Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SOUTHERNER

IV

SINCE THE CIVIL WAR

BY "NICHOLAS WORTH"

[merged small][ocr errors]

THE mill not only ran, but by this time it had, under my brother's good management, been enlarged. I could have gone to Harvard College without my grandfather's aid. In fact, I did not receive his aid, because of an event that he had not reckoned so near at hand as it was; but I should surely not have gone but for his suggestion.

It seemed wonderful to me then, and it seems even more wonderful now, that my grandfather should have selected Harvard College. "My heavens, man!" said Tom Warren, when he heard of it, "the very hotbed of unbelief and old abolitionism!"

But my grandfather's mind moved in a large orbit. He could have known nothing about Harvard College. He had not been to any college himself, and he was not a man of liberal education, perhaps I should say of formal education. But he had, within his own lifetime, seen the circle of national thought and discussion become narrower and narrower, and finally come to be a mere point, and that point was slavery; and then the horrors of war came on. His reasoning was that men had become narrower because they had seen but one side of the controversy. He wished me to look at the country and at life from a point of view as far removed as possible from the one I had hitherto had. His idea, more or less vague, was that such an experience would broaden my vision. His large common sense was shown in many another judgment that he made. Moreover, he did not

even know the bitterness and the suspiIcion that the war had aroused. He regarded it merely as a huge mistake; for the main current of his thought had taken its course before it came on.

It was only a week later when a messenger brought the news that he was dead. Old Ephraim must tell the story.

"I com' out er de li'l room, same as I do ev'ry mornin'; an' I mek a li'l fire in de fireplace, an' I whets de razzor an' gits de warm water ready. Den I look roun' at de big bed, and ol' mars' lay dere jes' as still as a chile. Mighty quare. He don' usual sleep dat a way dis time er de mornin'. Den I stole close ter de bed, an' 'fore God! What did I see?

"Miss Mandy, she knock sof' on de do' an' she say, 'Unc' Ephum, is father 'sleep yit?'

"When she see me lookin' at him in de bed, den she say, 'Father!'

"But ol' mars' never answer.

"Dead' - - she says.

666

"Ol' mars'er done gone home,' I says, - 'done gone home, sleepin' jes' lak a chile in de big bed, an' lef' his ol' sarvant behin'.""

When he was buried in the garden the next day, and the company had come back from the grave, old Ephraim remained standing in an attitude of prayer. I went back, took the old man by the arm, and led him into the house. "Ol' mars' done gone an' lef' his ol' sarvant behin'." My aunt had him drink a glass that she had herself prepared for him; and he sat long in my grandfather's room, saying to himself, "Did n't say nothin', - - jes' went ter sleep same as a chile. Ol' mars'er's gone."

My widowed aunt,— widowed by war,

- who had kept my grandfather's house, soon went to make her home elsewhere. When the estate was settled up by my brother, there was little of value left. My aunt inherited the house, but it had gone far toward decay. In fact, the whole plantation had outlived its natural life. The organization, such as it was, hung together till the master died. Then it fell to pieces. But my grandfather had left a piece of land to Ephraim; and, when my aunt went away, the old man went to live in the old house of his old master, to care for it.

The last year of my college life in the South was not eventful. I find it difficult to recall any incidents worthy of mention. In fact, that whole period was remote from the life of the time and from my own life afterwards. I learned to read Latin and Greek somewhat more easily, I think, than the average college boy of that day or of this. But that is all that I learned from the college work proper. This instruction might have been given anywhere, at any time during the last thousand years or more. It had as little to do with modern thought, and as little to do with the time and country that I lived in, as instruction given by teachers in the Middle Ages. It was only the literary society that touched modern or American life at all. We debated patriotic subjects, and we learned, in a way, the ready use of speech. I have never been quite sure, however, whether this strenuous debating exercise did harm or good. I fear it did harm to more boys than it helped.

For the Southern youth of that time in particular had what I shall call the oratorical habit of mind. He thought in rotund, even grandiose, phrases. Rousing speech was more to be desired than accuracy of statement. An exaggerated manner and a tendency to sweeping generalizations were the results. You can now trace this quality in the mind and in the speech of the great majority of Southern men, especially men in public life. We call it the undue development of their emotional nature. It is also the result of a

lack of any exact training, — of a system that was medieval. Every man that I can recall who was with me at college, and who escaped the oratorical habit of mind, studied afterwards at some other institution. Some of them went abroad,

a half dozen, perhaps. All the rest are to this day fluent and inaccurate, given to fine periods and loose generalizations.

It was definitely decided that I should go to Harvard College, but there was some criticism of such a decision among my friends. My mother had a silent misgiving: it would probably put an end to her hope that I would yet enter the pulpit; but it was not clear what my career would be. Tom Warren and the young fellows that I knew in town looked upon it as a wild scheme, tinged with a sort of treason. My aunt Margaret had this feeling, too. "Far away from your kinspeople and from everybody that knows you," she would say; "what's the use in going so far?" Among my academic acquaintances the natural thing to do would have been to go to a German university; for the movement in that direction was then just coming into fashion.

