[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

Does the reader ask what paper it was Frank
handed Mr. L. at the sale? Let him recall the conversation
in the boat between the uncle and nephew.
Well, that was not without good effects on Mr. Wardloe.
Perhaps it did not wholly satisfy him as to
Frank's innocence and heroism; it impressed, however,
a soft spot in that worthy planter's bosom,
which he affected to call his “weak part,” but which
others, with more propriety, considered his noblest
part. Mr. W. did many unexpected things in the
way of generosity, and where his friends looked for
indignation, he, to their surprise, expressed pity. He
even gave a picayune where he at first determined
to give a pickling.

After the rebellion Mr. W. became chairman of

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

the Vigilance Committee. Here he suggested and
advocated stringent and summary measures; and
volunteered to serve in the extemporary police, although
exempted by the wishes, and even requests
of his neighbors. Still it was happy not only for the
negroes, but the owners, that a man with a weak spot
in his heart, should be executioner as well as law
maker and judge.

As a specimen of his violent measures, behold Mr.
W. once among the patrol! He is well armed, pistols
in his belt! dirk in vest! and cowskin in hand!
Aye! let him catch a “nigger out that night without
a pass!”

Look out, Sambo! here comes the patrol! Quick,
into that bush! You silly ostrich, hide both ends!
Too late!—now you'll get it.

“Let fly!” exclaimed a young policeman, “there's
one —”

“Hold!—I say!—don't fire!” cries Captain Wardloe;
who thus calls to the negro:

“Come here, you scoundrel, you! Where's your
pass?”

“Oh! Massa Wardloe, don't let 'em go for to kill
me! oh don't! I'm Sambo!”

“Well! well! I know your Sambo, but where's
your pass? What's your master let you go out for
on Sunday night without a pass?”

“Lor bless Massa Wardloe I's bin down to

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

meetin', and I tinks I'd git back to massa Chambers
'fore time —”

Here police interposed:

“That's the old game, Captain! He ought to
have at least two dozen, to teach him to pray a little
faster. Captain, indeed, it will never do to take such
excuses —”

“By no means, gentlemen! So come along,
Sambo—I'll give you a couple of dozen myself.”

“That's right, Captain! Pay it into him well, let
him finish up meeting quicker next time. We'll
push on to Hedge's corner, there's always something
along there,” and away rode the patrol.

Now Uncle Wardloe hated to flog a negro; then
what made him volunteer? Well, let us listen!

“Sambo, you are a most silly fool of a nigger!
You must at all events have two little whacks to
teach you sense and show at home; but mark you,
jackass, after that, I shall pay away into this gate-post;
and mind, I tell you, if you don't then roar out
to make the patrol hear, why then if I don't make
you roar, this is no cowhide. So strip off!”

Sambo performed that operation gracefully enough,
saying, “Lor' bless you, Master Wardloe—I'll holler
like the very old scratch for sartin; but, massah,
please do the little cracks very lilly bit—indeed,
massah, I no tell lie, dis time.” And there stood
ebony, shirt in hand, and back bare; on which

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

exposed part Mr. W. inflicted two lilliputian stripes,
yet done rather harder than Sambo conceived
was in the compact; for, squirming about and
twisting his mouth into whistling shape, he cried
out, much surprised, and a little vexed:

“Oh! graminee! grashis! massah! I'se whipped
for sartin!”

“Let out, you black rascal, then!” replied Mr. W.
in a low voice, while he administered to the innocent
and unsuspecting gate-post a whack with a vengeance,
pealing wood and leather, on which Sambo performed
“the let out!”

“Oh—ooh! Lord bless you, massah!—don't kill
me.”

Whack! — “Holler right!” — whack! — “you
rascal!”

“Oh! let me go!—I'll never pray no more!—
Oho! good massah! Oho-o!”

“Louder and right, you black fool! pray as much
as you like!”—Whack! whack!

Sambo did not do it quite naturally, nor up to
agony point; and so Uncle W., half in fun and half in
vexation, gave darkee himself the next two whacks;
which, of course, did not sound so horribly as on the
gate-post, but they brought the real roar out of Sambo,
and kept it up to high scream point during the remaining
punishment of the gate. Indeed, the fellow

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

squealed now so very like piggy himself, that when
the captain overtook his party, they said:

“Captain, save us from your cow-skin! Why,
you have spoiled Chamber's negro for a month—you
cut the poor rascal as if you were chopping down a
tree!”

