Christmas Eve had come, and, as usual, the holidays had been officially
ushered in by a noble fire of hickory logs. A deep mass of ruddy coals
was glowing upon the vast hearth of the Hall. Upon these had been cast a
hamper of chosen oysters. The guests (it was the way at Elmington) were
expected to rake them out, every man for himself and sweetheart, which
gave a delightful informality to the proceedings. As soon as the
roasting was well under weigh, two enormous, ancestral bowls, one of
eggnog, the other of apple-toddy, were brought in. Later, there was to
be dancing. A dozen or so of our neighbors and friends were in the habit
of dropping in on us, on these occasions, to help us make merry.
“And now, grandfather,” said I, “it is time to bring out the old
Guarnerius.”
“The old what?” asked the Don, quickly.
“His old Guarnerius violin; Guarnerius was a celebrated maker of
violins,” I explained.
What was the matter with Charley? Why did he purse up his mouth and give
that inaudible whistle?
“Ah,—and Mr. Whacker has one of these old instruments?”
“Yes; and he is as tender with it as a mother with her first-born. He
allows it to be brought out only during the Christmas holidays; though
he used to let Monsieur Villemain play on it. The genuine ones are very
rare and dear,” I added.
Another silent whe-e-ew from Charley.
“Oh, I should suppose so,” replied the Don.
“What did you say your Guarnerius cost you, grandfather?”
That was a question I asked every Christmas Eve, when the violin was
brought out; and always with the same result.
“_That_,” replied the old gentleman, smiling and addressing the Don, “is
a piece of information I have never given to my friends. You see, when I
was a young man—”
We all knew what was coming,—the story that my grandfather always told
to strangers when his Guarnerius was brought out for inspection. It was
rather a long story,—how he took lessons from a very promising young
artist, who took to gambling and drinking, and had, therefore, to sell
his beloved violin to his pupil,—and how the young man grieved at
giving it up, etc., etc., etc.
“So saying,” concluded Mr. Whacker, “he wrung my hand and hurried out of
the room.”
“Ouch!” cried Charley, letting fall upon the hearth, at the same time, a
large oyster and the knife with which he was opening it.
If there runs upon the people’s highway a hopelessly slow coach, it is
your writer of English grammars. When will they deem this interjection
respectable enough to introduce into their works? If never, how is the
boy of the future to parse my works? Surely, it is worth any half-dozen
of their genteel alases, or their erudite alackadays! Look at it! Ouch!
How much body! What an expressive countenance! What character in its
features! Hebrew verbs have genders; and don’t you see that ouch is
masculine? What lady would use it? Nay, it is more than masculine,—it
is manly!
See those two boys,—the one with a strong pin fixed in the toe of his
shoe,—the other absorbed in his lesson, and sitting in an unguarded
attitude. Up goes the foot!
“Ouch!”
The word is more than manly,—it is stoical. Stoical, did I say? ’Tis
heroic!
For does not the lad say in that one breath, with Byron’s dying
gladiator, that he consents to start, but conquers agony? He means, as
clearly as though he had used the whole dictionary, “I am no girl. I
didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt, neither. I just wanted to have you
understand that I knew you were fooling with the seat of my trousers.”
All this those four letters mean; and yet this is their first appearance
in any serious literary work!
To this masterly interjection did Mr. Charles Frobisher give vent; and
he meant, of course, “I have cut my finger with this confounded knife,
opening this confounded oyster; but don’t disturb yourselves, ladies and
gentlemen, ’tis a small affair.” Accordingly he rose, left the room, and
soon returned with his finger bandaged.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” said Alice.
“Badly cut?” inquired my grandfather.
“It is nothing,” said Charley.
“But how annoying,” added the old gentleman. “Your left hand, too! So
that you will not be able to play for the dancers this evening.”
Charley looked at the bandaged finger with a thoughtful air, and shook
his head.
Charley, with all his supposed aversion to the fair sex, was ready, at
any time, to play all night to the dancing of a party of girls, and the
young people were much chagrined at the accident to his finger. True,
Herr Waldteufel had offered his services at the piano; but they wanted a
fiddler on Christmas Eve; and the question was raised whether one could
not be found among the negroes. But it turned out that a “revival” had
recently swept over the county, and both my grandfather’s fiddlers had
“got religion.” One of them had, in fact, already begun to preach; and,
in his first sermon, had taken high conservative ground as to the future
state of such as drew the bow and repented not. So, as the tyro to whom
the new parson had sold his instrument was not yet up to the mark, it
seemed certain that we would have to trip it to the less inspiring
strains of the piano.
