passed
additions of boards and brick were made, resulting in a formless but
comfortable habitation, with broad passage ways and odd lolling places
set to entrap cool breezes. The plantation comprised about one thousand
acres. The land for the most part was level, but here and there a hill
arose, like a sudden jolt. From right to left the tract was divided by a
bayou, slow and dark. The land was so valuable that most of it had been
cleared years ago, but in the wooded stretches the timber was thick, and
in places the tops of the trees were laced together with wild grape
vines. Far away was a range of pine-covered hills, blue cones in the
distance. And here lived the poorer class of people, farmers who could
not hope to look to the production of cotton, but who for a mere
existence raised thin hogs and nubbins of corn. In the lowlands the
plantations were so large and the residences so far apart that the
country would have appeared thinly settled but for the negro quarters
here and there, log villages along the bayous.

In this neighborhood Major John Cranceford was the most prominent
figure. The county was named in honor of his family. He was called a
progressive man. He accepted the yoke of reconstruction and wore it with
a laugh, until it pinched, and then he said nothing, except to tell his
neighbors that a better time was coming. And it came. The years passed,
and a man who had been prominent in the Confederate council became
Attorney-General of the American Nation, and men who had led desperate
charges against the Federal forces made speeches in the old capitol at
Washington. And thus the world was taught a lesson of forgiveness--of
the true greatness of man.

In New Orleans the Major was known as a character, and his nerve was not
merely a matter of conjecture. Courage is supposed to hold a solemn
aspect, but the Major was the embodiment of heartiness. His laugh was
catching; even the negroes had it, slow, loud and long. Sometimes at
morning when a change of season had influenced him, he would slowly
stride up and down the porch, seeming to shake with joviality as he
walked. Years ago he had served as captain of a large steamboat, and
this at times gave him an air of bluff authority. He was a successful
river man, and was therefore noted for the vigor and newness of his
profanity. His wife was deeply religious, and year after year she
besought him to join the church, pleaded with him at evening when the
two chil