People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — IN DIXIE'S LAND BEFORE THE WAR. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN DIXIE'S LAND BEFORE THE WAR.

By THE LATE James Franklin Fitts

(Copyright, 1833, by A. N. Kellogg Newspaper Co.] CHAPTER IL— Continued. Perhaps my frame of mind just then Inclined me toward a presentiment. Perhaps the reader will say that it is always easy to predict after the fact. No matter; the fact remains the same that a sudden and decided conviction was forced upon me that this stranger was to have a positive influence upon my life, and that his presence here at this time was of itself a promise of great results for me. He walked rapidly, removing his wide-brimmed palm-leaf hat and wiping his brow with a large red handkerchief as ho came. He was tall, powerful of frame and florid of face; and I observed uthat there was something about this color, hardly a tan, that I at once attributed to the sun of another latitude than this. Every detail of his person and dress I took in at once: my attention was certainly sharpened by the presentiment I have mentioned. I judged him to be at least fifty years old, though his face was plump and unwrinkled. His features were bold and handsome; there was a twinkle to his eye and an ever-recurring smile upon his face that made him seem the most charming of men. Short curls of chestnut hair ran all over his head. His dress was rich in material and fashionable in cut; diamonds were in his shirt-front, and an immense solitaire sparkled on one of his little fingers. He came up within a few feet of me, and paused. My father had thus far not seen him at all; he was absorbed ,in his revery. The stranger looked from me to him, and spoke in a round, hearty voice: “Well, here we are. My lad, what’s your name?” “Dorr Jewett, sir.” “Is that your father?" “Yes, sir." He walked over to my abstracted sire and bestowed such a hearty thwack upon his shoulders that he jumped to his feet. “Well, Amos, how are you, anyway?” My father looked at the laughing face before him, and was disarmed of

all anger. But his memory was not reinforced. “Really, sir,” he said, “you have the advantage of me.” “I am Pierce Bostock.” CHAPTER 111. MY FAIRY PRINCE. I name him as he appeared to me in the two hours that followed. He came like the benign spirit of some old fairy tale, bearing to me bright promise for the future. Now, when long years have passed, with all the full, strange record with which this narrative deals, I can think of the hour and the man in no other way. ’ It Was my'-hour of promise—he was my fairy prince. “Bostock!” said my father, holding out his hand, “Little Pierce Bostock? Why, it don’t seem possible.” “Yes, that reminds me, Amos, of how we used to wrestle, side hold. You used to throw me.” “I don’t think I could do it now,” said my father. “I reckon not, Amos. Well, my old chum, I’m mighty glad to see you. Will you believe it, Amos? —being in Boston for the very first time since I went south, the thought struck me to come up here, and hunt up old friends and schoolmates. There’s few of them left; and I’m right glad I’ve found you.” “I feci fiattered by your remembrance and your kindness, Pierce. It’s but a poor hospitality. I have to offer you; but you’re welcome to it. Come to the house, and we’ll sit down and talk over old days.” "We’ll have tu talk last, Amos. I’ve

mortgaged my time at the north, and I must leave Boston to-morrow. I can give you two hours only. This is your boy, eh?—fine manly fellow. What’s his name? —Dorr? Why, is it possible you called him after my father?” “Indeed I did, Pierce. You remember how kind he was to me. The boy’s name is Dorr Bostock Jewett.” “Now I like that; I’ll not forget it. Come along to the house as you said.” His beaming smile captivated me; as we walked along, while he busily talked with my father, he playfully shouldered my hoe, and took hold of my hand. Arrived at the house, my mother was introduced. It was the first exhibition of highbred politeness I had ever seen, and it impressed me. In the life that I had been living, duty and labor went for everything, courtesy was scant enough. Mr. Bostock removed his hat, gently took my mother’s hand, and bowed very low. “Extremely glad to meet you, madam. Your husband is my oldest and dearest friend, though I’ve seen nothing of him since we were mere lads.” “Sit down, sir, and make yourself comfortable,” said my mother. “Will you stay to tea?” “Thank you—l shall not have time,” he replied, looking at a massive-cased gold watch. “The train leaves the village at seven; it's almost five now.” “If you were raised in New Hampshire, perhaps you haven’t forgotten how to eat mush and milk.”

