repeatedly to his lips and
bedewing it with tears. Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes
ever since? But not at Woodlawn. The negroes generally were wild with
the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning
of the term. To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I
preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged
lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one
better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system.
The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first
results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell
with heaviest weight. Both were totally unprepared for it, and both
have so far suffered cruelly. A year ago Old John died, faithful
and cared for to the last. A few months ago the lease I had executed
expired, and I visited the estate again. All the glamour of the past
had disappeared. The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have
sold it. Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed
me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon
which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here
had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,--Cuffee has
taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature
of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left
the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair
streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her
feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane
which leads from the house--her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg
Merrilies--screaming out to me, 'You left you own plantashun.' Yes,
I have left my own plantation, and am grubbing out a modest and
sometimes a rather precarious existence elsewhere. But for all that,
it is more wholesome than mouldering among the ruins of a past that
can never return. The fight has been fairly fought, and New England
has won the day. Germany is up, France is down; Italy united, the pope
existing on sufferance in the palace where erstwhile emperors did him
homage. I don't quarrel with Fortune. Nay, in many things I dare say
the world has benefited by the change. And so, when I take my children
sometimes to look at Crawford's famous group, I even enjoy the spirit
of pride with which they look upon the figure of America, and the zest
with which they enjoy the vigorous onslaught