Part 9

Just before he left the train--he had to get out at the junction--some further reference to the Judge brought to my recollection that ghostly afternoon in the courtroom. Suddenly the picture of the negro with that look of stolid resignation on his face came before me. I asked him if any appeal had been taken in the case as suggested by the district attorney.

"Appeal? In the Crouch case? Not much. Hung him high as Haman."

"When?"

"'Bout a week ago. And by the way, a very curious thing happened at the hanging. The first time they strung Crouch up the rope broke and let him down, and they had to send eight miles for another. While they were waiting the mail arrived. The post-office was right opposite. In the bag was a letter for Crouch, care of the warden, but not directed to the jail. The postmaster brought it over and the warden opened it and read it to the prisoner, asking him who it was from, and the nigger said it was from his mother--that the man she worked for had written it. Of course the warden knew it was from Crouch's girl, for Crouch had always sworn he had no family, so the Judge told me. Then Crouch asked the warden if he'd answer it for him before he died. The warden said he would, and got a sheet of paper, a pen and ink, and sitting down by Crouch under the gallows asked him what he wanted to say. And now, here comes the funny part. All that negro wanted to say was just this:--

"'I'm enjoying good health and I hope to see you before long.'

'SAM CROUCH.'

"Then Crouch reached over and took the pen out of the warden's hands, and marked a cross underneath what the warden had written, and when the warden asked him what he did that for, he said he wanted his mother to have something he had touched himself. By that time the new rope came and they swung him up. Curious, wasn't it? The warden said it was the funniest message he ever knew a dying nigger to send, and he'd hung a good many of 'em. It struck me as being some secret kind of a password. You never can tell about these coons."

"Did the warden mail it?"

"Oh, yes, of course he mailed it--warden's square as a brick. Sent it, of course, care of the man the girl works for. He lives somewhere around here, or Crouch said he did. Awfully glad to see you again--I get out here."

The porter brought in the dogs, I picked up the gun, and we conducted the young sportsman out of the car and into a buggy waiting for him at the end of the platform.

As I entered the car again and waved my hand to him from the open window, I saw a negro woman dart from out the crowd of loungers, as if in eager search of some one. She was a tall, bony, ill-formed woman, wearing the rude garb of a farm hand--blue cotton gown, brown sunbonnet, and the rough muddy shoes of a man.

The dress was faded almost white in parts, and patched with different colors, but looked fresh and clean. It was held together over her flat bust by big bone buttons. There was neither collar nor belt. The sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, showing her strong, muscular arms, tough as rawhide. The hands were large and bony, with big knuckles, the mark of the hoe in the palms.

In her eagerness to speak to the porter the sunbonnet had slipped off. Black as the face was, it brought to my mind, strange to say, those weather-tanned fishwives of the Normandy coast--those sturdy, patient, earnest women, accustomed to toil and exposure and to the buffetings of wind and tempest.

When the porter appeared on his way back to the car, she sprang forward, and caught him by the arm.

"Oh, I'm dat sorry! An' he ain't come wid ye?" she cried. "But ye see him, didn't ye?" The voice was singularly sweet and musical. "Ye did? Oh, dat's good."

As she spoke, a little black bare-legged pickaninny, with one garment, ran out from behind the corner of the station, and clung to the woman's skirts, hiding her face in their folds. The woman put her hard, black hand on the child's cheek, and drew the little woolly head closer to her side.

"Well, when's he comin'? I come dis mawnin' jes 's ye tol' me. An' ye see him, did ye?" she asked with a strange quivering pathos in her voice.

"Oh, yes, I see him yisterday."

The porter's answer was barely audible. I noticed, too, that he looked away from her as he spoke.

"An' yer sho' now he ain't come wid ye," and she looked toward the train as if expecting to find some one.

"No, he can't come till nex' Saturday," answered the porter.