The "Old Place" had already ceased to have much interest for most of the family. Uncle Ephraim and his wife, Aunt Martha, lived in the old "big house," now sadly gone to decay, and they kept the "new" part of the house for the white folks, if they should ever come to use it. With them lived a very light mulatto girl, who was a sort of adopted daughter of Aunt Martha. The other negroes on the place lived as they had lived in my grandfather's lifetime, in the cabins. Uncle Ephraim, old as he was, showed a masterful spirit. The place had lost a white master and had gained a black one. The negroes worked parts of the old plantation "on shares," and they found Ephraim a hard taskmaster. The old man was thrifty, they called him stingy. this thrift, and by the depreciation in the value of the land, he gradually bought most of the plantation. The neighbor

By

hood decayed. It seemed as if my grandfather had been for years the only prop to its falling value. The city was extending itself in that direction, but chiefly by additions to its colored population. It was on the "Egypt" side of town, given over to negro residents. In the fall the young men of the city used to go there to shoot quail; but few other white people now visited the place.

Just before I went to Harvard I paid Uncle Ephraim a visit. Aunt Martha prepared an elaborate dinner for me, and she and Uncle Ephraim served it in the parlor, in the "new" house, talking incessantly of old times. All this side of my experience, too, was as remote from contemporary life as if I had lived a generation earlier. These old people called me "Mars' Nick." They were family slaves yet, to me. Who the negroes in town were, or what they did, it did not occur to me to inquire or to observe. Nobody seemed to inquire or to observe. My mother had had much trouble`in securing good servants, that was all that was heard about the whole colored population, except in political circles; and I did not yet move in political circles.

I did not know the history of my own country, except in a set of grandiose political phrases; I did not know its economic or social condition; I had not read a dozen books of American literature. Poe was the only one of our poets who was regarded seriously in my circle of acquaintance. I had read widely and loosely about in English literature; and I knew the Greek writers better than I knew the American writers. If I had come out of a monastery, I should hardly have been a greater stranger to American life than I was the day I went to Cambridge. But my grandfather's suggestion had caused me to think of my ignorance of our own history. I had already begun to realize that there was something colossal and elemental in that old man, who was a link between me and an epoch that closed before I was born. Somehow I owed the suggestion to him that I had

now had experience enough with the mediæval world. It was, then, such studies as history and economics to which I should now give my time.

I found it hard to feel at home at Harvard. In fact, I did not feel at home. Everybody with whom I had to do was polite, it seemed to me studiously and self-consciously polite; but I made no real acquaintances. My speech was noticeably Southern, - - perhaps that was a barrier. Naturally shy, too, I was not tactful, I dare say, in making advances. Whatever was the matter, I encountered a reserve that was discouraging. Often it seemed to me that I was regarded with suspicion, - certainly only with polite toleration.

Some time before this there had been a Southern loafer at Harvard, a young dandy who made himself conspicuous by his manner and his dress. He brought letters with him to several persons of social prominence, and he had done the scandalous thing of making love to half a dozen young women during the winter. He had not paid his debts, either, — in a word, he had left a bad reputation. I heard the story of his conduct, and I was

[ocr errors]

or I imagined that I was a victim of the suspicion that he had aroused about Southern students.

But it was this fellow's career that at last brought me my best friend. At the table where I ate I had met a young New Englander, whose frank and hearty manner I greatly admired. We had something more than a formal acquaintance; but he, too, when we were alone, showed what seemed to me a studied reserve.

One day in my absence (I heard this story only after we had left college) the conversation at the table turned on me. Somebody recalled the self-conscious young fellow who had brought all Southerners under suspicion; and somebody else maintained that Southerners were all alike. I was a quieter sort of fellow, they agreed, - but wait and see. I'd make a fool of myself yet. Then my friend, Cooley, came to my rescue. "I tell

--

a

you, boys, he's the real thing, genuine. You do the man an injustice, nice fellow. He speaks his Southern lingo, but he's square."

I noticed that Cooley came nearer to me. There was never a human being who suffered an injustice within his reach to whom he did not come near. We soon became really acquainted. He asked me to dine at his home in Boston on Sunday and to meet his mother. By his good offices I became better acquainted with many men, and at the beginning of my second year (I was a senior then) I was elected to one of the most desirable college clubs. My gift of oratory, too, had won me on one or two occasions some little distinction. Thus, during my second year, I was as much at home as during the greater part of my first year I had been a merely tolerated stranger. My grandfather had been right. He had seen wisely, by that large intuition which great minds have to guide them, that a man who lived under a blanket of provincialism was not likely to breathe freely.

