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We stop in the darkness at Chattanooga, and make a pilgrim's progress to the hotel. The Conductor Greatheart goes ahead with a lantern, and all the Feeble-Minds and the Ready-to-Halts and the Turn-Aways flock after him in a dream. A few steps through the darkness take us to
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the inn, which is entirely dream-dispelling. In the dull half-light of the lantern it seems to be an old-fashioned low wooden house or block of houses. There are innumerable windows and front doors. There is a yard in front with a little summer-house, plats of flowers, and a plank walk leading through it. The interior, like the exterior, is old-fashioned and decent. The warm weather of Minnesota has given place to sharp autumn airs. Evidently the sunny South is a cold country; but there is a comfortable fire in the waiting-room, a comfortable supper in the dining-room, and a long evening to be disposed of; so after supper we sit enjoying the fire, the constant ebb and flow of guests, and the thick-coming fancies and memories of the place. A little black maid hovers about the room constantly. She feeds the stove, opens the doors, answers questions, runs of errands, but chiefly perches on the window-seat and travels around the room with her eyes. My thought follows her. "Moppet, what town is this?"
"This is Chattanooga," smiling and curious, but self-possessed.
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"What do people come here for?" Vacancy. "What is there here to see?"
"Th' ain't nothin' extry, only walk roun' an' see the houses and stores."
"You seem to be all alone here among the woods and mountains. Is there any other town or village near."
"There 's Chickamauga. That 's about six miles from this."
"What kind of a place is that?"
"'T ain't so big a place as this."
"Did anything remarkable ever happen there?"
"They had a big fight there. That 's why they call it Chickamauga." (!)
"Do you know who fought?"
"I forget. I believe it was Mr. Sherman. Mr. Hooker too."
"Did he beat?"
"Yes. Well no, not exactly, but he kept on fighting till he did."
"Were you here then?"
"No. This house was a hospital then."
"Who held it? Which army had it for a hospital?"
"It was fust for Rebs. Then the Yankees took
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it,"--and Moppet is called from her perch to hold the light for a woman who has lost some money.
We all assist in the search, bowing over the sombre carpet. A two-dollar bill she says she had in her hand. She is sure she had it in her hand. She is an Irishwoman, but with less Irish than southern accent, travelling from Charleston to Memphis, and is waiting here for the night train. She took off her bonnet and washed her face, and then her money was gone. After a prolonged hunt she suddenly discovers the money in her pocket. Well, she knew she had it in her hand, and she was sure she did not want to lose it. It costs to travel now-a-days. It cost her forty-three dollars to go from Charleston to Memphis, besides her victuals. In the joy of her new-found bill she becomes communicative, and tell us she is going there to live with her sister. Her two nephews are travelling with her. A good many are leaving for the West. The cars she came in were crammed.
"What is the cause of it?"
"O, there is nothin' to do in Charleston! Charleston is all broke up and ruined."
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"Ruined by the war, do you mean?"
"Yes, 't was an awful war. O, 't was an awful war!"
"Did you see much of it yourself?"
"Yes, I was in it all the time. I lost my father and brother in it. My father was in the army and took sick. My brother was killed at the explosion in Fort Sumter."
"Were you ever afraid for yourself?"
"We was afraid of Sherman and Kilpatrick's men. The Rebs said all the time he would n't get in. No, he would n't get in. He would n't get in. And then we heard he was comin'. But they said he would n't get in. But he kept comin' and comin', and we skedaddled."
"Where did you skedaddle to?" using the word as familiarly as if it had been Addison's own.
"We went to Newberry,--my aunt and my cousin and two nephews. My aunt sold her furniture, sold everything. She had beautiful furniture. She brought it from Dublin. But she just tore everything up and sold out."
"How could she sell if there was such a panic? I should not think any one would have been found to buy."
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"They were all in a craze about Sherman. They did n't know what they did."
"How did you get away from Charleston?"
