I think that John Mayrant, Jr., is going to look like his mother. I was
very glad to be present when he was christened, and at this ceremony I
did not feel as I had felt the year before at the wedding; for then I
had known well enough that if the old ladies found any blemish on
that occasion, it was my being there! To them I must remain forever a
“Yankee,” a wall perfectly imaginary and perfectly real between us; and
the fact that young John could take any other view of me, was to them a
sign of that “radical” tendency in him which they were able to forgive
solely because he was of the younger generation and didn’t know any
better.
And with these thoughts in my mind, and remembering a certain very grave
talk I had once held with Eliza in the Exchange about the North and the
South, in which it was my good fortune to make her see that there is on
our soil nowadays such a being as an American, who feels, wherever
he goes in our native land, that it is all his, and that he belongs
everywhere to it, I looked at the little John Mayrant, and then I said
to his mother:--
“And will you teach him ‘Dixie’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’ as well?”
But Eliza smiled at me with friendly, inscrutable eyes.
“Oh,” said John, “you mustn’t ask too much of the ladies. I’ll see to
all that.”
Perhaps he will. And an education at Harvard College need not cause
the boy to forget his race, or his name, or his traditions, but only to
value them more, as they should be valued. And the way that they should
be valued is this: that the boy in thinking of them should say to
himself, “I am proud of my ancestors; let my life make them proud of
me.”
But, in any case, is it not pleasant to think of the boy being brought
up by Eliza, and not by Hortense?
And so my portrait of Kings Port is finished. That the likeness is not
perfect, I am only too sensible. No painter that I have heard of ever
satisfies the whole family. But, should any of the St. Michaels see
this picture, I trust they may observe that if some of the touches are
faulty, true admiration and love of his subject animated the artist’s
hand; and if Miss Josephine St. Michael should be pleased with any
of it, I could wish that she might indicate this by sending me a Lady
Baltimore; we have no cake here that approaches it.