WAITING FOR THE TRAIN AT MIDNIGHT.
Stopping occasionally to talk with the people along the road, and dining
at a farm-house, I did not reach Corinth until sunset. The first thing I
noticed, in passing the fortifications, was that the huts of the negro
garrison were dismantled; and I found the citizens rejoicing over the
removal of the troops. I returned to Mr. M——’s house, and was welcomed
by Mrs. M——, who seemed almost to have forgotten that I was not only a
Yankee, but a “bad Yankee” from Massachusetts. And here I may remark
that, whatever hostility was shown me by the Southern people on account
of my Northern origin, it usually wore off on a short acquaintance. Mrs.
M—— had a private room for me this time; and she caused a great, glowing
fire to be made in it for my comfort. After supper she invited me into
her sitting-room, where we talked freely about the bad Yankees, the war,
and emancipation.
Both her husband and father claimed to be Union men: but their Unionism
was of a kind too common in the South. They hated the secession leaders
almost as bitterly as they hated the Yankee government.
Mrs. M——: “Slavery was bad economy, I know; but oh, it was
glorious!”—spoken with a kind of romantic enthusiasm. “I’d give a mint
of money right now for servants like I once had,—to have one all my
own!”—clasping her hands in the ardor of that passionate wish.
“Ladies at the North,” she went on, “if they lose their servants, can do
their own work; but we can’t, we can’t!”
She bemoaned the loss of a girl she formerly owned; a bright mulattress,
very pretty and intelligent. “She could read and write as well as I
could. There was no kind of work that girl couldn’t do. And so
faithful!—I trusted everything to her, and was never deceived.”
I asked if she could feel in her heart that it was right to own such a
creature.
“I believed in it as much as I believed in the Bible. We were taught it
from our infancy,—we were taught it with our religion. I still think it
was right; but I think it was because we abused slavery that it was
taken from us. Emancipation is a worse thing for our servants than for
us. They can’t take care of themselves.”
“What has become of that favorite girl of yours?”
“She is in St. Louis. She works at her trade there; she’s a splendid
dressmaker. Oh, if I only had her to make my dresses now, like she used
to! She owns the house and lot where she lives; she has bought it with
the money she has earned. She’s married to a very fine mulatto man.”
“It seems she can take care of herself a good deal better than you can,”
I remarked. “It is she who is independent; it is you whom slavery has
left helpless.”
“Well, some of them have made money, and know how to keep it. But they
are very few.”
“Yet do not those few indicate what the race may become? And, when we
consider the bondage from which they have just broken, and the childish
improvidence which was natural to them in that condition, is it not a
matter of surprise that so many know how to take care of themselves?”
She candidly confessed that it was.
As an illustration of a practice Southern ladies too commonly indulge
in, I may state that, while we were conversing, she sat in the
chimney-corner, chewing a dainty little quid, and spitting into the fire
something that looked marvellously like tobacco juice.
As I was to take the train for Memphis at two o’clock in the morning, I
engaged a hackman to come to the house for me at one. Relying upon his
fidelity, I went to bed, slept soundly, and awoke providentially at a
quarter past the hour agreed upon. I waited half an hour for him, and he
did not appear. Opening the door to listen for coming wheels, I heard
the train whistle. Catching up my luggage, which luckily was not heavy,
I rushed out to search, at dead of night, in a strange town, lampless,
soundless, and fast asleep, for a railroad depot, which I should scarce
have thought of finding even by daylight without inquiring my way. Not a
living creature was abroad; not a light was visible in any house; I
could not see the ground I was treading upon. Fortunately I knew the
general direction in which the railroad lay; I struck it at last; then I
saw a light, which guided me to the depot.
But where was the train? It was already over-due. I could hear it
whistling occasionally down the track, where some accident had happened
to it. The depot consisted of a little framed box just large enough for
a ticket-office. You stood outside and bought your ticket through a
hole. This box contained a stove, a railroad lantern, and two men. The
door, contrary to the custom of the country, was kept scrupulously shut.
In vain were all appeals to the two men within to open it. They were
talking and laughing by their comfortable fire, while the waiting
passengers outside were freezing. Two hours we waited, that cold
winter’s night, for the train which did not come. There was an
express-office lighted up near by, but there was no admittance for
strangers there either.
Seeing a red flame a short distance up the railroad track, and human
forms passing at times before it, I went stumbling out through the
darkness towards it. I found it an encampment of negroes. Twelve men,
women, and children were grouped in gypsy fashion about a smoky fire.
They were in a miserable condition, wretchedly clad, hungry, weary, and
sleepy, but unable to sleep. One woman held in her arms a sick babe,
that kept up its perpetual sad wail through the night. The wind seemed
to be in every direction, blowing the smoke into everybody’s eyes. Yet
these suffering and oppressed creatures did for me what men of my own
color had refused to do,—they made room for me at their fire, and
hospitably invited me to share such poor comforts as they had. The
incident was humiliating and touching. One man gave me an apple, for
which I was but too glad to return him many times its cost.
They told me their story. They had been working all summer for a planter
in Tishemingo County, who had refused to pay them, and they were now
hunting for new homes. Two or three had a little money; the rest had
none. It made my heart sick to look at them, and feel that it was out of
my power to do them any real, permanent service. But they were not
discouraged. Said the spokesman of the party, cheerfully,—an old
gray-haired man in tatters,—“I’ll drap my feet into de road in de
mornin’; I’ll go till I find somefin’!”
Hearing the train again, whistling in earnest this time, I took leave of
them, and reached the depot just as it arrived.