"Well, I'm mighty dis'pinted. I been a-waitin' an' a-waitin' till I _mos_' gin out. Ain't nobody helped me like him. You tol' me las' time dat he'd be here to-day," and her voice shook. "You tell him I got his letter an' dat I think 'bout him night an' day, an' dat I'd rudder see him dan anybody in de worl'. And you tell him--an' doan' ye forgit dis--dat you see his sister Maria's chile--dis is her--hol' up yer haid, honey, an' let him see ye. I thought if he come to-day he'd like to see 'er, 'cause he useter tote her roun' on his back when she warn't big'r'n a shote. An' ye _see_ him, did ye? Well, I'm mighty glad o' dat."

She was bending forward, her great black hand on his wrist, her eyes fixed on his. Then a startled, anxious look crossed her face.

"But he ain't sick dat he didn't come? Yo' _sho'_ now, he ain't sick?"

"Oh, no; never see him lookin' so good."

The porter was evidently anxious about the train, for he kept backing away toward his car.

"Well, den, good-by; but doan' ye forgit. Tell him ye see me an' dat I 'm a-hungerin' for him. You hear, _a-hungerin_' for him, an' dat I can't git 'long no mo' widout him. Don' ye forgit, now, 'cause I mos' daid a-waitin' for him. Good-by."

The train rolled on. She was still on the platform, her gaunt figure outlined against the morning sky, her eager eyes strained toward us, the child clutching her skirts.

* * * * *

I confess that I have never yet outgrown my affection for the colored race: an affection at best, perhaps, born of the dim, undefined memories of my childhood and of an old black mammy--my father's slave--who crooned over me all day long, and sang me lullabies at night.

I am aware, too, that I do not always carry this affectionate sympathy locked up in a safe, but generally pinned on the outside of my sleeve; and so it is not surprising, as the hours wore on, and the porter gradually developed his several capacities for making me comfortable, that a certain confidence was established between us.

Then, again, I have always looked upon a Pullman porter as a superior kind of person--certainly among serving people. He does not often think so himself, nor does he ever present to the average mind any marked signs of genius. He is in appearance and deportment very much like all other uniformed attendants belonging to most of the great corporations; clean, neatly dressed, polite, watchful, and patient. He is also indiscriminate in his ministrations; for he will gladly open the window for No. 10, and as cheerfully close it one minute later for No. 6. After traveling with him for half a day, you doubtless conclude that nothing more serious weighs on his mind than the duty of regulating the temperature of his car, or looking after its linen. But you are wrong.

All this time he is classifying you. He really located you when you entered the car, summing you up as you sought out your berth number. At his first glance he had divined your station in life by your clothes, your personal refinement, by your carpet-bag, and your familiarity with travel by the way you took your seat. The shoes he will black for you in the still small hours of the morning, when he has time to think, will give him any other points he requires.

If they are patched or half-soled, no amount of diamond shirt studs or watch chain worn with them will save your respectability. If you should reverse your cuffs before him, or imbibe your stimulants from a black bottle which you carry in your inside pocket instead of a silver flask concealed in your bag, no amount of fees will gain for you his unqualified respect. If none of these delinquencies can be laid to your account, and he is still in doubt, he waits until you open your bag.

Should the first rapid glance betray your cigars packed next to your shoes, or the handle of a toothbrush thrust into the sponge-bag, or some other such violation of his standard, your status is fixed; he knows you. And he does all this while he is bowing and smiling, bringing you a pillow for your head, opening a transom, or putting up wire screens to save you from draughts and dust, and all without any apparent distinction between you and your fellow passengers.

If you swear at him, he will not answer back, and if you smite him, he will nine times out of ten turn to you the other cheek. He does all this because his skin is black, and yours is white, and because he is the servant and representative of a corporation who will see him righted, and who are accustomed to hear complaints. Above all, he will do so because of the wife and children or mother at home in need of the money he earns, and destined to suffer if he lose his place.

