"What you got in dem game-pockets to make 'em look so big? You certain'y ain' shoot as many buds as dat in dis time?" Gus, convicted, poked his hand into his bag and drew out the rabbit. 'Here, Uncle Robin," he said in some confusion, "this is the only one I shot. I want you to take it and give it to Mandy." But the old man declined. "Nor, I don' want it and Mandy don' want it," he said; "you done shoot it and now yo' bettuh keep it." He stalked on up the hill in silence. Suddenly, stopping, he turned back. "Well, well," he said, "times certain'y is changed! Marse Gus, yo' pa wouldn't 'a' told me a lie for a mule, let 'lone a' ole hyah." The character of the old-time negro I can hardly better illustrate than by the case of an old friend of mine, John Dabney, to whom I, in common with nearly all my acquaintances in Richmond, used to be greatly indebted, for he was the best caterer I ever knew. John Dabney was, in his boyhood, a race-rider for a noted Virginia turfman, Major William R. Johnson, but, possibly because of his gifts as a cook, he soon grew too fat for that "lean and hungry" calling, and in time he became a celebrated cook and caterer. He belonged to one of the De Jarnetts of the adjoining county to my native county, and, prior to the war, he bought himself from his mistress, as was not infrequently done by clever negroes. When the war closed, he still owed his mistress several hundred dollars on account of this debt, and as soon as he was able to raise the sum he sent it to her. She promptly returned it, telling him that he was free and would have been free anyhow and that he owed her nothing. On this, John Dabney took the money, went to his old home and insisted on her receiving it, saying that his old master had brought him up to pay his debts, and that this was a just debt which he proposed to pay. The instances are not rare in which old family servants who have worked under the new conditions more successfully than their former owners have shown the old feeling by rendering them such acts of kindness as could only have sprung from a deep and abiding affection. Whoever goes to the White House will find at the door of the executive offices an elderly and very stout negro door-keeper, with perfect manners, a step as soft as the fall of the leaf, and an aplomb which nothing can disturb. His name is Arthur Simmons, and, until toward the close of the war, he was a gentleman's servant in North Carolina; then he came North. He is, possibly, the oldest employee in the White House, having been appointed by General Grant during his first term, and having held his position, with the exception of a single term that of General Harrison- to the present time. It is said that Mr. Cleveland's first appointment after his return to office was that of Arthur Simmons to his old post. Possibly, Mr. Cleveland had heard this story of him: Once, Arthur, having learned that his old mistress had expressed a desire to see the President of the United States, invited her to Washington, met her at the station, saw to her comfort while in the city, arranged an interview with the President for her, and then escorted her back to take her train home. On a part of the old plantation which I have attempted to describe has lived for the past thirty years, free of rent, the leading negro politician in the upper end of Hanover County. His wife was Hannah, my mother's old maid, who, from within a year or two after the war, served us with a fidelity and zeal of which I can give no conception. It may, however, illustrate it to state that, although she lived a mile and a quarter from the house and had to cross a creek, through which, in times of high water, she occasionally had to wade almost to her waist, she for thirty years did not miss being at her post in the morning more than a half-score times. Hannah has gone to her long home, and it may throw some light on the old relation between mistress and servant to say that on the occasion of the golden wedding of my mother and father, as Hannah was at that time too ill to leave her home, they took all the presents in the carriage and carried them over to show them to her. Indeed, Hannah's last thought was of her old mistress. She died suddenly one morning, and just before her death she said to her husband, "Open the do', it's Miss." The door was opened, but the mistress was not there, except to Hannah's dying gaze. To her, she was standing by her bedside, and her last words were addressed to her. VII It is a continual cause of surprise among Governor of Virginia, went and fetched her those who do not know the South intimately in on his arm to take her place beside the that Southerners should be so fond of the mother of the bride. old negroes and yet should be so intolerant of things which Northerners would regard with indifference. It is a matter which can hardly be explained, but if anyone goes and lives at the South, he will quickly find himself falling into Southern ways. Let one go on the plantations where the politician is absent and the "bloody-shirt" newspaper is unknown, and he will find something of the old relation still existing. I have seen a young man (who happened to be a lieutenant in a volunteer company) kiss his old mammy on the parade ground in sight of the whole regiment. Some years ago, while General Fitzhugh Lee was Governor of Virginia, a wedding took place in the executive mansion at Richmond. At the last moment, when the company were assembled and all had taken their places, waiting for the bride to appear, it was discovered that mammy Celia, the bride's mammy, had not come in, and no less a person than General Lee, the UNHAPPILY, whatever the future may produce, the teachings of doctrinaires and injudicious friends have lost the negroes of the present generation their manners and cost them much of the friendship of the whites. None of us knows what relation the future may produce between the two races in the South, but possibly when the selfrighteous shall be fewer than they are now and the teachings which have estranged the races shall become more sane the great Anglo-Saxon race, which is dominant, and the negro race, which is amiable, if not subservient, will adjust their differences more in accordance with the laws which must eventually prevail, and the old feeling of kindliness, which seems, under the stress of antagonism, to be dying away, will once more reassert itself. SAINT ROSE By Frank Dempster Sherman ILLUSTRATION (FRONTISPIECE) BY WALTER APPLETON CLARK DEAR Rose, what volumes it would need to hold In Eden Love first found you blossoming, Poets and Lovers there shall ever be So long as there are gardens where the vine Within whose leaves is found