failing eyesight, and we persuaded her that spectacles would both become
and befriend a lady of her years, and so bought her a pair of
steel-bowed glasses. She wore them in some great emergencies at first,
but had clearly no pride in them. Before long she laid them aside
altogether, and they had passed from our thoughts, when one day we heard
her mellow note of laughter and her daughter's harsher cackle outside
our door, and, opening it, beheld Mrs. Johnson in gold-bowed spectacles
of massive frame. We then learned that their purchase was in fulfilment
of a vow made long ago, in the life-time of Mr. Johnson, that, if ever
she wore glasses, they should be gold-bowed; and I hope the manes of the
dead were half as happy in these votive spectacles as the simple soul
that offered them.
She and her late partner were the parents of eleven children, some of
whom were dead, and some of whom were wanderers in unknown parts. During
his life-time she had kept a little shop in her native town; and it was
only within a few years that she had gone into service. She cherished a
natural haughtiness of spirit, and resented control, although disposed
to do all she could of her own notion. Being told to say when she wanted
an afternoon, she explained that when she wanted an afternoon she always
took it without asking, but always planned so as not to discommode the
ladies with whom she lived. These, she said, had numbered twenty-seven
within three years, which made us doubt the success of her system in all
cases, though she merely held out the fact as an assurance of her faith
in the future, and a proof of the ease with which places are to be
found. She contended, moreover, that a lady who had for thirty years had
a house of her own, was in nowise bound to ask permission to receive
visits from friends where she might be living, but that they ought
freely to come and go like other guests. In this spirit she once invited
her son-in-law, Professor Jones of Providence, to dine with her; and her
defied mistress, on entering the dining-room, found the Professor at
pudding and tea there,--an impressively respectable figure in black
clothes, with a black face rendered yet more effective by a pair of
green goggles. It appeared that this dark professor was a light of
phrenology in Rhode Island, and that he was believed to have uncommon
virtue in his science by reason of being blind as well as black.
I am loath to confess that Mrs. Johnson had not a flattering opinion of
the Caucasian race in all respects. In fact, she had very good
philosophical and Scriptural reasons for looking upon us as an upstart
people of new blood, who had come into their whiteness by no creditable
or pleasant process. The late Mr. Johnson, who had died in the West
Indies, whither he voyaged for his health in quality of cook upon a
Down-East schooner, was a man of letters, and had written a book to show
the superiority of the black over the white branches of the human
family. In this he held that, as all islands have been at their
discovery found peopled by blacks, we must needs believe that humanity
was first created of that color. Mrs. Johnson could not show us her
husband's work (a sole copy in the library of an English gentleman at
Port au Prince is not to be bought for money), but she often developed
its arguments to the lady of the house; and one day, with a great show
of reluctance, and many protests that no personal slight was meant,
let fall the fact that Mr. Johnson believed the white race descended
from Gehaz, the leper, upon whom the leprosy of Naaman fell when the
latter returned by Divine favor to his original blackness. "And he
went out from his presence a leper as white as snow," said Mrs.
Johnson, quoting irrefutable Scripture. "Leprosy, leprosy," she
added thoughtfully,--"nothing but leprosy bleached you out."
It seems to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint
and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite
idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness
and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable
approach to whiteness in many of her own offspring. In a kindred spirit
of charity, no doubt, she refused ever to attend church with people of
her elder and wholesomer blood. When she went to church, she said, she
always went to a white church, though while with us I am bound to say
she never went to any. She professed to read her Bible in her bedroom
on Sundays; but we suspected, from certain sounds and odors which used
to steal out of this sanctuary, that her piety more commonly found
expression in dozing and smoking.
