Naturally, I remembered these things as I stood in front of “the big house ”—a story-and-a-half cottage—amid the flowering shrubs6. Here lived once the son of the King of Naples; himself a Prince, and—worthy7 son of a worthy sire—alderman and then mayor of the city of Tallahassee. Thus did an uncompromising democrat8 pay court to the shades of Royalty9, while a mocking-bird sang from a fringe-bush by the gate, and an oriole flew madly from tree to tree in pursuit of a fair creature of the reluctant sex.
The inconsistency, if such it was, was quickly punished. For, alas10! when I spoke11 of my morning’s pilgrimage to an old resident of the town, he told me that Murat never lived in the house, nor anywhere else in Tallahassee, and of course was never its postmaster, alderman, or mayor. The Princess, he said, built the house after her husband’s death, and lived there, a widow. I appealed to the guide-book. My informant sneered,—politely,—and brought me a ? 195 ? still older Tallahassean, Judge, whose venerable name I am sorry to have forgotten, and that indisputable citizen confirmed all that his neighbor had said. For once, the guide-book compiler must have been misinformed.
The question, happily, was one of no great consequence. If the Prince had never lived in the house, the Princess had; and she, by all accounts (and I make certain her husband would have said the same), was the worthier12 person of the two. And even if neither of them had lived there, if my sentiment had been all wasted (but there was no question of tears), the place itself was sightly, the house was old, and the way thither13 a pleasant one—first down the hill in a zig-zag course to the vicinity of the railway station, then by a winding14 country road through the valley past a few negro cabins, and up the slope on the farther side. Prince Murat, or no Prince Murat, I should love to travel that road to-day, instead of sitting before a Massachusetts fire, with the ground deep under snow, and the air full of thirty or forty degrees of frost.
In the front yard of one of the cabins opposite ? 196 ? the car-wheel foundry, and near the station, as I now remember, a middle-aged15 negress was cutting up an oak log. She swung the axe16 with vigor17 and precision, and the chips flew; but I could not help saying, “You ought to make the man do that.”
She answered on the instant. “I would,” she said, “if I had a man to make.”
“I’m sure you would,” I thought. Her tongue was as sharp as her axe.
Ought I to have ventured a word in her behalf, I wonder, when a man of her own color, and a pretty near neighbor, told me with admirable n?iveté the story of his bereavement18 and his hopes? His wife had died a year before, he said, and so far, though he had not let the grass grow under his feet, he had found no one to take her place. He still meant to do so, if he could. He was only seventy-four years old, and it was not good for a man to be alone. He seemed a gentle spirit, and I withheld19 all mention of the stalwart and manless wood-cutter. I hope he went farther, and fared better. So youthful as he was, surely there was no occasion for haste.
When I had skirted a cotton-field—the ? 197 ? crop just out of the ground—and a bit of wood on the right, and a swamp with a splendid display of white water-lilies on the left, and had begun to ascend20 the gentle slope, I met a man of considerably21 more than seventy-four years.
“Can you tell me just where the Murat place is?” I inquired.
He grinned broadly, and thought he could. He was one of the old Murat servants, as his father had been before him. “I was borned on to him,” he said, speaking of the Prince. Murat was “a gentleman, sah.” That was a statement which it seemed impossible for him to repeat often enough. He spoke from a slave’s point of view. Murat was a good master. The old man had heard him say that he kept servants “for the like of the thing.” He didn’t abuse them. He “never was for barbarizing a poor colored person at all.” Whipping? Oh, yes. “He didn’t miss your fault. No, sah, he didn’t miss your fault.” But his servants never were “ironed.” He “didn’t believe in barbarousment.”
The old man was thankful to be free; but to his mind emancipation22 had not made ? 198 ? everything heavenly. The younger set of negroes (“my people” was his word) were on the wrong road. They had “sold their birthright,” though exactly what he meant by that remark I did not gather. “They ain’t got no sense,” he declared, “and what sense they has got don’t do 'em no good.”
I told him finally that I was from the North. “Oh, I knows it,” he exclaimed, “I knows it;” and he beamed with delight. How did he know, I inquired. “Oh, I knows it. I can see it in you. Anybody would know it that had any jedgment at all. You’s a perfect gentleman, sah.” He was too old to be quarreled with, and I swallowed the compliment.
I tore myself away, or he might have run on till night—about his old master and mistress, the division of the estate, an abusive overseer (“he was a perfect dog, sah! ”), and sundry23 other things. He had lived a long time, and had nothing to do now but to recall the past and tell it over. So it will be with us, if we live so long. May we find once in a while a patient listener.
This patriarch’s unfavorable opinion as to the prospects24 of the colored people was ? 199 ? shared by my hopeful young widower25 before mentioned, who expressed himself quite as emphatically. He was brought up among white people (“I’s been taughted a heap,” he said), and believed that the salvation26 of the blacks lay in their recognition of white supremacy27. But he was less perspicacious28 than the older man. He was one of the very few persons whom I met at the South who did not recognize me at sight as a Yankee. “Are you a legislator-man?” he asked, at the end of our talk. The legislature was in session on the hill. But perhaps, after all, he only meant to flatter me.
