THE YANKEE-SCHOOL-MISTRESS.
The house was a large, old-fashioned frame building, square as a
packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are,
by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a
well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary
homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above
the common "corn-crackers" I had seen at the country meeting-house. The
Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our
host led the way directly to the sitting-room. There we found a bright,
blazing fire, and a pair of bright sparkling eyes, the latter belonging
to a blithesome young woman of about twenty, with a cheery face, and a
half-rustic, half-cultivated air, whom our new friend introduced to us
as his wife.
"I regret not having had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. S---- before, but
am very happy to meet her now," said the Colonel, with all the
well-bred, gentlemanly ease that distinguished him.
"The pleasure is mutual, Colonel J----," replied the lady, "but thirty
miles in this wild country, should not have made a neighbor so distant
as you have been."
"Business, madam, is at fault, as your husband knows. I have much to do;
and besides, all my connections are in the other direction--with
Charleston."
"It's a fact, Sally, the Colonel is the d---- busy man in these parts.
Not content with a big plantation and three hundred niggers, he looks
after all South Carolina, and the rest of creation to boot," said our
host.
"Tom will have his joke, Madam, but he's not far from the truth."
Seeing we were dripping wet, the lady offered us a change of clothing,
and retiring to a chamber, we each appropriated a suit belonging to our
host, giving our own to a servant, to be dried.
Arrayed in our fresh apparel, we soon rejoined our friends in the
sitting-room. The new garments fitted the Colonel tolerably well, but,
though none too long, they were a world too wide for me, and as my wet
hair hung in smooth flat folds down my cheeks, and my limp shirt-collar
fell over my linsey coat, I looked for all the world like a cross
between a theatrical Aminodab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the
stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb,
she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet,
gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter--jerking out between the
explosions:
"Why--you--you--look jest like--a scare-crow."
There was no mistaking that hearty, hoydenish manner; and seizing both
of her hands in mine, I shouted: "I've found you out--you're a
"country-woman" of mine--a clear-blooded Yankee!"
"What! _you_ a Yankee!" she exclaimed, still laughing, "and here with
this horrid 'secesherner,' as they call him."
"True as preachin', Ma'am," I replied, adopting the drawl--"all the way
from Down East, and Union, tu, stiff as buckram."
"Du tell!" she exclaimed, swinging my hands together as she held them in
hers. "If I warn't hitched to this 'ere feller, I'd give ye a smack
right on the spot. I'm _so_ glad to see ye."
"Do it, Sally--never mind _me_," cried her husband, joining heartily in
the merriment.
Seizing the collar of my coat with both hands, she drew my face down
till my lips almost touched hers (I was preparing to blush, and the
Colonel shouted, "Come, come, I shall tell his wife"): but then turning
quickly on her heel, she threw herself into a chair, exclaiming, "_I_
wouldn't mind, but the _old man would be jealous_." Addressing the
Colonel, she added, "_You_ needn't be troubled, sir, no Yankee girl will
kiss _you_ till you change your politics."
"Give me that inducement, and I'll change them on the spot," said the
Colonel.
"No, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do," replied the planter; "the conversion
wouldn't be genuwine--besides such things arn't proper, except 'mong
blood-relations--and all the Yankees, you know are first-cousins."
The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of
its genial, good humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while
partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont
country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal
pay to come South as a teacher. A sister accompanied her, and about a
year after their arrival, she married a neighboring planter. Wishing to
be near her sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for
life in that wild region. "I like the country very well," she added;
"it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate
these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are _so_ slow, and
_so_ careless, and _so_ dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry
the very life out of me. I do believe I'm the hardest mistress in all
the district."
I learned from her that a majority of the teachers at the South are from
the North, and principally, too, from New England. Teaching is a very
laborious employment there, far more so than with us, for the
Southerners have no methods like ours, and the same teacher usually has
to hear lessons in branches all the way from Greek and Latin to the
simple A B C. The South has no system of public instruction; no common
schools; no means of placing within the reach of the sons and daughters
of the poor even the elements of knowledge. While the children of the
wealthy are most carefully educated, it is the policy of the ruling
class to keep the great mass of the people in ignorance; and so long as
this policy continues, so long will that section be as far behind the
North as it now is, in all that constitutes true prosperity and
greatness.
The afternoon wore rapidly and pleasantly away in the genial society of
our wayside-friends. Politics were discussed (our host was a Union man),
the prospects of the turpentine crop talked over, the recent news
canvassed, the usual neighborly topics touched upon, and--I hesitate to
confess it--a considerable quantity of corn whiskey disposed of, before
the Colonel discovered, all at once, that it was six o'clock, and we
were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves
again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but regretful "good-bye" to
our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.
The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent
rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning. We
gave them the reins, and, jogging on at their leisure, it was ten
o'clock at night before they landed us at the little hamlet of W----
Station, in the state of North Carolina.