“Why, bless me, madam, can you give me a bowl of it? My old nigger cooks get up corn bread, corn cake and all kinds of corn fixings, but they can’t make mu§h. I’d like it above all things.” With a napkin under his fat chin, our jolly guest sat at the table, partaking with evident relish of the simple entertainment that was set before him. He was a keen observer, notwithstanding his easy, careless way, and I think that nothing had escaped his notice. Never had the house and its furnishings seemed as shabby to me as now. “Beg pardon, Amos; but you know everything is permitted between old friends. You don’t thrive well here.” “No,” said my father, “and I fear I never shall. You remember something about this old place; twenty acres out of the thirty no better than a stone quarry. Bad luck has followed me; I’ve had bad seasons, slim crops, sickness and debt. It’s a hard struggle, almost a hopeless one.” “I’m sorry for you, Amos; from the bottom of my soul I am. I don’t know of a fellow who deserved good fortune ahead of you. If you’d struck out when I did, you’d have succeeded anywhere. New England is a good place to rear men, but no place at all for them to spread, you know. I don’t brag, but I’ve got a right to point with some pride to what I’ve done since I saw these hills last.” “You are at the south, I infer,” said my father. “I’ve one thousand acres of the best cotton land in Mississippi below Vicksburg. I plant every acre of it; and I raise sugar in Louisiana.” “I hope you’re not a slaveholder, sir,” said my mother. “0, I’ve a few niggers—hardly a hundred. I’ve had to hire some the last season.” At the horrified looks of my mother and the painful silence of my father Mr. Bostock wiped his mouth and laughed. “I’d like to have you come down and see how some of those lazy cattle impose upon me. But, dash it all, Amos, I haven’t time to discuss the institution, and it wouldn’t do, either—we should quarrel. Of course you’re an abolitionist. I remember you in the old days; you were cut out for one. Let’s talk about something else.” “You have a family, of course, Pierce?”

“My wife died a few years ago. I’ve one child, Coralie, a little witch of seven. I’ve a great house, which is run by the servants. I know all about the plantation, but I haven’t much control inside. Everything is lavish, and it’s a wonder to me, sometimes, that I’m not a poor man. But come down, and you’ll find hospitality enough.” For more than an hour he talked, interrupted only by an occasional question or exclamation. I did not observe then —long afterward I had occasion to recall the sact —that he parried several attempts of my parents to draw him out about his deceased wife and his daughter. He talked interestingly, almost eloquently, about the cultivation of cotton, the scenes in the immense fields when the picking time arrived, the ginning, the baling and the “shooting” down the long incline to steamboat. To me it was all a new revelation; I listened with all my senses. He turned to me briskly with the question: “Well, my lad, how would you like to go down and see all this for yourself?” “Above all things, sir.” “I say, Amos, why not send him down to me, after a few years? I’ll put him in the way to be rich.” I sat with clasped hands, eagerly looking from one to the other of tay parents. Their hearts werb touched by the thought of parting with me, and by the generous interest of Mr. Bostock. “I mean it, Amos. I’ve-taken a notion to the boy, and I’d like to have him with me. To be sure, I’m a slaveholder, but there’s lots of more dangerous animals in the woods than the unfortunate man who has to feed and clothe a parcel of lazy niggers. You needn't hurry; keep him a few years yet; send him to school; and by and by send him down to me, via Cincinnati, Cairo and Vicksburg, I’ll take ca±e of him, and .give him such a start in the world as he'd never get up this way. I won’t forget what I’m saying, Amos, neither. What do you say?” “Your kindness quite overpowers me, Pierce. I’ll think seriously of it, and talk it over with the boy and his mother.”

“All right, my old friend; the thing is as good as done. Now my time is about up. Don’t get crazy over politics, Amos, and don’t take Dorr to your abolition meetings. Let me have a pen and ink and I’ll put down my address for you.” He took from his pocket a narrow blank book, wrote rapidly upon a leaf of it, tore out the leaf, thrust it into my father’s hand, and had said his farewell and was out of the house with a celerity that was really bewildering. My father looked at the paper. It shook in his hand; he turned pale. He could not speak, but held the paper toward us. My mother took and read it, while I looked over her shoulder. The leaf was from a blank check book. On the stub he had written his address; the body was a check on a Boston bank, payable to the order of Amos Jewett for one thousand dollars! “I can’t take it —I really must not,” said my father. “Dorr, go and tell him so.” I ran out of the house. Mr. Bostock was already one hundred yards off laying the lash on the horse. I shouted to

him; he looked back, waved his hat to me, and disappeared over the hill. I went back into the house and reported. “He wants you to have it, Amos,” said my tearful mother. “May God bless his great generous heart,” said my father, with much emotion. “Dorr, my dear boy, you can go to the academy now.” CHAPTER IV. HOW I FLANKED THE DEACON. I thought, at first, to dismiss the events of the two following chapters with a brief mention, as they do somewhat depart from the course of the narrative. But it has appeared better, on second thoughts, to withhold nothing of the circumstances attending my farewell to my northern home. And it must not be said that the character of Deacon Halleck is presented here as a type of the men of that section. Keenly do I remember the kindness, the patience, the neighborly good will and good works of the people in a community where poverty was the rule and hard toil was the common lot. Because the deacon happened to be connected in a curious way with the final severance of my home ties and old associations his picture is presented here just as he was. I suppose that his kind is not yet extinct. This is autobiography; it should be complete. The bounty of our generous southern friend enabled me to have one precious year at the academy, some years later, and gave my father the means to replenish his poor stock and poorer farm implements. But when he told Mr. Bostock that bad luck had followed him, he spoke in prophecy as well as history. My poor father! He deserved a better fate. Misfortune followed misfortune; they came