I would not make a wanton jest here of Mrs. Johnson's anxiety to claim
honor for the African color, while denying this color in many of her own
family. It afforded a glimpse of the pain which all her people must
endure, however proudly they hide it or light-heartedly forget it, from
the despite and contumely to which they are guiltlessly born; and when I
thought how irreparable was this disgrace and calamity of a black skin,
and how irreparable it must be for ages yet, in this world where every
other shame and all manner of wilful guilt and wickedness may hope for
covert and pardon, I had little heart to laugh. Indeed, it was so
pathetic to hear this poor old soul talk of her dead and lost ones, and
try, in spite of all Mr. Johnson's theories and her own arrogant
generalizations, to establish their whiteness, that we must have been
very cruel and silly people to turn her sacred fables even into matter
of question. I have no doubt that her Antoinette Anastasia and her
Thomas Jefferson Wilberforce--it is impossible to give a full idea of
the splendor and scope of the baptismal names in Mrs. Johnson's
family--have as light skins and as golden hair in heaven as her reverend
maternal fancy painted for them in our world. There, certainly, they
would not be subject to tanning, which had ruined the delicate
complexion, and had knotted into black woolly tangles the once wavy
blonde locks of our little maid-servant Naomi; and I would fain believe
that Toussaint Washington Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years
ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same
sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's eyes in infancy. But I
have no means of knowing this, or of telling whether he was the prodigy
of intellect that he was declared to be. Naomi could no more be taken in
proof of the one assertion than of the other. When she came to us, it
was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her mother in
this as in everything else, and never went. Except Sunday-school
lessons, she had no other instruction than that her mistress gave her in
the evenings, when a heavy day's play and the natural influences of the
hour conspired with original causes to render her powerless before words
of one syllable.
The first week of her services she was obedient and faithful to her
duties; but, relaxing in the atmosphere of a house which seems to
demoralize all menials, she shortly fell into disorderly ways of lying
in wait for callers out of doors, and, when people rang, of running up
the front steps, and letting them in from the outside. As the season
expanded, and the fine weather became confirmed, she modified even this
form of service, and spent her time in the fields, appearing at the
house only when nature importunately craved molasses....
In her untamable disobedience, Naomi alone betrayed her sylvan blood,
for she was in all other respects negro and not Indian. But it was of
her aboriginal ancestry that Mrs. Johnson chiefly boasted,--when not
engaged in argument to maintain the superiority of the African race. She
loved to descant upon it as the cause and explanation of her own
arrogant habit of feeling; and she seemed indeed to have inherited
something of the Indian's hauteur along with the Ethiop's supple cunning
and abundant amiability. She gave many instances in which her pride had
met and overcome the insolence of employers, and the kindly old creature
was by no means singular in her pride of being reputed proud.
She could never have been a woman of strong logical faculties, but she
had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom
introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it, and then
suddenly sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she
obscurely hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when
she warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way
that she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the
kitchen after they had taken their bitters. "Quality ladies took their
bitters regular," she added, to remove any sting of personality from her
remark; for, from many things she had let fall, we knew that she did not
regard us as quality. On the contrary, she often tried to overbear us
with the gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over
whom she reigned, that she had lived with folks worth their three and
four hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the
ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations of
the family, Mr. Johnson having been an author. She even professed to
have herself written a book, which was still in manuscript, and
preserved somewhere among her best clothes.
It was well, on many accounts, to be in contact with a mind so original
and suggestive as Mrs. Johnson's. We loved to trace its intricate yet
often transparent operations, and were perhaps too fond of explaining
its peculiarities by facts of ancestry,--of finding hints of the Pow-wow
or the Grand Custom in each grotesque development. We were conscious of
something warmer in this old soul than in ourselves, and something
wilder, and we chose to think it the tropic and the untracked forest.
She had scarcely any being apart from her affection; she had no
morality, but was good because she neither hated nor envied; and she
might have been a saint far more easily than far more civilized people.
There was that also in her sinuous yet malleable nature, so full of
guile and so full of goodness, that reminded us pleasantly of lowly
folks in elder lands, where relaxing oppressions have lifted the
restraints of fear between master and servant, without disturbing the
familiarity of their relation. She advised freely with us upon all
household matters, and took a motherly interest in whatever concerned
us. She could be flattered or caressed into almost any service, but no
threat or command could move her. When she erred she never acknowledged
her wrong in words, but handsomely expressed her regrets in a pudding,
or sent up her apologies in a favorite dish secretly prepared. We grew
so well used to this form of exculpation, that, whenever Mrs. Johnson
took an afternoon at an inconvenient season, we knew that for a week
afterwards we should be feasted like princes. She owned frankly that she
loved us, that she never had done half so much for people before, and
that she never had been nearly so well suited in any other place; and
for a brief and happy time we thought that we never should part.