"People went any way they could. We had a mule team. We crossed the Saluda River on just boards with chains. Two men stood one side and two the other, and kept us on. The mules would want to drink, and they had to hold on. I was awful scairt. Moonlight nights we would travel, and camp dark ones. Made a heap o' difference whether there was a moon or not. And we could n't get rest nowhere. We 'd just settle down and then 't was 'Sherman is comin', 'Sherman 'll ruin you,' 'Sherman this, an' Sherman that.' We were goin' up to Greenfield, an' we heard he was there burnin' an' shootin' and enterin' houses an' doin' everything, and so we came back."
"Was he burning at such a rate?"
"O yes, he just burnt everything. Burnt the crops and the garden patches. Jack Han was a rich farmer up there, and they burnt him out entirely. He 's a poor man now."
"Did they burn him any closer than the rest?"
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"Why, yes, 't was revenge. He shot a soldier, a Yankee, for stealing a melon in his field, and the soldiers found it out and burnt everything, and set fire to the town."
"Why did n't they catch him and punish him?"
"O, the could n't. He run into the country. They would n't have know it at all, but a colored man saw it and told,--one of his own men. It ruined Jack Han."
"Do you think the colored people have been changed at all by the war?"
"O yes, the colored people in Charleston don't work now. They won't work. They are all lazy and jes' walk roun'. People advertise in the papers for white servants. They won't have colored people. The colored persons is awful sassy in Charleston. They take the inside of the walk of a white person, an' they insult you as quick as they se you, and if you say a word they make faces at you."
"Did you care much yourself which way the war went?"
"I had a disgust for the Yankees at first. I lost my father and mother. Of course we want-
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ed to be governed by our own people. We 've no use for the Yankees."
The hotel is under the charge of a woman, and there is the very womanish trait of having the best room shut up. We are treated to a peep at it,--a well-furnished room with bright carpet, gilt looking-glasses, upholstered chairs, stately and cold, as best rooms have a right to be; but there seems a touch of New England in this exclusiveness, and we are not surprised to learn that the careful, sociable, modest, and motherly woman who seems to be holding the whole house in the hollow of her hand is a Northern woman. Indeed, her speech bewrayeth her, as it does all of us Northerners and Southerners, Yankees, Buckeyes, and Hoosiers. She and her husband sold their farm, and came down here to make their fortune. Does she like? Well, yes, enough to stay another year. It is for her interest to stay, and, like the thrifty woman she is, she means to stay, like or not. But I fancy her carefulness must be sometimes sorely tried by Southern and African unthrift. Yet she speaks well of her servants, the colored girls. They receive three dollars a week, and
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are faithful and efficient. She has no trouble with them. But evidently Chattanooga is not the "big place" to her that it is to her little dusky handmaiden. "There 's nothin' of it," she says with well-founded disgust. "It 's the war that has made Chattanooga. There 's nothin' of it but a depot and a store and Gov'ment buildings."
"Are there not schools for the children?"
"O yes, my girl goes to a beautiful school,--a boarding-school, half-way up the mountain. It is kept by Mr. Williams. He is the Principal, but there 's others."
"Is he a Southern man?"
"No, he is from Massachusetts. They are all from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They are all young. It 's a new school, but an excellent one."
I begin to remember reading of a new school established ther by some enterprising, benevolent, and far-sighted man, and ask her if this school is not a Northern affair.
"Yes, I believe it is; a Mr. Roberts laid it out."
"Is there a Mr. C. C. Carpenter connected
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with it,--a former missionary to the Caribou Islands?"
"The very same. He and his wife are in it."
We must look in upon this school, surely, a school hanging on a battle-field half-way up the sky. Below, it seems but an uncanny place, but may be they are nearer Heaven up yonder.