It was fortunately dark; and they could not see
the captain's face, when at the hazard of betraying
matters with a laugh, he answered—“I shall charge
the vigilance committee the price of a cow-hide.”

Reader! I well know that there are many Uncle
Wardloe's in the South. I heard one thus answer
Mr. Greenin from the North:—“You are a slanderer,
sir! Hundreds and hundreds of negroes here never
had a lash on their backs! Come down, sir, to my
plantation; call up all my negroes; strip off their
clothes; examine for yourself; if you find the
smallest sign of a stripe, I'll pay you any sum!”

But Mr. Greenin went home prejudiced! He
helped to kindle the fire of indignation meetings till
sham saints, and mock patriots, and false philanthropists,
were ready, for love's sake, to do nothing but
hate! and for freedom's sake to overthrow a free
country!

However, Mr. Wardloe was nearly as inconsistent
the opposite way—and he would help at a pinch.
He still had some lurking suspicions about Frank's
share in the rebellion; because the following had

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happened at the execution of the sixty negroes:
When Woburn was about to be hung, he had said
to Mr. Jenkins, his counsel—“I am about to die for
my brethren in bondage; but I see a man that will
at some time lead them to liberty in my place!”

Here Woburn had looked towards where Frank
was standing; on which Mr. Jenkins asked—“You
do not mean Frank Freeman?” And then Woburn
replied—“I will betray no one by name; the man,
however, did not actually join us this time—he cannot
avoid it the next.”

Jenkins was a humane man. He consulted with
Mr. Wardloe; but not long after he was drowned
by the upsetting of a boat; and so the matter had
remained in Mr. Wardloe's mind, filling him with
suspicions and misgivings. Yet at the sale, when he
looked on poor Frank and his mother, and then at
his nephew standing alone in his moral grandeur,
and noticed the anguish of his mind; when he re-called
his strange fainting, and thought that to be in
some way connected with his interest in Frank, and
that Mr. L. honestly believed he owed Frank a
great sacrifice—half-blinded with tears he stepped
from his place, and tearing a blank page from his
pocket-book, with his pencil he wrote hurriedly:

“Can't stand it!—bid more!—bid a —.” At
that “article” the uncle heard Edward's tremulous
voice, in the expiring of hope, say—“all my library!

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

my wife's —;” when he dashed down after “a”—
$1,000! Mere chance made a one before the zeros;
for Wardloe let the pencil take its own way now.
Had it trembled into a 5, Wardloe would scarce
have known the difference.

The dealers having witnessed Frank's movements,
were after that last bid, $4,000, convinced the
contest was hopeless; and therefore it was, as has
been seen, abandoned. And hence our folks in due
time all separated and went home to prepare for
Christmas.

We old school people can remember as far back
as the ancient holiday doggerel—


“Christmas comes but once a year,
And when it comes it brings good cheer;”
but the negroes of our parish fully illustrated its
meaning; and Mr. Wardloe was one of the few that
knew how to set forth a proper Christmas table.

Christmas is the grand saturnalia in the South.
From three to four days and nights are given as
holiday, during which every indulgence and license
consistent with any subordination and safety are allowed.
The land swarms with peregrinating blacks;
as if the great black ants of the western Gopher hills
had visited the island world to look at the crabs and
craw-fish. The world lives out of doors, every body

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being turned into charcoal and done up in fantasticals.

Each island turns into a vast dance house. It is
the era of the Africantische—a genus of the poetry
of motion—out-leaping all other polkas and hammer-the-floor
affairs imported by the modern long-beards.
It includes all sorts of single, double, compound,
complex, implex, riggle and twist, forward
and stop-short, back-again and go-a-head dances; in
which floors are heeled into hollows—thick soles
kicked against ebony shins—legs are here, arms
there, heads down and feet up; while corn-stalk
fiddles are scraped into agony, and calabashes
emerge into banjos; and all and everything is a
joyous uproar of jolly and unmeaning laughter—
wild refrain—silly song—absurd brag—jack-daw
gabble—mill-clatter raillery—day and night—and
night and day—all society seems resolved into
chaos—the darkness only being visible!