He has had, too, if you did but know it, a life as interesting, perhaps, as any of your acquaintances. It is quite within the possibilities that he has been once or twice to Spain, Italy, or Egypt, depending on the movements of the master he served; that he can speak a dozen words or more of Spanish or Italian or pigeon English, and oftener than not the best English of our public schools; can make an omelette, sew on a button, or clean a gun, and that in an emergency or accident (I know of two who lost their lives to save their passengers) he can be the most helpful, the most loyal, the most human serving man and friend you can find the world over.

If you are selfishly intent on your own affairs, and look upon his civility and his desire to please you as included in the price of your berth or seat, and decide that any extra service he may render you is canceled by the miserable twenty-five cents which you give him, you will know none of these accomplishments nor the spirit that rules them.

If, however, you are the kind of man who goes about the world with your heart unbuttoned and your earflaps open, eager to catch and hold any little touch of pathos or flash of humor or note of tragedy, you cannot do better than gain his confidence.

* * * * *

I cannot say by what process I accomplished this result with this

## particular porter and on this particular train. It may have been the

newness of my shoes, combined with the proper stowing of my toothbrush and the faultless cut of my pajamas; or it might have been the fact that he had already divined that I liked his race; but certain it is that no sooner was the woman out of sight than he came direct to my seat, and, with a quiver in his voice, said,--

"Did you see dat woman I spoke to, suh?"

"Yes; you didn't seem to want to talk to her."

"Oh, it warn't dat, suh, but dat woman 'bout breaks my heart. Hadn't been for de gemman gettin' off here an' me havin' to get his dogs, I wouldn't 'a' got out de car at all. I hoped she wouldn't come to-day. I thought she heared 'bout it. Everybody knows it up an' down de road, an' de papers been full, tho' co'se she can't read. She lives 'bout ten miles from here, an' she walked in dis mawnin'. Comes every Saturday. I only makes dis run on Saturday, and she knows de day I'm comin'."

"Some trouble?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, suh, a heap o' trouble; mo' trouble dan she kin stan' when she knows it. Beats all why nobody ain't done tol' her. I been talkin' to her every Saturday now for a month, tellin' her I see him an' dat he's a-comin' down, an' dat he sent her his love, an' once or twice lately I'd bring her li'l' things he sent her. Co'se _he_ didn't send 'em, 'cause he was whar he couldn't get to 'em, but she didn't know no better. He's de only son now she'd got, an' he's been mighty good to her an' dat li'l' chile she had wid her. I knowed him ever since he worked on de railroad. Mos' all de money he gits he gives to her. If he done the thing they said he done I ain't got nothin' mo' to say, but I don't believe he done it, an' never will. I thought maybe dey'd let him go, an' den he'd come home, an' she wouldn't have to suffer no mo'; dat made me keep on a-lyin' to her."

"What's been the matter? Has he been arrested?"

"'Rested! '_Rested!_ Fo' God, suh, dey done hung him las' week."

A light began to break in upon me.

"What was his name?"

"Same name as his mother's, suh--Sam Crouch."

"NEVER HAD NO SLEEP"

It was on the upper deck of a Chesapeake Bay boat, _en route_ for Old Point Comfort and Norfolk. I was bound for Norfolk.

"Kinder ca'm, ain't it?"

The voice proceeded from a pinched-up old fellow with a colorless face, straggling white beard, and sharp eyes. He wore a flat-topped slouch hat resting on his ears, and a red silk handkerchief tied in a sporting knot around his neck. His teeth were missing, the lips puckered up like the mouth of a sponge-bag. In his hand he carried a cane with a round ivory handle. This served as a prop to his mouth, the puckered lips fumbling about the knob. He was shadowed by an old woman wearing a shiny brown silk, that glistened like a wet waterproof, black mitts, poke-bonnet, flat lace collar, and a long gold watch chain. I had noticed them at supper. She was cutting up his food.