The morning dawns bright and beautiful and cold. Such carriages as we have been able to secure are at the gate,--antique barouches at uncertain stages of preservation, each drawn by two venerable horses, and guided by a discreet driver; with which brilliant equipages our wayward sisters replenish their exhausted treasury at the rate of ten dollars the carriage for a morning's drive. Leaving our rooms, we are accosted in the corridor by a United States soldier, bravely attired in army blue, tall and respectful and fine-looking, black but comely. His mission is anything but martial. Have we any washing we should like to put out? Of course we have. Are travellers ever without it? I wonder if he is a trustworthy launder,--(laundress he cannot be,--why not then
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launder?) Does he belong to the house? No, but his wife washes for Lieut. ----- in yonder room, and he has just brought home the official clothes. A basket confirmatory stands at the designated door, and he goes away grateful, with a bigger bundle than he brought, but faithfully promising to return it punctually before nightfall.
We drive along the bottom of the basin in which Chattanooga stands. The houses of the freedmen are scattered over the plain,--sometimes crammed close together, and sometimes straying out into the fields adventurous and alone. They are comical little shanties, curiously awry, laboriously patched, boards projecting beyond the walls at irregular lengths, broken-backed roofs, not a straight line anywhere, but every variety of shapelessness. They are such houses as very small boys might build in play-hours, pens rather than houses; but they are generally whitewashed, and look far less squalid than the huts we have seen on our journey hither. They embody ambition, improvement, personal effort to better one's condition. You cannot help being amused at their comical and ingenious crookedness, yet there is a little twinge of pathos be-
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hind the smile. The women are at work, washing, knitting, and perhaps gossiping, and the children are playing in the common door-yard,--the open pasture.
We have reached the base of Lookout. The mountain faces us, rugged, wooded, steep, abounding in precipices apparently inaccessible. But we follow a winding and safe road. Our driver is a white man, inexhaustibly stupid or insanely cunning. He discovers no interest in anything, never speaks except when he is spoken to, which is an excellent thing in drivers,--but when he is spoken to he travels a Sabbath-day's journey over the barren fields of his mind before he is prepared to make the startling announcement that he "don't know." It would give a spice of romance if we could suppose him an ex-Rebel soldier shamming ignorance to annoy his late foes, but there is nothing to keep such a theory in countenance.
"Driver, what part of the Mountain did our army take when they charged up Lookout?"
Six geographical miles through the desert of Sahara, then, "Jest along here."
"Did they not ascend both sides of the mountain?"
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"No. They went in the road."
"Did the whole army march up this road?"
"Yes."
"But the enemy would have planted cannon and swept them all away."
"Had to go in this road. There wa' n't any other way to get up."
Which settles the question, does it not, soldiers of the White Star, men of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois?
Leaving the plain, the road turns into the woods and bears zigzag up the mountain. Now at the base of steep, sharp cliffs, and now dizzily along their edge, under great forest-trees, gorgeous with the season's splendid hues. For Autumn, departing from the North, flung his mantle of many colors over this Southland, and draped her sorrow with a more than royal magnificence. The brilliant sunshine streams down through the glorious leafage, which gathers all the lustre and transmutes it into an intenser radiance, till the old mountain is aglow,--a very Kohinoor,--a mountain of light. With every turn in the road, with every opening of the trees, comes some fresh view of loveliness or
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grandeur,--glimpse of silent valley and sparkling river below, of the long line of purple mountains beyond, of calm sky bending blue above. Half-way up, perhaps, we come upon a level space, a sort of plain or plateau, open, but shaded by grand old trees and home-like with little wooden cottages, summer-houses of Southern gentlemen before the war thundered up the mountain-side; and a charming retreat it must have been, loved of bird and breeze and flower and vine, far up above the heat and dust and noise of common life, won to the sweet solitude of the mountain, deep hidden in the melodious silences of nature. Why should men have sought with painful journeyings our far Northern hills, when delightful spots of greenery lay at their own door? But now the trail of the serpent is over it all. Ruined barricades, shattered earthworks, remains of rifle-pits, prostrate tree-trunks, scarred and mutilated trees, mark the mad track of battle. The road becomes more rough, the silence more sacred. There is no speech nor language,--only the voice of the wind in the tree-tops hushed to a gentle sighing, only the low murmur of mul-
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titudinous leaves,--the plaintive undertone of nature. The carriage stops, we alight, we follow the sharp turns of a rocky, climbing wood-path, and suddenly in a moment the whole vast sweep of valley and sky is before us. We have gained the summit of Lookout.