your fragrant shrine. A lover's token,-take this song of mine! AM was mad. SAM AN EXTRA BLANKET By F. Hopkinson Smith ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLOTTE WEBER-DITZLER You could see that from the way he strode up and down the platform of the covered railroad station, talking to himself in staccato explosives, like an automobile getting under way. He had lost his trunk, and a drummer without his trunk is as helpless-well, as an elephant in a similar scrape. Outside a snowstorm was working itself up into a blizzard; cuts level with the fences, short curves choked with drifts, flat stretches bare of a flake. Inside a panting locomotive crawled ahead of two Pullmans and a baggage-a special from Detroit to Kalamazoo, six hours late, loaded with comic-opera people, their baggage, properties-and Sam's lost trunk. When the train pulled up opposite to where Sam stood, the engine looked as if it had struck an avalanche on the way up and had brought most of it along. Sam moved down to the step of the first Pullman, his absorbing eye taking in the train, the fragments of the glaciers, and the noses of the chorus girls pressed flat against VOL. XXXVI.-61 the frosted panes. The conductor was now on the platform, crunching a tissue telegram which the station-master had just handed him. He had stopped for orders and for a wider breathing space, where he could get out into the open and stretch his arms, and become personal and perhaps profane without wounding the feelings of his passengers. Sam stepped up beside him and showed him an open telegram. "Yes, it's aboard all right," replied the conductor, "but I couldn't find it in a week. A lot of scenery and ladders and trunks all piled in. I am sorry, but I wouldn't "What you 'wouldn't,' my sweet Aleck, don't interest me," exploded Sam. "You get a couple of porters and go through that stuff, or I'll wire the main office that "See here, young feller. Don't get gay. Hit that gourd of yours another crack and maybe you'll knock some sense into it. We're six hours late, ain't we? We got three hours to make Kalamazoo in, ain't we? This show's got to get there on time, 533 "You're 'it.' I'll git the trunk at Kalamazoo." Then he crossed the platform, made his way to the street entrance, and stepped into the omnibus of the only hotel in the town. When its swinging sign, blurred in the whirl of the storm, hove in sight, Sam's face was still knotted in wrinkles. He had a customer in this town good for two hundred dozen table cutlery, and but for "this gang of cross-tie steppers," he said to himself he would-here the hind heels of the 'bus hit the curb, cutting short Sam's anathema. The drummer picked up his grip and made his way to the desk. "What's the matter, Sammy?" asked Larry, the clerk. "You look sour." "Sour? I am a green pickle, Larry, that's what I am, a green pickle. Been waiting five hours for my trunk in that Oriental Palm Garden of yours you call a station. It was aboard a Special loaded with chorus girls and props. Conductor wouldn't dump it, and now it's gone on to Kalamazoo and "Oh, but you'll get it all right. All you've got to do, Sam, is to "Get it! Yes, when the daisies are blooming over us. I want it now. Larry, whenever I run up against anything solid it's always one of these fly-by-nights. What do you think of going upstairs in the dark and hauling out a red silk hat and a pair of gilt slippers, instead of a sample card of carvers? Well, that's what a guy did for me last fall down at Logansport. Sent me two burial caskets full of chorus girl props instead of my trunk. Oh, yes, I'll get it. Get it in the neck. Here, send this grip to my room." The clerk pursed his lips and looked over his key-rack. He knew that he'd no room, -none that would suit Sam Makin-had known it when he saw him entering the door, the snow covering his hat and shoulders, his grip in his hands. "Going to stay all night with us, Sammy?" Larry asked. "Sure! What do you think I'm here for? Blowing and snowing outside fit to beat the band. What do you want me to dobunk in the station?" "H'm, h'm," muttered the clerk, studying the key-rack and name-board as if they were plans of an enemy's country. Sam looked up. When a clerk began to say "H'm," Sam knew something was wrong. "Full ?" "Well, not exactly full, Sam, but-h’m— we've got the Joe Gridley Combination with us overnight, and about everything "Go on―go on-what'd I tell you. Up again these fly-by-nights as usual," blurted out Sam. The clerk raised his hand deprecatingly. 'Sorry, old man. Put you on the top floor with some of the troupe-good rooms, of course, but not what I like to give you. Leading lady's got your room, and the manager's got the one you sometimes have over the extension. It'll only be for tonight. They're going away in the morning, and I "Cut it out-cut it out-and forget it,' interrupted Sam. "So am I going away in the morning. Got to take the 5.40 and hunt up that trunk. Can't do a thing without it. Only waltzed in here to get something to eat and a bed. Be back later. Put me anywhere. This week's hoodooed and these show guys are doing it. You want a guardian, Samuel; a gentle, mild-eyed little guardian. That's what you want." The clerk rang a gong that sounded like a fire-alarm, and the porter came in on a run. "Take Mr. Makin's grip and show him up to Number 11." On the way upstairs Sam's quick eye caught the flare of a play-bill tacked to one wall. "What is it?" he asked of the porter, pointing to the poster-"an ‘East Lynne' or a Mother's Curse'?" "No-one o' them mix-ups, I guess. Song and dance stunts. Number 11, did Larry say? There ye are key's in the lock." And the porter pushed open the door of the room with his foot, dropped Sam's bag on the pine table, turned up the gasthe twilight was coming on-asked if there was" anything more?"-found there wasn't -not even a dime-and left Sam in possession. "'Bout as big as a coffin, and as cold," grumbled Sam, looking around the room. 'No steam-heat-one pillow and"-here he punched the bed-"one blanket, and thin at that-the bed hard as a- Well, if this don't take the cake! If this Burg don't get a hotel soon I'll cut it out of my territory." Sam washed his hands; wiped them on a 14x20 towel; hung it flat, that it might dry and be useful in the morning, gave his hair a slick with his comb, scooped up a dozen cigars from a paper box, stuffed them in his outside pocket, relocked his grip, and retraced his steps downstairs. When he reached the play-bill again, he stopped for particulars. Condensed and pruned of inflammatory adjectives the gaycolored document conveyed the information that the "Joe Gridley Combination" would play for this one night, performance |