If I am long on the way, it is because, as I love always to have it, the going and coming were the better part of the pilgrimage. The estate itself is beautifully situated29, with far-away horizons; but it has fallen into great neglect, while the house, almost in ruins, and occupied by colored people, is to Northern eyes hardly more than a larger cabin. It put me in mind of the question of a Western gentleman whom I met at St. Augustine. He had come to Florida against his will, the weather and the doctor having combined against him, and was looking at ? 200 ? everything through very blue spectacles. “Have you seen any of those fine old country mansions,” he asked, “about which we read so often in descriptions of Southern life?” He had been on the lookout30 for them, he averred31, ever since he left home, and had yet to find the first one; and from his tone it was evident that he thought the Southern idea of a “fine old mansion” must be different from his.
The Murat house, certainly, was never a palace, except as love may have made it so. But it was old; people had lived in it, and died in it; those who once owned it, whose name and memory still clung to it, were now in narrower houses; and it was easy for the visitor—for one visitor, at least—to fall into pensive32 meditation33. I strolled about the grounds; stood between the last year’s cotton-rows, while a Carolina wren34 poured out his soul from an oleander bush near by; admired the confidence of a pair of shrikes, who had made a nest in a honeysuckle vine in the front yard; listened to the sweet music of mocking-birds, cardinals35, and orchard36 orioles; watched the martins circling above ? 201 ? the trees; thought of the Princess, and smiled at the black children who thrust their heads out of the windows of her “big house;” and then, with a sprig of honeysuckle for a keepsake, I started slowly homeward.
The sun by this time was straight overhead, but my umbrella saved me from absolute discomfort37, while birds furnished here and there an agreeable diversion. I recall in particular some white-crowned sparrows, the first ones I had seen in Florida. At a bend in the road opposite the water-lily swamp, while I was cooling myself in the shade of a friendly pine-tree,—enjoying at the same time a fence overrun with Cherokee roses,—a man and his little boy came along in a wagon38. The man seemed really disappointed when I told him that I was going into town, instead of coming from it. It was pretty warm weather for walking, and he had meant to offer me a lift. He was a Scandinavian, who had been for some years in Florida. He owned a good farm not far from the Murat estate, which latter he had been urged to buy; but he thought a man wasn’t any better off for owning too much ? 202 ? land. He talked of his crops, his children, the climate, and so on, all in a cheerful strain, pleasant to hear. If the pessimists39 are right,—which may I be kept from believing,—the optimists40 are certainly more comfortable to live with, though it be only for ten minutes under a roadside shade-tree.
When I reached the street-car track at the foot of the hill, the one car which plies41 back and forth42 through the city was in its place, with the driver beside it, but no mules43.
“Are you going to start directly?” I asked.
“Yes, sah,” he answered; and then, looking toward the stable, he shouted in a peremptory44 voice, “Do about, there! Do about!”
“What does that mean?” said I. “Hurry up?”
“Yes, sah, that’s it. ‘T ain’t everybody that wants to be hurried up; so we tells 'em, 'Do about!’”
Half a minute afterwards two very neatly45 dressed little colored boys stepped upon the rear platform.
“Where you goin'?” said the driver. “Uptown?”
? 203 ?
They said they were.
“Well, come inside. Stay out there, and you’ll git hurt and cost this dried-up company more money than you’s wuth.”
They dropped into seats by the rear door. He motioned them to the front corner. “Sit down there,” he said, “right there.” They obeyed, and as he turned away he added, what I found more and more to be true, as I saw more of him, “I ain’t de boss, but I’s got right smart to say.”
Then he whistled to the mules, flourished his whip, and to a persistent46 accompaniment of whacks47 and whistles we went crawling up the hill.
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1
propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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4
vouchsafing
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的现在分词 )；允诺 | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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7
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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8
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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9
royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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11
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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12
worthier
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| 应得某事物( worthy的比较级 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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13
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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14
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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15
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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18
bereavement
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| n.亲人丧亡，丧失亲人，丧亲之痛 | |
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19
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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20
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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25
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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perspicacious
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| adj.聪颖的，敏锐的 | |
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29
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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31
averred
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| v.断言( aver的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出 | |
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32
pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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34
wren
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| n.鹪鹩；英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
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35
cardinals
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| 红衣主教( cardinal的名词复数 )； 红衣凤头鸟（见于北美，雄鸟为鲜红色）； 基数 | |
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orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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37
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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39
pessimists
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| n.悲观主义者( pessimist的名词复数 ) | |
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40
optimists
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| n.乐观主义者( optimist的名词复数 ) | |
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41
plies
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的第三人称单数 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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42
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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43
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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44
peremptory
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| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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45
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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46
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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47
whacks
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| n.重击声( whack的名词复数 )；不正常；有毛病v.重击，使劲打( whack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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