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole Earth, is Mount Zion.
I shall not soon behold a fairer sight than this; but it is no fair sight that enchains the gaze, and stills the breath, and sends a shiver through the frame. Not the beautiful river far down at our feet, silver bright in silver light, loitering between its bosky banks on its most wilful way, not the broad valley basking in the sun beneath its mountain walls, nor the mountains themselves, shimmering now afar with a warm blue indistinctness,--not one nor all of these could so fix and fill the startled soul, startled with sharp pain and with sudden rapture.
To me this is the battle-field of the war, scarcely surpassed in the magnitude of its results, never in the romantic interest of its progress. East and west and north and south it stretches, a line of battle eight miles long
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and twenty-eight hundred feet high! Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, are all in sight, and all is battle-ground. Off in the southeast is the bloody field of Chickamauga. To the right stretches the long line of wooded hills that form the Mission Ridge, recalling in its name another tragedy in our country's history, a bitter war of races, a story of oppression and violence, the final, forcible uprooting of a whole people from home and country, and their sad and sullen transfer to a far-off, unknown land. But there are golden threads shining through that sombre web. Mission Ridge perpetuates something better than man's inhumanity to man. It tells a story of Christian love and labor for those whom selfishness and greed and tyranny were grinding between the upper and nether millstones. Verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth. It would seem as if grace and pardon were for individuals only. In nature and nations there is no forgiveness, only inexorable law. The lands wrung from helpless, hapless Indians have been desolated with a greater desolation than the Indians ever knew. Men went out from their homes vowing never
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to return till they had slain at least one victim. And now in the valleys and plains so wickedly won blood toucheth blood,--the blood of their own children. As it was in a measure the whole nation's sin, so it was in equal measure the whole nation's suffering.
On the plain below in front and a little to the right sits Chattanooga, on a point of land formed by a bend in the river. Puny enough she looks, squatting there in presence of all this grandeur and glory of mountain and river, like a child's roughly-handled and well-worn toy village; but she keeps fast hold of her line of roads that strike out in all directions, for she knows that in them lies her strength. The yellow highways twisting and turning across the valley look like the veins in marble. On the left is Lookout Valley. The wayward Tennessee, running hither and thither everywhere before it seriously sets about escaping from its environment, carves out before us the rude outline of a human foot,--a hint which the valley-dwellers took, and called the conformation Moccason Point. Thence in the battle-autumn our batteries belched up a grim salute
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to Lookout, and Lookout send down grim rejoinder. Through all this smiling silence it is easy to see this whole plain astir with armed men,--everywhere the terrible glitter of bayonets, the waving of bright banners bravely borne from many a hard-fought field, the drum-beat and bugle-call to battle, the steady tramp of confident hosts marching under one man's eye to the place which one man's voice assigned them. Before him this wide expanse of hill and vale is an illuminated page, ready to his hand, on which he is to write his own and his country's name and fate in letters of living light. How brilliant the names that cluster on that page!--Howard, Hooker, Thomas, Reynolds, Sherman, Sheridan, Grant,--it might seem as if all the names that have endurance in them are gathered there; but as noble a valor as their is the valor which has no name,--the courage, the patriotism, the simple, stern sense of duty that could expect no individual renown, yet just the same put all things to the stake.
Standing here one can more readily comprehend the plan of battle than the possibility of
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its execution. With the enemy posted all along the summit of Missionary Ridge, with batteries and rifle-pits at its base, and wherever batteries and rifle-pits were wanted, how could our soldiers cross the plain, charge up the steep hillsides strewn with logs and stumps, leap the breatworks, take the rifle-pits, capture the batteries and turn his own guns against the enemy? Yet they did it. There are twenty explanations and illustrations,--the greater difficulty of receiving than of making a charge, the impossibility of sighting guns at a rapidly advancing object, the uncertainty of shot and shell, but they are not sufficient: the only adequate answer is, they did it! Common sense, mathematics, natural history, and mental philosophy all combine to declare such a feat an impossibility, and the sole circumstance in its favor is that it was done.