One day, however, our dividing destiny appeared in the basement, and was
presented to us as Hippolyto Thucydides, the son of Mrs. Johnson, who
had just arrived on a visit to his mother from the State of New
Hampshire. He was a heavy and loutish youth, standing upon the borders
of boyhood, and looking forward to the future with a vacant and listless
eye. I mean this was his figurative attitude; his actual manner, as he
lolled upon a chair beside the kitchen window, was so eccentric that we
felt a little uncertain how to regard him, and Mrs. Johnson openly
described him as peculiar. He was so deeply tanned by the fervid suns
of the New Hampshire winter, and his hair had so far suffered from the
example of the sheep lately under his charge, that he could not be
classed by any stretch of comparison with the blonde and straight-haired
members of Mrs. Johnson's family.
He remained with us all the first day until late in the afternoon, when
his mother took him out to get him a boarding-house. Then he departed in
the van of her and Naomi, pausing at the gate to collect his spirits,
and, after he had sufficiently animated himself by clapping his palms
together, starting off down the street at a hand-gallop, to the manifest
terror of the cows in the pasture, and the confusion of the less
demonstrative people of our household. Other characteristic traits
appeared in Hippolyto Thucydides within no very long period of time, and
he ran away from his lodgings so often during the summer that he might
be said to board round among the outlying cornfields and turnip-patches
of Charlesbridge. As a check upon this habit, Mrs. Johnson seemed to
have invited him to spend his whole time in our basement; for whenever
we went below we found him there, balanced--perhaps in homage to us, and
perhaps as a token of extreme sensibility in himself--upon the low
window-sill, the bottoms of his boots touching the floor inside, and his
face buried in the grass without.
We could formulate no very tenable objection to all this, and yet the
presence of Thucydides in our kitchen unaccountably oppressed our
imaginations. We beheld him all over the house, a monstrous eidolon,
balanced upon every window-sill; and he certainly attracted unpleasant
notice to our place, no less by his furtive and hangdog manner of
arrival than by the bold displays with which he celebrated his
departures. We hinted this to Mrs. Johnson, but she could not enter into
our feeling. Indeed, all the wild poetry of her maternal and primitive
nature seemed to cast itself about this hapless boy; and if we had
listened to her we should have believed there was no one so agreeable in
society, or so quick-witted in affairs, as Hippolyto, when he chose....
At last, when we said positively that Thucydides should come to us no
more, and then qualified the prohibition by allowing him to come every
Sunday, she answered that she never would hurt the child's feelings by
telling him not to come where his mother was; that people who did not
love her children did not love her; and that, if Hippy went, she went.
We thought it a masterstroke of firmness to rejoin that Hippolyto must
go in any event; but I am bound to own that he did not go, and that his
mother stayed, and so fed us with every cunning propitiatory dainty,
that we must have been Pagans to renew our threat. In fact, we begged
Mrs. Johnson to go into the country with us, and she, after long
reluctation on Hippy's account, consented, agreeing to send him away to
friends during her absence.
We made every preparation, and on the eve of our departure Mrs. Johnson
went into the city to engage her son's passage to Bangor, while we
awaited her return in untroubled security.
But she did not appear till midnight, and then responded with but a sad
"Well, sah!" to the cheerful "Well, Mrs. Johnson!" that greeted her.
"All right, Mrs. Johnson?"
Mrs. Johnson made a strange noise, half chuckle and half death-rattle,
in her throat. "All wrong, sah. Hippy's off again; and I've been all
over the city after him."
"Then you can't go with us in the morning?"
"How _can_ I, sah?"
Mrs. Johnson went sadly out of the room. Then she came back to the door
again, and opening it, uttered, for the first time in our service, words
of apology and regret: "I hope I ha'n't put you out any. I _wanted_ to
go with you, but I ought to _knowed_ I couldn't. All is, I loved you too
much."
PASS
BY IRONQUILL
A father said unto his hopeful son,
"Who was Leonidas, my cherished one?"
The boy replied, with words of ardent nature,
"He was a member of the legislature."
"How?" asked the parent; then the youngster saith:
"He got a pass, and held her like grim death."
"Whose pass? what pass?" the anxious father cried;
"'Twas the'r monopoly," the boy replied.
In deference to the public, we must state,
That boy has been an orphan since that date.
TEACHING BY EXAMPLE
BY JOHN G. SAXE
"What is the 'Poet's License,' say?"
Asked rose-lipped Anna of a poet.