"Kinder ca'm, ain't it?" he exclaimed again, looking my way. "Fust real nat'ral vittles I've eat fur a year. Spect it's ther sea air. This water's brackish, ain't it?"

I confirmed his diagnosis of the saline qualities of the Chesapeake, and asked if he had been an invalid.

"Waal, I should say so! Bin livin' on hospital mush fur nigh on ter a year; but, by gum! ter-night I jist said ter Mommie: 'Mommie, shuv them soft-shells this way. Ain't seen none sence I kep' tavern.'"

Mommie nodded her head in confirmation, but with an air of "if you're dead in the morning, don't blame me."

"What's been the trouble?" I inquired, drawing up a camp stool.

"Waal, I dunno rightly. Got my stummic out o' gear, throat kinder weak, and what with the seventies"----

"Seventies?" I asked.

"Yes; had 'em four year. I'm seventy-five nex' buthday. But come ter sum it all up, what's ther matter with me is I ain't never had no sleep. Let me sit on t'other side. One ear's stopped workin' this ten year."

He moved across and pulled an old cloak around him.

"Been long without sleep?" I asked sympathetically.

"'Bout sixty year--mebbe sixty-five."

I looked at him inquiringly, fearing to break the thread if I jarred too heavily.

"Yes, spect it must be more. Well, you keep tally. Five year bootblack and porter in a tavern in Dover, 'leven year tendin' bar down in Wilmington, fourteen year bootcherin', nineteen year an' six months keepin' a roadhouse ten miles from Philadelphy fur ther hucksters comin' to market--quit las' summer. How much yer got?"

I nodded, assenting to his estimate of sixty-five years of service, if he had started when fifteen.

He ruminated for a time, caressing the ivory ball of his cane with his uncertain mouth.

I jogged him again. "Boots and tending bar I should think would be wakeful, but I didn't suppose butchering and keeping hotel necessitated late hours."

"Well, that's 'cause yer don't know. Bootcherin's ther wakefulest business as is. Now yer a country bootcher, mind--no city beef man, nor porter-house steak and lamb chops fur clubs an' hotels, but jest an all-round bootcher--lamb, veal, beef, mebbe once a week, ha'f er whole, as yer trade goes. Now ye kill when ther sun goes down, so ther flies can't mummuck 'em. Next yer head and leg 'em, gittin' in in rough, as we call it--takin' out ther insides an' leavin' ther hide on ther back. Ye let 'em hang fur four hours, and 'bout midnight ye go at 'em agin, trim an' quarter, an' 'bout four in winter and three in summer ye open up ther stable with a lantern, git yer stuff in, an' begin yer rounds."

"Yes, I see; but keeping hotel isn't"----

"Now thar ye're dead out agin. Ye're a-keepin' a roadhouse, mind--one of them huckster taverns where ha'f yer folks come in 'arly 'bout sundown and sit up ha'f ther night, and t'other ha'f drive inter yer yard 'bout midnight an' lie round till daybreak. It's eat er drink all ther time, and by ther time ye've stood behind ther bar and jerked down ev'ry bottle on ther shelf, gone out ha'f a dozen times with er light ter keep some mule from kickin' out yer partitions, got er dozen winks on er settee in a back room, and then begin bawlin' upstairs, routin' out two or three hired gals to get 'arly breakfust, ye're nigh tuckered out. By ther time this gang is fed, here comes another drivin' in. Oh, thet's a nice quiet life, thet is! I quit las' year, and me and Mommie is on our way to Old P'int Cumfut. I ain't never bin thar, but ther name sounded peaceful like, and so I tho't ter try it. I'm in sarch er sleep, I am. Wust thing 'bout me is, no matter whar I'm lyin', when it comes three 'clock I'm out of bed. Bin at it all my life; can't never break it."

"But you've enjoyed life?" I interpolated.