And this gruff old Lookout proffers a harder problem still. By nature inaccessible, by skill impregnable, by will overcome. Its surly sides present every form of obstacle. It is ridged and rugged, furrowed with ravines, matted with wild undergrowth, bristling with shrubs, broken
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boughs, and limbs of dead trees forking in every direction, rough with ledges and detached masses of rock, and so steep that it can be ascended only by literal climbing, and sometimes is not to be ascended at all. The crest is a solid limestone palisade fronting the river, and shelving out at the top, far beyond a perpendicular. He must have steady nerves who stands at its edge; but, sitting or lying on the rock, one can peer over into the craggy, descending, sharp-set abyss below. Upon the crest is a huge pile of rocky irregular slabs, the upper one comparatively thin and flat, and spreading out beyond the lower ones, giving an uncertain-looking but sufficiently firm foothold to whoever would command the very highest outlook. Add to these natural defences that the mountain was lined with redoubt and redan, with breastwork and rifle-pit and abatis; and every earthwork and every rifle-pit alive with plunging fire till the whole mountain-wall was a wall of flame. Now then, come up, men of mortal mould, flesh and blood and nerve and sinew, hurl yourselves against this fiery barrier, sweep the mountain clean of rebels and
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hold it for country and for freedom. They are coming. To the foe on the heights, the glittering hosts on the plain seem but marshalling for holiday review,--but it is work, and not play, they have in hand to-day. They are coming from the East and from the West. No obstacle deters them, no danger daunts them. Across the plain, into the thickets, up the cliffs, over the ledges, marching, rushing, falling, climbing, clutching at root and bough and boulder, breasting the fierce torrent of bullets, they are swarming up the mountain, they are storming Lookout.
It is another Sinai to the dwellers on the plain,--"thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people that was in the camp trembled." The cloud upon the mount wraps about the assailants and veils them from the valley-gazers, but the deafening roar of battle thundering out of the cloud tells their way. Up and up they go, into the clouds, beyond the clouds, and now through a rift the bright banners gleam higher and always higher as they hurtle against the foe, driv-
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ing him before them by the fury of their onset, and hurling him headlong over the dizzy heights down into the jaws of death. Swelling up the eastern slope the tide of victory meets another sea surging up the west, the mingling waves roll on higher and higher through night and darkness, whelming every foe, breaking over every barrier, raging around the mountain's crest till the false flag is swept away forever and forever, and the morning sun rises upon the banner of freedom, waving in triumph and beauty from the peaceful summit of Lookout.
One bright day four years ago, so close upon these hard-fought battles and dearly won victories that our blood had not yet lost the first thrill of their story, there came to me a little missive from Chickamauga, a "trifle from the grateful hearts of the ----th Ohio,--put into the one remaining hand of a brave, maimed comrade for safe carriage to a loyal State." It was a Christmas letter from an unknown soldier, speaking for himself and his men in words that would shame my slender desert were not their warmth evidently borrowed from the gen-
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erous sympathy of youth, touching all things with its own ardor, rather than from any fire which my weak hand could kindle. Few things, I suppose, are more grateful to a writer, especially to one who is familiar rather with the salt than the sugar of criticism, than the
which help him to keep heart with himself,--not always the easiest thing to do under the constant stress of temptation to fall down and worship a "divine despair." But when words of greeting and gratitude come from out the thunders-storm of battle, it confirms one to one's self with a faith that, for the time, is strength. Then duty puts on her sternest face, and will be served by no insincere hands. What avails there is at least real. How can I ever thank you enough, great-hearted friends, for giving me some priceless share in this Titan work of yours? "Did you think," my soldiers said, "as you read of the charge along the crest of Lookout Mountain, that some of your words went in our hearts up the craggy slope to that 'Battle in the Clouds'? Did you know the van of 'iron Hooker's' bayonets wore a fiercer
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gleam for what you had written? You did not know what friends you were losing, as that shattered, struggling line toiled up to that pestilent summit. . . . . By no means is it probable that any of us shall ever meet you, . . . . but when you read of other volleys and other charges sweeping down still more of the remaining handful of the ----th Ohio, please remember that you lost friends in the carnage of that hour." O friends! some stronger hand than mine shall crown your brows with the laurel so worthily won. I only come, a reverent pilgrim to the shrine where your young blood was spilled. I press with tears the turf you trod. Over me leans the sky that smiled that day upon your living and sept above your dead. Beneath me lies the rock that upbore your feet to the rapturous joy of victory and pillowed your heads in the sore stress of battle sinking to iron sleep. But I know that whether you still walk the familiar earth, or whether high Heaven holds you, the blessings of my heart within me, the thanks which my lips are all too feeble to speak, are but the pale shadow of a nation's gratitude, the faint echo of a people's love.
