their old grizzled heads and gay turbans looked as if
they were set on the table by the chins in a long row. Patiently the
master taught them; they had gone no further then "cat" in five long
months. He made the letters for them on the blackboard again and again,
but the treat of the evening was the making of these letters on the
board by the different scholars in turn. "Now, Dinah--B." And old Dinah
would hobble up proudly, and, with much screwing of her mouth and
tongue, and many long hesitations, produce something which looked like a
figure eight gone mad. Joe had his turn next, and he would make,
perhaps, an H for a D. The master would go back and explain to him
carefully the difference, only to find at the end of ten minutes that
the whole class was hopelessly confused: Joe's mistake had routed them
all. There was one pair of spectacles among the old people: these were
passed from hand to hand as the turn came, not from necessity always,
but as an adjunct to the dignity of reading.

"Never mind the glasses, Tom. Surely you can spell 'bag' without them."

"Dey helps, Mars King David," replied old Tom with solemn importance. He
then adorned himself with the spectacles, and spelled it--"g, a, b."

But the old people enjoyed their lesson immensely; no laughter, no
joking broke the solemnity of the scene, and they never failed to make
an especial toilet--much shirt-collar for the old men, and clean turbans
for the old women. They seemed to be generally half-crippled, poor old
creatures; slow in their movements as tortoises, and often unwieldy;
their shoes were curiosities of patches, rags, strings, and carpeting.
But sometimes a fine old black face was lifted from the slow-moving
bulk, and from under wrinkled eyelids keen sharp eyes met the master's,
as intelligent as his own.

There was no church proper in Jubilee. On Sundays, the people, who were
generally Baptists, assembled in the schoolroom, where services were
conducted by a brother who had "de gif' ob preachin'," and who poured
forth a flood of Scripture phrases with a volubility, incoherence, and
earnestness alike extraordinary. Presbyterian David attended these
services, not only for the sake of example, but also because he
steadfastly believed in "the public assembling of ourselves together for
the worship of Almighty God."

"Perhaps they understand him," he thought, noting the rapt black faces,
"and I, at least, have no right to judge them--I, who, with