"Now give me an example, pray,
That when I see one I may know it."
Quick as a flash he plants a kiss
Where perfect kisses always fall.
"Nay, sir! what liberty is this?"
"The _Poet's License_,--that is all!"
WHEN ALBANI SANG[1]
BY WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND
Was workin' away on de farm dere, wan morning not long ago,
Feexin' de fence for winter--'cos dat's w'ere we got de snow!
W'en Jeremie Plouffe, ma neighbor, come over an' spik wit' me,
"Antoine, you will come on de city, for hear Ma-dam All-ba-nee?"
"W'at you mean?" I was sayin' right off, me, "Some woman was mak'
de speech,
Or girl on de Hooraw Circus, doin' high kick an' screech?"
"Non--non," he is spikin'--"Excuse me, dat's be Madam All-ba-nee
Was leevin' down here on de contree, two mile 'noder side Chambly.
"She's jus' comin' over from Englan', on steamboat arrive Kebeck,
Singin' on Lunnon an' Paree, an' havin' beeg tam, I ex-pec',
But no matter de moche she enjoy it, for travel all roun' de worl',
Somet'ing on de heart bring her back here, for she was de Chambly girl.
"She never do not'ing but singin' an' makin' de beeg grande tour
An' travel on summer an' winter, so mus' be de firs' class for sure!
Ev'ryboddy I'm t'inkin' was know her, an' I also hear 'noder t'ing,
She's frien' on La Reine Victoria an' show her de way to sing!"
"Wall," I say, "you're sure she is Chambly, w'at you call Ma-dam
All-ba-nee?
Don't know me dat nam' on de Canton--I hope you're not fool wit' me?"
An he say, "Lajeunesse, dey was call her, before she is come mariée,
But she's takin' de nam' of her husban'--I s'pose dat's de only way."
"C'est bon, mon ami," I was say me, "If I get t'roo de fence nex' day
An' she don't want too moche on de monee, den mebbe I see her play."
So I finish dat job on to-morrow, Jeremie he was helpin' me too,
An' I say, "Len' me t'ree dollar quickly for mak' de voyage wit' you."
Correc'--so we're startin' nex' morning, an' arrive Montreal all right,
Buy dollar tiquette on de bureau, an' pass on de hall dat night.
Beeg crowd, wall! I bet you was dere too, all dress on some fancy
dress,
De lady, I don't say not'ing, but man's all w'ite shirt an' no ves'.
Don't matter, w'en ban' dey be ready, de foreman strek out wit' hees
steek,
An' fiddle an' ev'ryt'ing else too, begin for play up de musique.
It's fonny t'ing too dey was playin' don't lak it mese'f at all,
I rader be lissen some jeeg, me, or w'at you call "Affer de ball."
An' I'm not feelin' very surprise den, w'en de crowd holler out,
"Encore,"
For mak' all dem feller commencin' an' try leetle piece some more,
'Twas better wan' too, I be t'inkin', but slow lak you're goin' to die,
All de sam', noboddy say not'ing, dat mean dey was satisfy.
Affer dat come de Grande piano, lak we got on Chambly Hotel,
She's nice lookin' girl was play dat, so of course she's go off purty
well,
Den feller he's ronne out an' sing some, it's all about very fine moon,
Dat shine on Canal, ev'ry night too, I'm sorry I don't know de tune.
Nex' t'ing I commence get excite, me, for I don't see no great Ma-dam
yet,
Too bad I was los all dat monee, an' too late for de raffle tiquette!
W'en jus' as I feel very sorry, for come all de way from Chambly,
Jeremie he was w'isper, "Tiens, tiens, prenez garde, she's comin' Ma-dam
All-ba-nee!"
Ev'ryboddy seem glad w'en dey see her, come walkin' right down de
platform,
An' way dey mak' noise on de han' den, w'y! it's jus' lak de beeg
tonder storm!
I'll never see not'ing lak dat, me, no matter I travel de worl',
An' Ma-dam, you t'ink it was scare her? Non, she laugh lak de Chambly
girl!
Dere was young feller comin' behin' her, walk nice, comme un Cavalier,
An' before All-ba-nee she is ready an' piano get startin' for play,
De feller commence wit' hees singin', more stronger dan all de res',
I t'ink he's got very bad manner, know not'ing at all politesse.