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Slowly, silently descending by stumbling zigzag paths,--shall we visit the Seminary? No! Well,--yes. Our soldiers are but the advance-guard of schools, and teaching is at best a milder form of martyrdom. I know; yet after the uproar of battle and the pæans of victory, a b ab has but a spiritless sound. Never mind. We will do our duty--on Lookout Mountain if nowhere else. Go to, therefore, and let us get up an interest immediately.
A good man of New York, Mr. Christopher R. Robert,--believing with the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster--on whom be peace!--that, the covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, especially the poor whites of the South, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression into an estate of sin and misery, from which they can only be rescued by God's own grace shining upon their heads and into their hearts,--did out of the good pleasure of his benevolent heart enter into contracts, covenants, and plans to concentrate that gracious illumination, and deliver them out of a
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state of sin and misery. To which ends he bought five hundred acres of land on Missionary Ridge, and as much on the side of Lookout Mountain, together with the government buildings have been changed from hospitals for wounded bodies into hospitals for worse wounded souls,--souls that have been marred by years and generations of slavery, and its camp-followers, ignorance and meanness. Approaching the institution in the rear, it has still a rather barren and barrack look, but in front a park of fine trees gives a charming play-ground and a lovely outlook. The buildings have been repaired and refitted with neatness and freshness. As it is holiday-time, we could not see the school at work, but the arrangements made for the comfort and convenience of the pupils seemed very satisfactory. The rooms are large, airy, and well open to sunshine. The school was founded especially for the benefit of the poor whites, though they do not avail themselves of it so largely as was hoped. It was used more by the better classes. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the
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poor whites that swarm at the doors of the hovels along the railroad could ever get into such a place as this unless they are brought in bodily. They do not look as if they could form any conception of a school, of its uses, or even of its existence; and if they could, how should they command the small sum necessary to enter it? Still this school is an entering wedge, whose power for good it would not be easy to over-estimate. It was opened on the 15th of May, 1866, and expects to form a Freshman collegiate class in the autumn of 1867. It has a Preparatory Department, an English and Business Department requiring five years for completing its course, though permitting students to take a partial course, and a Classical Department in which students are fitted for college. Music, drawing, and the modern languages are also taught. The buildings are capable of receiving three hundred pupils. As yet, I believe, they have but about fifty. The enterprise has not been so far pecuniarily successful, and I suppose was not expected to be, considering that the expense of a twenty-weeks session is but one hundred dollars.
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Some of the "Rules and Regulations" are interesting, as compared with those of similar institutions at the North. Number One is that "No profane or vulgar language is permitted in the Institutions."
Number Two. The use of tobacco is not allowed in any of the buildings or upon the verandas.
Number Three. No student will be allowed to remain in the Institutions who makes use of intoxicating liquors.
Number Six. Scholars are required to be neatly dressed, and to be punctual and regular in their attendance upon the exercises of the schools.
