The Call of the South

omily and resentfully meditating upon his rejection by the regiment, started briskly toward the temporary lodgings of his mo

that work for awhile, and t

What do you want to kn

grandmothers, everything you know-who they were, and what they

know all that at once? Are you still worr

d enough to go to war along with resp

them, and better than most. I wouldn't

to-night; but I want to know all about it right now.

he was or even that he was alive. Your pa was mighty high-spirited, and he never seemed to forget whatever it was that came between him and his father; though he would talk about him some too, and appeared to worship his mother's memory. They must have been very

y which side my g

ide-the U

er was in

to do with the war, but I didn't understand exactly what. He didn't like to talk about the war. When we were first married he used to say that the war was the first battle and the easiest, and that he was enlisted for the second and intended

you first

er had a school for negroes not very far from mine, and he had had a hard time from the very first. None of the respectable white people would have anything to do with him, and he could not get board from any one but negroes. But the worse the people treated him the harder he worked, and his school grew. Finally it became so larg

cked him down and he was nearly killed by striking his head against a hitching-post as he fell. The next morning a committee of some of the citizens came to the schoolhouse, and Colonel Allen, who was one of them, told your father that the community was greatly aroused by the condition of affairs, and that th

ther hi

ey didn't like some of the things he said. As he finished he told them that he could see that our condition, cut off as we were from association with respectable people by prejudice and from the lower classes because of their dense ignorance, and thrown into intimacy by our work, was somewhat u

y else gave our critics a chance to talk, and his solution of the difficulty was for us to be married-at once. He went on to say a whole lot of things, honey, that I never imagined he thought of, and wound up by declaring that I owed it to the work we had begun to make any sacrifices to carry it on. Now, honey, the

ning before time for school. When school assembled he sent a note by one of the boys to Colonel Allen, saying that we had arranged t

send to that note?" Hayward aske

along with some others of the committee in ab

did he

f in their unspeakable indignation at this method we had adopted, which, he said, struck at the very foundation of their civilization. He talked very high and mighty, I thought, and though he pretended to try to hold himself down and not get mad, he ripped and c

say to that?" Hay

with Colonel Allen about uprooting any principle of civilization, that times and conditions had changed, and, while he knew the sentiment of the people would be against our marriage, he thought that sentiment was wrong and would have to give way before the pressure of the new order of things,

nourable committ

er men just turned around without saying

the school on

f running away as he thought they would, they crowded around him, and after a struggle in the dark they left him lying just outside the door with a broken arm, a pistol-ball through his side, and unconscious f

er, who was raving and moaning, would surely die before he got there. But the old doctor told us as soon as he examined him that he would pull through all right. He said that he had been a surgeon in Stonewall Jackson's corps and that he had seen men forty times worse hurt back in the army in two months. That made us feel a great deal better, I tell you. Your father came to his senses before the old man quit working with him, and when he heard that the young doct

wait?" inter

ignantly out of the house with his pill-bags in one hand and in the other an old

come back?"

pacing bay mare made us glad every two

n't agree with his neighbours

n the last day he came, when your father was thanking him as he had done so often for his kindness

leave that place as

e opened the school again, but in less than a week the schoolhouse was burned down. We rented ano

most, and often had to pack up almost before we finished unpacking. Finally we lost all hope of being able to teach the negroes in the South, and decided to go home. Your father did go so far as to

ther got the profes

ept it till

n, "though it seems sometimes I remember how he loo

ut his being conscious that they were in the house. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't have time for anything else. His hard work and disappointment over the failure that he had made down South was what killed him, I have alw

ything about your father's being in the war of the rebellion, but he told about his trials and struggles to teach the negroes in the South, and said that in that work John Graham was as much a s

think I would do or would not do if they kindly permitted me to enlist. No, no. It's because I'm part negro-though I'm quite as white as a number I saw the

use. He boarded there and she was treated something like a member of the family, although she was a servant, and they were married after awhile. Some few of the people didn't like it, I've heard mammy say, but they got along without any trouble; and when my father saved

r's running away from her master. You have never told me anything about her, ex

and got across the river without being caught, and some of the white people helped her to get on as

"but what made her run away and leave her fathe

," said the mother evasively, "and i

s get at the bottom of it. I declare I believe you don't li

ve. Graham looked at her quietly a few moments, and, ascribing her reticence to unwillingness to descant upon the negro eleme

made mammy tell me all about her father and mother and her running away

he quicker you do the sooner it will be over. Go

Guinea

And her mother's

g L

e read, too. And now what did this pair do or suffer

e swamp for weeks at a time. The children on the place, black and white, were as scared of him as death, and none of the slave women would ever go about him if they could help it. Not long after General Young bought him, Gumbo and his first wife, who was brought over from Africa with him, had the plans all fixed to steal one of the General's little boys, five

kill him? What was th

afraid of her father to come back home. The next day, however, the young man turned up, and swore he had not seen Miss Lily in a week. Then the plantation was in terror.-Honey, I can't tell you the rest.-They found her.-When they were calling out all the people from the quarters, the General learned that Gumbo had not been seen since Miss Lily was lost. He had run away so often that no attention was paid to it, for he always came back after a time.-They got the bloodhounds, mammy said, and went to the swamp. After a long tim

reathing, and when she stopped he dropped his face in hi

all the General's ravings and screams that he would kill every nigger on the place; and he kept it up so long and kept breaking out again so after they thought they had him pacified that mammy said she was scared so bad she just couldn't stay there any longer: an

interrupting his mother's flow of words, of which he had noted little since hearing

tricia Schmidt, daughter of Cindy-

o," correcte

is record ought to have as many as Kaiser Bill," drawled Graham sarcastically. Then with better humour he said t

me that for h

*

at the blank wall. Then he spoke

bout that; and a negro I'll

are not going to

er than I am. I got along very well at college, but these people here are different. I'll show 'em. I'll go to the war, and I'll get as much gl

k himself