The Maine spirits go South then; for Sambo and
Congo, and Loango, do something then besides
smelling at a cork! Ah! white man! the “nigger”
gets as drunk as you! Rum is an ultra-democrat—
it levels down! Glorious liberty, however, of the
free North! the white has the right to be drunk
every day, to turn swine and roll in a gutter; but
the poor negro slave has license to do this only once

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in the year! Go—Northman! give Darkee the right
to be a hog every day!

The present Christmas in our parish was to be a
special time. The year had been prosperous; cotton
was a fine “blow;” negroes had behaved well;
planters had made money; and Mr. Leamington
had redeemed Frank. The dealers—a sort of vagrants
with Cain's brand on their hateful brows—had
been defeated; and, hated and cursed in secret, they
had gone away with their chains, and cuffs, and
gags! Oh, planters! how joyous would be your
Christmas, if ye would make laws to keep your
negroes ever at home!

Many dinner parties were given to day; but the
dinner was at Mr. Wardloe's. Here, of course, were
Parson L. and his wife, and Dinah, and Carrie, and
the children—not that the colored folks were to dine
a la abolitione, but that they went to Eaglet Isle by
express invitation. The darkies were to have a
special “kick-up” to themselves.

Behold a saloon fit for a prince. The table runs
through its longitude, perhaps, forty feet! The
guests are seated, each with his shadow behind the
chair—two dozen other waiters at a distance. That
looks like business: every guest has something to
do to-day, and will need his own helper; and, indeed,
each guest, before he was let off to-day, felt in

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need of two or three mouths, and the loan of some
patent digester!

Being limited in the number of pages, we cannot,
in imitation of modern ways, give the whole bill of
fare; but the first course was, of course, soup. Then
came the feathered part of creation, but without any
feathers:—not vulgar barn-house creatures, but turkeys,
pheasants, and ducks, with several sorts of backs,
canvass included: and these roasted, boiled, fricasseed,
with and without oysters and with proper gravies.
And beef, if not a la mode, yet in every other mode.
And hams, tongues, oysters fried, boiled, stewed.
And other meats concealed in dresses as effectually
as if done by M. Parlez, and served under hard
names. And vegetables:—leeks, onions, squash,
kershaw, (no pumpkin)—sweet potatoe in all its
glory—rice in all its forms—pickles of all sorts,
sizes and colors, and in bottles and plates. But time
would fail to tell how many other edibles crowded
the table till plate touched plate! Dish chimed
against dish! Spoon jostled fork! and knife pushed
spoon!

Now began the war! It was eating, eating!
moistened with a little drinking!—and interrupted
by talking!—and mingled with the clatter of china!—
the ring of glasses!—the rattle of the cerealia arma!—
the popping of corks!—the bubbling forth of rosy
spirits and the loud foaming of barley-corn froths!

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All which continued one good hour—and then came
recess! And while the guests stopped to blow: off
went plates, viands, liquors as by magic, and then
table cloth No. 1 being removed, revealed cloth No.
2, and ready for

Second Course.—And this was tempting as a
baker's show-window, where urchins stand on a
cellar-door, and look affectionately on all the pies,
tarts, puddings, jellies, and innumerable flour doings,
frescoed, iced, bronzed, and in every mode of ancient
and modern architecture! And now the spirits
mocked at Temperance! The alcoholic legion was
there in full force; they stood, rank and file, sixteen
in number and name! This was before the birth of
Teetotalism. Still, water was there. It was in
bowls, however, where floated orange leaves, and
into that odorous water folks from time to time
dipped finger-tips, which were wiped on scented
towels hanging from ebony holders! Water was like
silver in the days of Solomon—not much estimated!
Another hour was consumed!

And now cloth No. 3 was ready for the fruits.
Here the tropics emptied their horns of plenty, to
allure the sated guests with flavor, fragrance and
beauty—but man cannot eat forever. Yet orange,
and pine-apple, and pomegranate, and fig, and marmalades,
and grapes, and guava jelly, and preserved
limes, and almonds, and peccans, and filberts, and

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cocoas—and other such, were tasted, or looked on
with approving smiles, which said—“we would if
we could!” Away then went the half-honored
dessert, and No. 3 being removed, stood in its
polish—

The naked table! For what? Aye, for what?
Why for wines and cordials and elixirs of life!
The drinking was to be done. And sure enough that
battle began as if there had been no war before.

