ny
sort, did not notice it. He straightened up as if he had grown an inch
or more when he found that he had a correspondent who was respectful
enough to address him as "Mister," and rose immensely in his own
estimation when he opened the letter and with _much_ difficulty spelled
out the following:

"This is verry privat and perticlar bisness and i wouldnt think of
speaking to nobody but you about it who are one of the most promnent and
respeckted sitizens of barington."

This was nothing but the truth, according to Mr. Goble's way of
thinking; but up to this time he had never met any one whose opinions
agreed with his own. If the business to which his correspondent referred
was so very "private and particular," it would never do, he thought, to
read the letter there in the post-office, while there were so many men
standing around; so he straightway sought the privacy of his own
dwelling--a little tumble-down log cabin with a dirt floor and stick
chimney, which was situated in the outskirts of the town.

"One of the most respected and prominent citizens of Barrington; that's
what I be," muttered Bud Goble, as he stumbled along the dark road
toward his domicile. "I always knowed it, but there's a heap of folks
about here who have always been down on me, kase I haven't got any
niggers of my own and have to work for a livin'; but I'm to the top of
the heap now, an' what's more, I'll let some of 'em know it before I am
many hours older. I wisht I knew what's into this letter, kase it's
mighty hard work for me to read it. If it's anything about them
babolitionists an' the doctering they're preachin' up among our
niggers--Well, they'll not do it much longer, kase I am about ready to
take some on 'em outen their beds at night an' lay the hickory over
their backs. There's money into it, kase Mr. Riley an' the rest of the
men that's onto the committee said so; an' I'm onto every job where
there's an honest dollar to be made."

Bud Goble was a fair type of that class of people who were known to
those among whom they lived as "white trash." Even the negroes,
particularly those who belonged to wealthy planters, looked upon them
with contempt. Too lazy to work, they lived from hand to mouth; and not
one out of ten of the many thousands of them who went into the
Confederate Army knew what they were fighting for. To save his life Bud
Goble could not have told what all this excitement was about. He had a
dim notion that somebody wa