"Enj'yed life! Well, p'rhaps, and agin p'rhaps not," looking furtively at his wife. Then, lowering his voice: "There ain't bin er horse race within er hundred miles of Philadelphy I ain't tuk in. Enj'y! Well, don't yer worry." And his sharp eyes snapped.

I believed him. That accounted for the way the red handkerchief was tied loosely round his throat--an old road-wagon trick to keep the dust out.

For some minutes he nursed his knees with his hands, rocking himself to and fro, smiling gleefully, thinking, no doubt, of the days he had speeded down the turnpike, and the seats, too, on the grand stand.

I jogged him again, venturing the remark that I should think that now he might try and corral a nap in the daytime.

The gleeful expression faded instantly. "See here," he said seriously, laying his hand with a warning gesture on my arm, the ivory knob popping out of the sponge-bag. "Don't yer never take no sleep in ther daytime; that's suicide. An' if yer sleep after eatin', that's murder. Look at me. Kinder peaked, ain't I? Stummic gone, throat busted, mouth caved in; but I'm seventy-five, ain't I? An' I ain't a wreck yet, am I? An' a-goin' to Old P'int Cumfut, ain't we, me an' Mommie, who's sixty---- Never mind, Mommie. I won't give it away"--with a sly wink at me. The old woman looked relieved. "Now jist s'pose I'd sat all my life on my back stoop, ha'f awake, an' ev'ry time I eat, lie down an' go ter sleep. Waal, yer'd never bin talkin' to-night to old Jeb Walters. They'd 'a' bin fertilizin' gardin truck with him. I've seen more'n a dozen of my friends die thet way--busted on this back porch snoozin' business. Fust they git loggy 'bout ther gills; then their knees begin ter swell; purty soon they're hobblin' round on er cane; an' fust thing they know they're tucked away in er number thirteen coffin, an' ther daisies a-bloomin' over 'em. None er that fur me. Come, Mommie, we'll turn in."

When the boat, next morning, touched the pier at Old Point, I met the old fellow and his wife waiting for the plank to be hauled aboard.

"Did you sleep?" I asked.

"Sleep? Waal, I could, p'rhaps, if I knowed ther ways aboard this steamboat. Ther come er nigger to my room 'bout midnight, and wanted ter know if I was ther gentleman that had lost his carpet-bag--he had it with him. Waal, of course I warn't; and then 'bout three, jist as I tho't I was dozin' off agin, ther come ther dangdest poundin' the nex' room ter mine ye ever heard. Mommie, she said 'twas fire, but I didn't smell no smoke. Wrong room agin. Feller nex' door was to go ashore in a scow with some dogs and guns. They'd a-slowed down and was waitin', an' they couldn't wake him up. Mebbe I'll git some sleep down ter Old P'int Cumfut, but I ain't spectin' nuthin'. By, by."

And he disappeared down the gang plank.

THE MAN WITH THE EMPTY SLEEVE

I

The Doctor closed the book with an angry gesture and handed it to me as I lay in my steamer chair, my eyes on the tumbling sea. He had read every line in it. So had P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, whose property it was, and who had announced himself only a moment before as heartily in sympathy with the pessimistic views of the author, especially in those chapters which described domestic life in America.

The Doctor, who has a wrist of steel and a set of fingers steady enough to adjust a chronometer, and who, though calm and silent as a stone god when over an operating table, is often as restless and outspoken as a boy when something away from it touches his heartstrings, turned to me and said:--

"There ought to be a law passed to keep these men out of the United States. Here's a Frenchman, now, who speaks no language but his own, and after spending a week at Newport, another at New York, two days at Niagara, and then rushing through the West on a 'Limited,' goes home to give his Impressions of America. Read that chapter on Manners," and he stretched a hand over my shoulder, turning the leaves quickly with his fingers. "You would think, to listen to these fellows, that all there is to a man is the cut of his coat or the way he takes his soup. Not a line about his being clean and square and alive and all a man,--just manners! Why, it is enough to make a cast-iron dog bite a blind man."