Boys and girls over twelve years of age are admitted. Several Rebel and Union soldiers have been among the pupils. All the teachers are away for the vacation, but the business manager and the matron, Rev. and Mrs. C. C. Carpenter, late of Caribou Island, are keeping castle, pleasing themselves doubtless with reproducing as far as possible the lost delights of Labrador climate and society by perching on the mountain peaks of Tennessee. As far as one may judge
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from so very slight a survey, the school is worthy of the confidence and support of the North, and full of promise to the South.
I am just preparing to steal out of my room to take a quiet walk by myself, and get a face-to-face glimpse of Chattanooga, when there is a knock at the door, and there stands my six-foot soldier with his well-filled basket of clean clothes. His promptness surprises me, and my admiration of his promptness gratifies him. "Is it possible your wife has washed and ironed all these clothes to-day?"--for it seems nearly as impracticable a thing as the storming of Lookout.
"Yes, Miss," he says modestly, his whole swart face illuminated with smiles.
"Did she do them all alone?"
"Yes, Miss. I 've got a wife that is a wife."
"I should think so. And they are very nicely done too."
"Yes, I told her she must do her prettiest on yours."
Now I do not suppose he did tell her any such thing, there being no reason in the world why
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he should, but then it was very civil in him to say so. You may not put implicit confidence in everything your flatterers tell you, but it is pleasant to know that people care enough about pleasing you to flatter you. Attempting to pay him, I find I must have a bill changed. He cannot change it, nor the landlady, nor the clerk; so I propose to go out with him into some of the neighboring shops, and then I adjure him to take the money home and give it to his wife with my thanks and respects. He promises me faithfully that he will, only he is not going directly home. It occurs to me, "Why not go and pay her myself? I should like to tell her how highly I think of her work. Do you suppose she would object to my paying her a visit?"
"Indeed, she 'd be very much pleased. Nothing she likes better than to do things for people and have it please them."
"How far away do you live?"
"Not a great ways,--half a mile perhaps, or three quarters."
"You can show me the way so that I can find it without trouble?"
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"I 've got through my day's work, Miss, and I can go with you myself, just as well as not." So we walk off together amicably, and he says in a low voice, half to himself, "She 'll be mighty proud to have you come and see her."
My companion justifies my instinctive good opinion of him. His manners are gentle, his voice is low and smooth, and his talk intelligent. He tells me that he is a freedman, that he used to live in Georgia, but left his master and followed Mr. Sherman's army, and has never seen his master since. He went first to Atalanta, [sic] and then came up to Chattanooga.
"Did your wife come with you?"
"No, she lived with another master and could n't get away. I did n't know not'in' what become of her. Fust I knowed a party of fugitives said she was comin' up on de cars. Soon 's I heard of her, I went and got her."
"Was she freed by the army?"
"No, she runned away from her Mas'r too, and took the boy wid her. But de Rebels got hold of him and carried him back thirteen miles, but he got away from 'em in de night an' run back to his moder. She left everyting,--bed
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an' beddin',--did n't bring notin' wid her only three dresses. We scraped a bed an' a few tings togeder, and managed to get along."
"How old was the boy?"
"Leben years, Miss."
"He must be a very bright boy."
"Yes, he 's a good boy."
"And I hope you will send him to school and give him a good education."
"Yes, my wife an' me, we 's goin' to give the boy larnin', and then I tell him he must work an' be civil an' well-mannered, an' that 's all that 's nec'ary."
"Do you have regular work yourself?"
"Yes, Miss. I'se employed on the railroad. I get forty dollars a month. I'se been a railroad man now two years."
"That is very good wages."
"Yes, but everything's very high. I pay ten dollars a month rent, an' it takes about all there is left to live on. I don't get much ahead. Took a heap of money to get started."
"Do the white people trouble you at all here?"
"Well, no. Dey can't do notin' cause dere 's de sogers."
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"Do you suppose they would harm you if the soldiers were removed?"
"Good many people roun' here that would be cuttin' up if dey was away."
