leading a brave, simple, and Christian life.