V

THE COLONEL AND THE GHOST

life

The Cooleys, who were my most influential friends in Boston, were Unitarians; and through them I met some of the leaders of that religious society. There must have been something in my temperament or in my manner at that period of my to suggest a preacher; for they, too, without any active encouragement by me, conceived the notion that I might take the pulpit as my career. I was grateful to these people for demonstrating to me that men and women may be "good," may even be religious, without accepting the old orthodox creeds; for during all my Southern life I had been assured that this could not be, and the matter had till now worried me much. And I showed my gratitude, I hope. No doubt this was the reason why the notion got current among

my Boston friends that I might go into the pulpit.

One day I was told by an influential Unitarian preacher that a society in Kansas wanted a pastor. If I would consent to go, he would heartily commend me. I would find that a good place to begin work, he was sure. I was surprised, almost shocked. I had not seriously entertained the idea of becoming a preacher. What would my mother think if I became a Unitarian? But a larger question came up. If not this, what? To "give my life to the service of my country" — how, pray? My country showed no eagerness for my service. I had supposed that, of course, I should return to my Southern home. But what would there be to do there? My brother had become a more and more capable manager of the mill. I had no fondness for the law, and except through the law there seemed to be no chance to enter public life. Worse yet, if I were frank, and freely made known my opinions, I should not find political favor in my state. During the weeks that I pondered on the situation, the more or less definite outlook in Kansas began to seem at least less absurd.

Finally I said that I would go and see the people, if I could go with a perfectly frank understanding. They were to know that I had not fully made up my mind to become a preacher; but I should like to consider the subject "on the ground." My advisers - or their advisers did not quite like this noncommittal mood; but in reply they said, with some humor, that they also would remain noncommittal.

[ocr errors]

Surely it was an extraordinary errand. I wrote to my mother and brother that I should spend a month or two in the West before I went home; and I started to Kansas. It was a pleasant prairie town to which I went. The society was a small one, but it was active. It showed a mood of boastfulness. It was very self-conscious, and sometimes belligerent. The most active members were women, and they seemed to me to keep their minds in

an improper state of exposure. They read "advanced" books, books of more or less aggressive controversy; and they read more than they digested. Their conversation sounded like extracts from books on the freedom of thought and the freedom of most other things. It was a raw intellectual society.

In certain moods one enjoys this attitude toward life; but it soon became tiresome to me. The only part of the mind that seemed active was its nerves. Repose? There was no repose in Kansas then. It was a clash of moods, of temperaments, of backgrounds; everything was seen in a shimmer. The parents of these Kansans had left New England and gone to Ohio and Illinois to get more room for their minds and bodies. This generation had gone on to Kansas to get still more room for mind and body; and they were nervous lest somebody should suspect that they were not "free." I stayed there a fortnight. Then I visited two of the great growing cities of the Middle West. Then I went home, and the dream of the Unitarian pulpit, if it had been a dream, vanished. In a little while, in the midst of Southern Methodist and Episcopalian circles, it became an unthinkable enterprise.

As the summer wore away, the old question became a serious one,- how I should serve my country. The editor of the principal newspaper at the state capital invited me to write for him; and I did. But, since he was a censor of the opinions of all who wrote, and since also it did not seem to enter his mind to pay for my contributions, I could not do this work with great enthusiasm.

One day there came to see my brother a man who owned a cotton mill in one of the towns in the state that had begun an era of prosperity and boastfulness. He told me that they had the best public school system in the South. They had just built new schoolhouses; they were going to have a high school; they hoped even to persuade the trustees of one of the religious colleges to move the college

VOL. 98-NO. 2

there. "We're in for the best of everything." Why should n't I go home with him and look over the ground? It might be that I was the very man they were in need of for superintendent.

I went; and for a term I taught in the "graded school," as they called it. It both interested me and bored me, and I did not yet know whether I had found merely a job or a career. At the end of the first term the man who had served as superintendent of the schools of the town had proved a failure. He resigned, and I was elected to the place. And now my work began in earnest.

I knew nothing about pedagogy, and I trusted my common sense to guide me. The schools were not bad; the people had a great enthusiasm about them, that is, those who believed in public schools at all, for there was a strong minority party of the churches, and the teachers were very willing. "The old land is waking up," I said; and I went about my work with satisfaction. The books and the teaching still seemed to me too remote from everyday life; and I compiled two little books that winter. which a local printer brought out. One was a short history of the state, hardly more than a primer. There was then no history of the state suitable to use in the schools. The other was a primer about the products and industries. Both of them were received by the teachers and by the children with delight; and many persons complimented me. Here was a superintendent, they said, worth having: when he didn't find good tools, he made them.

The negro schools were by no means so good as the schools for white children. The teachers were not so capable, the houses were not so good, nor was the amount spent on them proportionately so great as that spent on the white schools. I took up the problem of the education of the black children, also, with great earnestness. At least once a week I visited their schools. I worked out a plan of what I conceived to be the best training for these people. I made it practical.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »