Southern Literature From 1579-1895 Part 42

"Not so, my dear madam, for are you not sure to lose?"

"To lose?"

"Yes, indeed."

"No, sir; I am sure to win."

"Bah! you ladies have such a delicious little confidence in the things you patronize, that it is really astonis.h.i.+ng. You think Sir Archy will beat Selim? Pshaw! you know nothing about it."

This piques madam Henrietta, and she smiles satirically again as she says:

"Well, sir, I do not want your pretty horse--but if you insist, why, I cannot retreat. I shall, at least, have the pleasure of returning him to his master."

The Captain shakes his head.

"A bet upon such terms is no bet at all, my dearest madam," he says, "for, I a.s.sure you, if I win, you will return home curl-less, glove-less, and ribbon-less. All is fair in war--and love."

With which words, Captain Ralph darts a martial ogle at his companion.

This piques her more than ever.

"Well, sir," she replies, "if you are determined, have your desire."

"Good!" cries the Captain, "we are just in time. There is the horse." . . . . . . And, with another gallant bow, the Captain rides away towards the horses. . . .

The boys are again instructed much after the same fas.h.i.+on: the signal is given in the midst of breathless suspense, and the horses dart from their places.

They dart around, Sir Archy again leading: but this position he does not hold throughout the first mile: he gradually falls behind, and when they pa.s.s the winning-post he is fifty yards in the rear. His owner tears his hair, but the crowd do not see him--they flush and shout.

The second mile is between Fair Anna and the Arabian, and they lock in the middle of it; but the Arabian gradually takes the lead, and when they flash up to the stand he is ten yards ahead. Sir Archy is distanced and withdrawn.

It would be impossible to describe the excitement of the crowd:--the tremendous effect produced upon them by this reversal of all their hopes and expectations. They roll about like waves, they shout, they curse, they rumble and groan like a stormy sea.

The horses are the objects of every one's attention. Their condition will go far to indicate the final result--and Sir Archy being led away and withdrawn, the race now will be between Fair Anna and the Arabian.

Mr. James looks more solemn than ever, and all eyes are turned upon him. Captain Waters is not visible--he is yonder, conversing with the ladies.

But the horses! Fair Anna pants and breathes heavily: her coat is drenched more completely than before with perspiration; her mouth foams; she tosses her head; when the rake is applied to her back a shower falls.

The Arabian is wet all over too; but he breathes regularly; his eye is bright and his head calm. He has commenced running. The first intention of Mr. James is to give up the race, but his pride will not let him. He utters an oath, and gives renewed instructions to his rider. These instructions are to whip and spur--to take the lead and keep it, from the start.

The moment for the final struggle arrives, and Captain Ralph merely says, "Rein free!"

The boys mount--the crowd opens; the drum taps and the animals are off like lightning.

Fair Anna feels that all her previous reputation is at stake, and flies like a deer. She pa.s.ses around the first mile like a flash of white light; but the Arabian is beside her. For a quarter of a mile thereafter they run neck and neck--the rider of fair Anna lashes and spurs desperately.

They come up to the quarter-stretch in the last mile at supernatural speed:--the spectators rise on their toes and shout:--two shadows pa.s.s them like the shadows of darting hawks:--the mare barely saves her distance and the Arabian has triumphed.

If we could not describe the excitement after the second heat, what possibility is there that we could convey an idea of the raging and surging pandemonium which the crowd now came to resemble? Furious cries--shouts--curses--applause--laughter--and the rattle of coin leaving unwilling hands are some of the sounds. But here we must give up:--as no mere pen can describe the raging of a great ma.s.s of water lashed by an angry wind into foam and whistling spray and muttering waves, which rise and fall and crash incessantly, so we cannot trace the outline of the wildly excited crowd.

[Afterwards come contests with the quarter-staff, a wrestling match, running matches, a contest of singing among "a dozen blus.h.i.+ng maidens," and of fiddling among twenty bold musicians: and the day is wound up with a great banquet.]

FOOTNOTE:

[29] By permission of D. Appleton and Co., New York.

ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE.

~1830=1894.~

ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, and was educated at Was.h.i.+ngton College, Tennessee, and at the University of North Carolina. He studied law and began its practice in Asheville.

He was soon elected to the State Legislature and to Congress; and from 1854 to his death was continuously in public life except just after the war. His wit and eloquence made him a great favorite both on the stump and in Congress, and the influence he wielded in his state was unbounded. He was opposed to secession, but joined his state in her decision and became colonel of the 26th North Carolina Regiment, one of the best of the army.

In 1862 he was elected governor of the State and was so active and enterprising in getting aid by sea for the cause that he was called the "War Governor of the South." He was in favor of considering the negotiations for peace in 1863, but he neglected no measures to insure the success of the Confederacy. In 1865 he was held a prisoner of war for a few weeks in Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ~State Capitol of North Carolina.~]

His political disabilities were not removed till 1872; in 1876 he was elected governor of North Carolina, and in 1879, United States Senator, having been elected and his seat refused him in 1870. His death occurred in Was.h.i.+ngton City, and he is buried in Asheville. His State is now preparing to erect a monument expressing her honor and devotion to her ill.u.s.trious son.

WORKS.

Speeches: (in Congress and on Public Occasions.)

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE WAR.