"'Cutting up,'--how?"
"Well, they 'd be down on us!"
The variations in his pronunciation are I believe his, and not mine. I distinctly remember certain words in which th was changed into d. Others I remember with the proper sound, and give them so. It may be that his conversation represents a transition state in his education.
The road is getting rather rough and wild, seems indeed to be chiefly railroad, and I fancy we have already gone our three quarters of a mile. He says that we are now pretty near the house, but he seems to be a little absent-minded, and finally stops and says: "I will speak of it. Miss, you must excuse me,--I ony jess thought of it,--I ought to have told you,--but I noticed you come away and left your door open."
"Why, so I did. I forgot. However, I don't believe any one will go in."
"No, I don't believe they will. Nobody roun'
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to see it ony me an' the lady, but I thought I would jess mention it."
Here it occurs to me that I have left my hotel without anybody's knowing where I am, or whither I am going, or that I am gone at all; indeed, on the first two points I have but a slender stock of information myself. I trust this is an honest man. I steal a sidelong glance up into his face, and am shamed out of my momentary distrust. It is radiant with gentleness and honesty and satisfaction and modesty. Let us deviate into politics.
"Do the colored people feel much interest in the question of suffrage?"
"Well, some does and some does n't. They don't say a great deal about it."
"How do you look upon it yourself?"
"Seems like there ain't no hurry about it. I think they better wait till they get more larnin'."
"If they should be allowed to vote how do you think they would vote?"
"Oh!" with a decidedly derisive laugh, "they 'd vote as they thought";--then as an unnecessary appendix, "Of course they 'd vote wid de Yankees."
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Then we turn into something more like a street, and soon he opens for me a gate, saying, "Here 's whar I live." It is a low, broad house, without pretensions to beauty, but sufficiently comfortable. "No, not de big house. Dis whar de lady lives who owns my house." We go past the landlady's house, around into the back yard, and come to his own dwelling. It looks like a shed or porch of the larger house, but is white-washed and well kept. A part of the yard is hard and clean-swept, and a part is devoted to gardening. The door stands open, leading directly to their living-room, where his wife appears resting from her labors. Our introduction is historical rather than fashionable. She is a young woman, not so prepossessing as her husband, for whom she evidently has a great respect, not to say reverence. She seems like a little girl, almost too bashful to speak, but she has a bright smile, and she presently opens to me, and we speedily get on terms friendly, not to say intimate, discussing her boy, her husband, her skill, and the beauties of Chattanooga. The room is the prefection of neatness. It has a look of being thick-set with
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household implements and other trumpery,--braided mats among the rest, though of course I make a point of not seeing anything.
When I rise to go, the husband insists on accompanying me to show the way, and as we are leaving the yard he says apologetically, "She ain't a very fancy woman, but she 's smart, and you must make the best of it."
Oh! but then do I not wax rhetorical, extolling not only her virtues, but her charms; and it is not fault of mine if he does not go home marvelling at the jewel he has so long possessed all unknown. Indeed, I half fancy he thinks he must somehow have introduced me to the wrong woman, but he does not stint his praises. "She ain't nothin' for company," he says. "She been here now fourteen months and she has n't taken tea out once. She don't go nowhar, only to church."
"Is she a member of the church?"
"Yes, she 's been a member of the Methodist church eighteen years."
"Do the colored people here go to church as a general thing?"
"Very much same as 't is wid de whites. Some goes and some does n't."
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"Do you think they generally use their freedom? Do they behave well?"
"Some of 'em is industrious and behaves well, and some of 'em is lazy and steals, and is sent to the penitentiary. Dere was one ony little while ago. That 's what disheartens me most of anything. I talk to 'em an' try to make 'em do better."
And then what if I give him some encouraging assurances, and a little friendly suggestion, and just a spice of flattery founded on fact, in return for his civility; and he offers me unlimited service whenever I return to Chattanooga, and we part like Pip and Joe Gargery, "us ever the best of friends,"--does it not all come into the general plan of Reconstruction?