“—Not single spies, But in battalions.” Each year the thin eoil that overlaid the rocks grew more grudging in its yield; a murrain carried off the cattle; hard work and anxiety prostrated my mother, and death mercifully released her. This stroke fell in my eighteenth year. For awhile my father bore up under his accumulating load of misfortune and sorrow; but when his creditor commenced the foreclosure of the mortgage, both hope and ambition left him. He died the day after the place was sold; and if ever a man perished of a broken heart, it was he. Twice, at his suggestion, at long intervals, I had written to Mr. Bostock to repeat our thanks for his gift and so to remind him of the poor New Hampshire lad in' whom he had proffered so warm an interest. Later developments caused me to recall the dates of this correspondence. My first letter was written upon my sixteenth birthday anniversary, January 1, 1853. In the due and rather slow course of the mails of that time an answer came, postmarked at the address in Mississippi which Mr. Bostock had left with us. I was at that time completing my first quarter at the academy; was eager and zealous in my studies, and it must be confessed that I was rather taken aback to discover that my correspondent was a very poor speller. But the matter of the epistle I could not have wished different. It was hearty, generous, sympathetic. He reiterated all I had heard from him as to myself, five years before, and he bade me come down to him as'soon as my parents would consent. My second letter was written in 1857,-upon the death of my father, and advised my correspondent that both of my parents were no more. To this no answer was ever returned. I thought strangely of his silence. It troubled me much, although I attributed it to miscarriage of the mails. After the lapse of a few weeks, the desire and intention to write again grew strong. It so happened that the difficulties and annoyances of the situation in which 1 was placed after the death of my father caused me to defer this design; so that, when I started on my southern journey in the summer of 1858, the letter was still unwritten. My father died soon after I became twenty years of'age.- For a year after —a memorable year!—l was domiciled in the family of my guardian. Deaeon Halleck

Shall J attempt a pen-picture of this man? It is not possible for me to do it justice. He was something over fifty, long, gaunt and sallow, with a highpitched, squeaking voice that dismally rasped through all better sounds in the church choir. His face was - thin, peaked and bloodless, his eyes restle a. his hands were always moving about as if searching for more coin to add to his store. He was reported to be worth twenty thousand dollars—a large fortune for that day and place. Behind his back people called him a hard, penurious man; in public he was referred to as “our leading citizen,” “a model of piety,” “a pillar of religion.” In common with this man’s unhappy family, I suffered all the severity of patriarchal government, and all the torments of religious fanaticism, during my sojourn in his house. At sunset of Saturday, the Sabbath was deemed to have begun, and a discipline harsher than that of the penitentiary was enforced. The Scriptures were read and expounded through Deacon Halleck’s nose. Morning and afternoon the family was marshaled forth to the meeting-house on the hill, barren of shade, where the people sweltered in summer and froze in winter, as stoves in the latter season would have been deemed a suggestion of the adversary. At all times in the week levity was frowned upon and discouraged. The stray copies of the Boston papers that had been my delight were vigorously confiscated, as the deacon had not the time to go over them with the scissors and clip out the sinful paragraphs. The few volumes of history and poetry which I had accumulated by long and patient self-denial—my precious books! —were seized and put under lock and key, until this Cerberus could look them over and see if any of them were fit to escape the flames. Meantime, pending this decision, I was recommended to peruse the volumes of the deacon’s small but select library, of which Baxter’s “Perseverance and Rest of the Saints,” the lurid sermons of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and “Fox’s Book of Martyrs,” may be cited as specimens. My existence heretofore had been one of toil and poverty; but love and kindness had lighted it. To say that I hated this new existence and its conditions, is very feebly to express my feelings. In the December before my majority the deacon’s barn, situated some distance from the house, caught fire, and was burned to the ground. It was filled with hay, part of the crop from the owner’s farm, and some old disused implements, all of which were consumed. The deacon promptly collected the insurance, and it was cautiously whispered about that he had succeeded in getting his loss appraised at about double the actual amount. But people were very careful about repeating this story. [to be continued;]

“WHAT'S YOUR NAME?” “DORR JEWETT, SIR.

HE LOOKED BACK AND WAVED HIS HAT.