"Have you seen the Clayville Dime?"
Moore chucked me a very shabby little sheet of printed matter. It
fluttered feebly in the warm air, and finally dropped on my recumbent
frame. I was lolling in a hammock in the shade of the verandah.
I did not feel much inclined for study, but I picked up the Clayville
Dime and lazily glanced at that periodical, while Moore relapsed into the
pages of Ixtlilxochitl. He was a literary character for a planter, had
been educated at Oxford (where I made his acquaintance), and had
inherited from his father, with a large collection of Indian and Mexican
curiosities, a taste for the ancient history of the New World.
Sometimes I glanced at the newspaper; sometimes I looked out at the
pleasant Southern garden, where the fountain flashed and fell among
weeping willows, and laurels, orange-trees, and myrtles.
"Hullo!" I cried suddenly, disturbing Moore's Aztec researches, "here is
a queer affair in the usually quiet town of Clayville. Listen to this;"
and I read aloud the following "par," as I believe paragraphs are styled
in newspaper offices:--
"'Instinct and Accident.--As Colonel Randolph was driving through our
town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the
colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm
and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till
rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into
collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently
shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. This may
relieve Tom Widlake of the duty of shooting the colonel in revenge for
his father. It is commonly believed that Colonel Randolph's horses
were maddened by the smell of the blood which has dried up where old
Widlake was shot. Much sympathy is felt for the colonel. Neither of
the horses was injured.'"
"Clayville appears to be a lively kind of place," I said. "Do you often
have shootings down here?"
"We do," said Moore, rather gravely; "it is one of our institutions with
which I could dispense."
"And do you 'carry iron,' as the Greeks used to say, or 'go heeled,' as
your citizens express it?"
"No, I don't; neither pistol nor knife. If any one shoots me, he shoots
an unarmed man. The local bullies know it, and they have some scruple
about shooting in that case. Besides, they know I am an awkward customer
at close quarters."
Moore relapsed into his Mexican historian, and I into the newspaper.
"Here is a chance of seeing one of your institutions at last," I said.
I had found an advertisement concerning a lot of negroes to be sold that
very day by public auction in Clayville. All this, of course, was
"before the war."
"Well, I suppose you ought to see it," said Moore, rather reluctantly. He
was gradually emancipating his own servants, as I knew, and was even
suspected of being a director of "the Underground Railroad" to Canada.
"Peter," he cried, "will you be good enough to saddle three horses and
bring them round?"
Peter, a "darkey boy" who had been hanging about in the garden, grinned
and went off. He was a queer fellow, Peter, a plantation humourist, well
taught in all the then unpublished lore of "Uncle Remus." Peter had a
way of his own, too, with animals, and often aided Moore in collecting
objects of natural history.
"Did you get me those hornets, Peter?" said Moore, when the black
returned with the horses.
"Got 'em safe, massa, in a little box," replied Peter, who then mounted
and followed at a respectful distance as our squire.
Without many more words we rode into the forest which lay between
Clayville and Moore's plantation. Through the pine barrens ran the road,
and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. The
sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of
honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect
blossom. Here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home,
and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf of
the "live oak," combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar.
There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as it
were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was
canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all
the boughs.
The trees grew thinner as the road approached the town. Dusty were the
ways, and sultry the air, when we rode into Clayville and were making for
"the noisy middle market-place." Clayville was but a small border town,
though it could then boast the presence of a squadron of cavalry, sent
there to watch the "border ruffians." The square was neither large nor
crowded, but the spectacle was strange and interesting to me. Men who
had horses or carts to dispose of were driving or riding about, noisily
proclaiming the excellence of their wares. But buyers were more
concerned, like myself, with the slave-market. In the open air, in the
middle of the place, a long table was set. The crowd gathered round
this, and presented types of various sorts of citizens. The common "mean
white" was spitting and staring--a man fallen so low that he had no
nigger to wallop, and was thus even more abject, because he had no
natural place and functions in local society, than the slaves themselves.
The local drunkard was uttering sagacities to which no mortal attended.
Two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a few
planters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen,
loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general. At
either end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with the
traditional facetiousness of the profession. As the "lots" came on for
sale they mounted the platform, generally in family parties. A party
would fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according to
its numbers and "condition." The spectacle was painful and monstrous.
Most of the "lots" bore the examination of their points with a kind of
placid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddings
grew keen and flattered their pride.
The sale was almost over, and we were just about to leave, when a howl of
derision from the mob made us look round. What _I_ saw was the
apparition of an extremely aged and debilitated black man standing on the
table. What Moore saw to interest him I could not guess, but he grew
pale and uttered an oath of surprise under his breath, though he rarely
swore. Then he turned his horse's head again towards the auctioneer.
That merry tradesman was extolling the merits of nearly his last lot. "A
very remarkable specimen, gentlemen! Admirers of the antique cannot
dispense with this curious nigger--very old and quite imperfect. Like so
many of the treasures of Greek art which have reached us, he has had the
misfortune to lose his nose and several of his fingers. How much offered
for this exceptional lot--unmarried and without encumbrances of any kind?
He is dumb too, and may be trusted with any secret."
"Take him off!" howled some one in the crowd.
"Order his funeral!"
"Chuck him into the next lot."
"What, gentlemen, _no_ bids for this very eligible nigger? With a few
more rags he would make a most adequate scarecrow."
While this disgusting banter was going on I observed a planter ride up to
one of the brokers and whisper for some time in his ear. The planter was
a bad but unmistakable likeness of my friend Moore, worked over, so to
speak, with a loaded brush and heavily glazed with old Bourbon whisky.
After giving his orders to the agent he retired to the outskirts of the
crowd, and began flicking his long dusty boots with a serviceable cowhide
whip.
"Well, gentlemen, we must really adopt the friendly suggestion of Judge
Lee and chuck this nigger into the next lot."
So the auctioneer was saying, when the broker to whom I have referred
cried out, "Ten dollars."
"_This_ is more like business," cried the auctioneer. "Ten dollars
offered! What amateur says more than ten dollars for this lot? His
extreme age and historical reminiscences alone, if he could communicate
them, would make him invaluable to the student."