(_From All About it--an address before the young men of Raleigh, N. C.; published in "Land We Love" January, 1867._)

Virginia to the north of us was settled by English Cavaliers; South Carolina, mainly by French Huguenots, both among the n.o.blest stocks of Western Europe. North Carolina, with but a slight infusion of each, was settled by a st.u.r.dier--and in some respects--a better race than either. She was emphatically the offspring of religious and political persecution, and the vital stream of her infant life was of Scotch-Irish origin. A cross of those two n.o.ble races has produced a breed of men as renowned for great deeds and modest worth as perhaps any other in this world. Two instances will suffice for this. Perhaps the most manly and glorious feat of arms in modern times was the defence of Londonderry, as the boldest and most remarkable state paper was the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Both were the work mainly of men such as settled North Carolina.

_The Country Gentlemen._--Perhaps one of the most remarkable changes which we may expect, is one that will soon be apparent on the face of our country society. The abolition of slavery will do wonders here. It puts an end to the reign of those lordly-landed proprietors, planters, and farmers, who const.i.tuted so striking and so pleasant a feature in our rural population. No longer the masters of hundreds of slaves wherewith to cultivate their thousands of acres, the general cheapness of lands in the South will prevent their forming around them a system of dependent tenantry, since every industrious man will be able to plough his own farm. They will therefore gradually sell off their paternal acres, no longer within the scope of prudent management, and seek homes in the towns and villages, or contract their establishments to their means and altered condition. Agriculture will then pa.s.s gradually into the hands of small farmers, and the great farms will forever disappear.

I can scarcely imagine it possible for any one to view the steady disappearance of the race of Southern country gentlemen without genuine sorrow . . . the high-toned, educated, chivalrous, intelligent, and hospitable Southern gentlemen, of whom each one who hears me has at least a dozen in his mind's eye in Virginia and the Carolinas: whose broad fields were cultivated by their own faithful and devoted slaves, whose rudely splendid mansions stand where their fathers reared them, among the oaks and the pines which greeted the canoe of John Smith, welcomed the s.h.i.+ps of Raleigh, and sheltered the wild cavaliers of De Soto; whose hall doors stood wide open, and were never shut except against a retreating guest;[30] whose cellar and table abounded with the richest products of the richest lands in the world, and whose hospitality was yet unstained by unrefined excess; whose parlors and fire-sides were adorned by a courtly female grace which might vie with any that ever lighted and blessed the home of man; whose hands were taught from infancy to fly open to every generous and charitable appeal, and whose minds were inured to all self-respect and toleration, and whose strong brains were sudden death to humb.u.g.g.e.ry, all the _isms_, and the whole family of mean and pestilential fanaticism.

_The Negroes._--There is also a great change at hand for the negro. . . Who that knew him as a contented, well-treated slave, did not learn to love and admire the negro character? I, for one, confess to almost an enthusiasm on the subject. The cheerful ring of their songs at their daily tasks, their love for their masters and their families, their politeness and good manners, their easily bought but sincere grat.i.tude, their deep-seated aristocracy--for your genuine negro was a terrible aristocrat,--their pride in their own and their master's dignity, together with their overflowing and never-failing animal spirits, both during hours of labor and leisure, altogether, made up an aggregation of joyous simplicity and fidelity--when not perverted by harsh treatment--that to me was irresistible!

A remembrance of the seasons spent among them will perish only with life. From the time of the ingathering of the crops, until after the ushering in of the new year, was wont to be with them a season of greater joy and festivity than with any other people on earth, of whom it has been my lot to hear. In the glorious November nights of our beneficent clime, after the first frosts had given a bracing sharpness and a ringing clearness to the air, and lent that transparent blue to the heavens through which the stars gleam like globes of sapphire, when I have seen a hundred or more of them around the swelling piles of corn, and heard their tuneful voices ringing with the chorus of some wild refrain, I have thought I would rather far listen to them than to any music ever sung to mortal ears; for it was the outpouring of the hearts of happy and contented men, rejoicing over the abundance which rewarded the labor of the closing year! And the listening, too, has many a time and oft filled my bosom with emotions, and opened my heart with charity and love toward this subject and dependent race, such as no oratory, no rhetoric or minstrelsy in all this wide earth could impart!

Nature ceased almost to feel fatigue in the joyous scenes which followed. The fiddle and the banjo, animated as it would seem like living things, literally knew no rest, night or day; while Terpich.o.r.e covered her face in absolute despair in the presence of that famous _double-shuffle_ with which the long nights and "master's shoes" were worn away together! . . . .

Who can forget the cook by whom his youthful appet.i.te was fed? The fussy, consequential old lady to whom I now refer, has often, during my vagrant inroads into her rightful domains, boxed my infant jaws, with an imperious, "Bress de Lord, git out of de way: dat chile never kin git enuff": and as often relenting at sight of my hungry tears, has fairly bribed me into her love again with the very choicest bits of the savory messes of her art. She was haughty as Juno, and aristocratic as though her naked ancestors had come over with the Conqueror, or "drawn a good bow at Hastings," . . . and yet her pride invariably melted at the sight of certain surrept.i.tious quant.i.ties of tobacco, with which I made my court to this high priestess of the region sacred to the stomach.

And there, too, plainest of all, I can see the fat and chubby form of my dear old nurse, whose encircling arms of love fondled and supported me from the time whereof the memory of this man runneth not to the contrary. All the strong love of her simple and faithful nature seemed bestowed on her mistress' children, which she was not permitted to give to her own, long, long ago left behind and dead in "ole Varginney." Oh! the wonderful and touching stories of them, and a hundred other things, which she has poured into my infant ears! How well do I remember the marvellous story of the manner in which she obtained religion, of her many and sore conflicts with the powers of darkness, and of her first dawning hopes in that blessed gospel whose richest glory is, that it is preached to the poor, such as she was!