But what of the parson and his wife? They had
disappeared, my dear Mr. Waters, with the last
table cloth. And, although they had done nothing
but nibble the last hour, and sipped the least possible
at every toast and compliment, they were crammed
and had a little headache, and faces slightly flushed.
The fact is, a southern Christmas Dinner is a dinner;
and when the host is Mr. Wardloe, and the occasion
the rescue of Frank, you will need nothing more in
the way of eating and drinking, that day and the day
after!

The conversation was not more edifying than
northern affairs of the sort; yet the Parson was
toasted and congratulated till more than once he
rubbed his eye hastily, as if a gnat was on the lid or
lash. But when the ladies had gone, Mr. L. rose and
spoke as follows:

“Gentlemen of the South:—That happy time is
near, when science and art shall render the

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intercourse between the South and the North daily and
hourly. We shall be more than neighborhoods—we
shall be vicinities; we shall shake hands and talk
orally, every day. Then we shall not take our reciprocal
views from books and papers, from prejudiced
persons, from cliques and parties. From the first I
felt at home here; if I had ice in my blood, your
kindness long since dissolved it. The too great heat
in yours, would temper into a generous warmth—but
less inflaming. Hence the union of our excellencies
would form a character to preserve the blessed Union
of our states, forever. (Applause.)

“I felt our hearts were one that day! I am no
soldier, gentlemen, but then and now, I felt—I feel—
if fight I must—my sword must be drawn for our
whole country! (Great applause.)

“Now, gentlemen, may I, pleading my cloth, and
my well-known and frequently avowed views on
social habits, be allowed to join the ladies?”

“Aye! aye!”—with three cheers for Mr. L., was
unanimously responded. Upon the Parson's withdrawal,
Mr. Wetherel, the auctioneer, arose:

“Gentlemen! I have knocked down many a black
fellow in my way—but bless my soul, if I ever
knocked down any poor fellow with a heartier whack
than Frank!”

“Wetherel,” cried Col. Hilson, “why the dickens
didn't you knock down that insolent dealer?”

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

“I would, if you'll buy him.”

“Aye! I'd buy him for the pleasure of tossing the
scamp over to my negroes. The fellows would like
such a hunt.”

Mr. Wardloe regarded this as rather commonplace,
perhaps; or he wished, maybe, to keep within
bounds and please Edward; but he here arose and
proposed:

“Gentlemen! let us drink good afternoon, and join
the ladies. And so the company concluded the
session.

The reader will naturally ask if the negroes had no
dinner? Yes, verily. Except a few house servants
who were to have a dinner to themselves, and who
were, in fact, too tonish for field and common darkies,
the others had a time of cramming, truly awful.
Their affair came off at the “Quarters”; where they
stuffed and drank, and sang and danced, as if Slavery
was the Life of Lives. Sentences in whole, or in
part, were now and then caught by the white folks in
parlors and saloons, which were indices how the tide
of fun was setting: thus—

“Two bale bid—only two—gwine—gwine.”

“Massah, buy Frank for nigger parsin—”

“I's de niggah to cut shine round Carrie—”

“Oh! gosh! Ole Diner promis Frank hab um
gal; you black crow—”

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

“Den I gwine to leave dis quiet place—too much
religin here!”

This allusion to the disappointed dealers, was followed
by three times three, and brought a smile over
the white faces.

“He de slave chainer! gib um cow-skin—how de
gemman make track when Massah Parsin holler out
4000 dollar!”

“Hurraw! for Massa Parsin—”

“Hurraw! for Massah Wardloe! He flog Sambo!
Sambo, he cry—`I'se whipped for sartin'—”

“Huh! haw!”

Much of this delicate flattery was doubtless owing
to the state of the stomach. The half-starved, illclad,
idle free negro of the North cannot flatter.
He can only cringe! And what can we expect?
He is virtually a slave, and without an owner! A
few men of genius and talent and morals (melancholy
pyramids, alone in a desert) stand grandly up—Black
Men among White Men! But why fight indignant
against Destiny, when they can be Rulers of Destiny!
Go, ye black men of talent and morals and knowledge—
go! Make a deathless name in abolishing heathenism
and slavery in your own land!

But the boats are ready; and now away homeward
glide our happy parties. The merry laugh and

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the boat song are still heard when the crews disappear
in the haze and behind the waving grass, till
faint, and yet fainter, and then like a moan, die
away the voices in the distance.

p562-123

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