Ma-dam, I s'pose she get mad den, an' before anyboddy can spik,
She settle right down for mak' sing too, an' purty soon ketch heem up
quick,
Den she's kip it on gainin' an' gainin', till de song it is tout finis,
An' w'en she is beatin' dat feller, Bagosh! I am proud Chambly!
I'm not very sorry at all, me, w'en de feller was ronnin' away,
An' man he's come out wit' de piccolo, an' start heem right off for
play,
For it's kin' de musique I be fancy, Jeremie he is lak it also,
An' wan de bes' t'ing on dat ev'ning is man wit' de piccolo!
Den mebbe ten minute is passin', Ma-dam she is comin' encore,
Dis tam all alone on de platform, dat feller don't show up no more,
An' w'en she start off on de singin' Jeremie say, "Antoine, dat's
Français,"
Dis give us more pleasure, I tole you, 'cos w'y? We're de pure Canayen!
Dat song I will never forget me, 't was song of de leetle bird,
W'en he's fly from it's nes' on de tree top, 'fore res' of de worl' get
stirred,
Ma-dam she was tole us about it, den start off so quiet an' low,
An' sing lak de bird on de morning, de poor leetle small oiseau.
I 'member wan tam I be sleepin' jus' onder some beeg pine tree
An song of de robin wak' me, but robin he don't see me,
Dere's not'ing for scarin' dat bird dere, he's feel all alone on de
worl',
Wall! Ma-dam she mus' lissen lak dat too, w'en she was de Chambly girl!
Cos how could she sing dat nice chanson, de sam' as de bird I was hear,
Till I see it de maple an' pine tree an' Richelieu ronnin' near,
Again I'm de leetle feller, lak young colt upon de spring
Dat's jus' on de way I was feel, me, w'en Ma-dam All-ba-nee is sing!
An' affer de song it is finish, an' crowd is mak' noise wit' its han',
I s'pose dey be t'inkin' I'm crazy, dat mebbe I don't onderstan',
Cos I'm set on de chair very quiet, mese'f an' poor Jeremie,
An' I see dat hees eye it was cry too, jus' sam' way it go wit' me.
Dere's rosebush outside on our garden, ev'ry spring it has got new
nes',
But only wan bluebird is buil' dere, I know her from all de res',
An' no matter de far she be flyin' away on de winter tam,
Back to her own leetle rosebush she's comin' dere jus' de sam'.
We're not de beeg place on our Canton, mebbe cole on de winter, too,
But de heart's "Canayen" on our body an' dat's warm enough for true!
An' w'en All-ba-nee was got lonesome for travel all roun' de worl'
I hope she'll come home, lak de bluebird, an' again be de Chambly girl!
[Footnote 1: From "The Habitant and Other French Canadian Poems," by
William Henry Drummond. Copyright 1897 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
COLONEL STERETT'S PANTHER HUNT
BY ALFRED HENRY LEWIS
"Panthers, what we-all calls 'mountain lions,'" observed the Old
Cattleman, wearing meanwhile the sapient air of him who feels equipped
of his subject, "is plenty furtive, not to say mighty sedyoolous to
skulk. That's why a gent don't meet up with more of 'em while pirootin'
about in the hills. Them cats hears him, or they sees him, an' him still
ignorant tharof; an' with that they bashfully withdraws. Which it's to
be urged in favor of mountain lions that they never forces themse'fs on
no gent; they're shore considerate, that a-way, an' speshul of
themse'fs. If one's ever hurt, you can bet it won't be a accident.
However, it ain't for me to go 'round impugnin' the motives of no
mountain lion; partic'lar when the entire tribe is strangers to me
complete. But still a love of trooth compels me to concede that if
mountain lions ain't cowardly, they're shore cautious a lot. Cattle an'
calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any
anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm
ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on
the bluff above--two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the
walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an'
colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an'
lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Cæsar when I rides
onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' up an' down the
aige of the bluff they leaps from, mewin' an' lashin' their long tails
in hot enthoosiasm. Shore, the cats has been chasin' the mare an' foal,
an' they locoes 'em to that extent they don't know where they're headin'
an' makes the death jump I relates. I bangs away with my six-shooter,
but beyond givin' the mountain lions a convulsive start I can't say I
does any execootion. They turns an' goes streakin' it through the pine
woods like a drunkard to a barn raisin'.