LLIDAY.

"P.S.--Just as I finished writing I had a note from Judge Featherton
offering me the court messengership at five dollars a week. I am
twenty-five. The place was held before by a white boy of fifteen. I
declined. 'Southward Ho!'"

Davis was not without sympathy as he read his friend's letter in a
city some distance away. He had worked in a hotel, saved money enough
to start a barber-shop and was prospering. His white customers joked
with him and patted him on the back, and he was already known to have
political influence. Yes, he sympathized with Bert, but he laughed
over the letter and jingled the coins in his pockets.

"Thank heaven," he said, "that I have no ideals to be knocked into a
cocked hat. A colored man has no business with ideals--not in _this_
nineteenth century!"

JIM'S PROBATION

For so long a time had Jim been known as the hardest sinner on the
plantation that no one had tried to reach the heart under his outward
shell even in camp-meeting and revival times. Even good old Brother
Parker, who was ever looking after the lost and straying sheep, gave
him up as beyond recall.

"Dat Jim," he said, "Oomph, de debbil done got his stamp on dat boy,
an' dey ain' no use in tryin' to scratch hit off."

"But Parker," said his master, "that's the very sort of man you want
to save. Don't you know it's your business as a man of the gospel to
call sinners to repentance?"

"Lawd, Mas' Mordaunt," exclaimed the old man, "my v'ice done got
hoa'se callin' Jim, too long ergo to talk erbout. You jes' got to let
him go 'long, maybe some o' dese days he gwine slip up on de gospel
an' fall plum' inter salvation."

Even Mandy, Jim's wife, had attempted to urge the old man to some more
active efforts in her husband's behalf. She was a pillar of the
church herself, and was woefully disturbed about the condition of
Jim's soul. Indeed, it was said that half of the time it was Mandy's
prayers and exhortations that drove Jim into the woods with his dog
and his axe, or an old gun that he had come into possession of from
one of the younger Mordaunts.

Jim was unregenerate. He was a fighter, a hard drinker, fiddled on
Sunday, and had been known to go out hunting on that sacred day. So it
startled the whole place when Mandy announced one day to a few of her
intimate friends that she believed "Jim was under conviction." He had
stolen out hunting one Sunday night and in passing through the swamp
had gotten himsel