“I vill blay for de yoong beebles till daylight doaf abbear,” quoth the
Herr, who was very near the mammoth bowl of apple-toddy.
But just as this thorough-going proposal fell from the Professor’s
well-moistened lips, there was heard the clattering of hoofs on the
frozen ground. There was a stir among the darkies, around and in the
door-way, and on the steps of the Hall; for, as was the custom in the
olden days, whenever there was any conviviality going forward in the
“Great-House,” the negroes had crowded about all the doors and windows
whence a glimpse of the festivities was to be had; for they knew very
well there was “mo’ toddy in dat d’yar big bowl dan de white folks gwine
’stroy, let alone de eggnog.”
I hasten to remark that this mysterious cavalier, so darkly galloping
through night and frost, was none other than Mr. William Jones,—Billy
for short,—the young fellow of whom we have heard before, and who was,
at this time, a student at the University. A dozen sable youngsters
seized his reins, ambitious of the honor of riding his horse to the
stable; and as he dismounted and approached the densely-packed steps, he
was assailed by a chorus of joyous, friendly voices.
“Dat you, Marse Billy? Lord ’a’ mussy, how de chile done growed,
to-be-sho! Jess like he pa, too!”
The light was streaming upon his cheery, manly face. “Why, how do you
do, Aunt Polly?”
“I ’clare ’fo’ Gaud de chile know me, and in de dark, too!” And Aunt
Polly doubled herself up and chuckled blissfully.
“Know you! why, it was only last October that I went off to the
University!”
“Dat so, Marse Billy. How we old people does forgit, to-be-sho!”
I may remark, here, that before the late war it was very gratifying to a
middle-aged negro to be thought old. There was on every farm a
considerable proportion of the ladies and gentlemen of color who had
voted themselves too old or too infirm to labor. Their diseases,—they
were all diseased,—while masking their malignity behind such empirical
euphemisms as rheumatiz or misery in de chist, baffled all diagnosis,
and were invariably incurable; for who can minister to a mind diseased
with that most obstinate of ailments, an aversion, to wit, to putting in
movement the muscles of one’s own body? There was, so to speak, an
_Hôpital des Invalides_ on every farm; and on my grandfather’s the
_emeriti_ and _emeritæ_ were in strong force.
And truly it was a pleasant sight, provided you were not a political
economist or a philanthropist, to walk among the cabins, on a bright
autumn afternoon, and see the good souls sitting, sunning themselves,
and hear the serene murmur of their prattle, broken, ever and anon, by
some mellow burst of careless laughter.
It was tranquillity such as this, I fancy, that Homer must have observed
in the old men of his day. Don’t you remember when there was a truce,
and Priam was standing upon the battlements,—what book was it?—but no
matter,—and he sent for Helen to come and point out to him the various
Greek heroes who stood beneath the walls; and how she had to pass by a
knot of ancient men, and how she amazed them by her beauty? The days of
toil and sweat and wounds, for them, at least, were past; and they, too,
had come to catch, from the turrets, a glimpse of wide-ruling Agamemnon
and Ulysses of many wiles; of the brawn of Ajax; and of Diomede, equal
to the immortal gods. And there they sat, hobnobbing and
a-twittering—so the master says—low and sweet as so many cicadas—let
us say katydids—from greenwood tree.
“No wonder,” they chirped, “the Greeks and Trojans” (_they_ were no
longer either Greeks or Trojans,—they were aged men, merely) “have
ceaselessly contended, for now nearly ten years, about her,—for she is
divinely beautiful!”
I think it must have been my childhood’s experiences of plantation life
that caused me to be so profoundly touched by this masterly passage; for
hardly elsewhere, in this grimly struggling world of ours, could just
such scenes have been witnessed. Just think of it, for a moment! Here,
throughout Virginia, there were, in those days, on every farm, three or
four, or a dozen, or a score of servants, who had rested from their
labors at an age when one may say the struggle glows fiercest with the
European races. A roof was over their heads, a bright fire crackled on
their hearths. Their food, if plain, was abundant. And there was not a
possibility that these things should ever fail them. No wonder they used
to rival the ἄσβεστος γέλως that burst from the ever-serene gods, when
lame Vulcan, with his ungainly hobble, went to and fro among them,
officiously passing the nectar.
That sonorous mellowness of unalloyed laughter we shall never hear
again. But never mind,—let it pass!