Part 22

“I was born and bred up in one of Lord Denbigh’s cottages, at Kirby, in Warwickshire. My father was employed on the great place, that’s Newnham Paddocks, you know. He was a labourer, and brought up sixteen children, not one of whom, except me, has ever been summonsed before a justice, or got into any kind of trouble. I went to school till about nine, but I was always longing to be out in the fields at plough or birdkeeping; so I got away before I could do much reading or writing. But I kept on at Sabbath School, and learnt more than I did at the other. The young ladies used to teach us, and they’d set us pieces and things to learn for them in the week. My Cæsar (the only ejaculation Amos allows himself; he cannot remember where he picked it up), how I would work at my piece to get it for Lady Mary! I’ve fairly cried over it sometimes, but I always managed to get it, somehow. After a bit, I was taken on at the house. At first, I did odd jobs, like cleaning boots and carrying messages; and then I got into the garden, and from that into the stable, and then for a bit with the keepers, and then into livery, to wait on the young ladies. So you see I learnt something of everything, and was happy, and earning good wages. But I wanted to see the world, so I took service with a gentleman who was a big railway contractor. I used to drive him, and do anything a’most that he wanted. I stayed with him nine years, and ’twas while going about with him that I met my wife here. We got married down in Kent, thirty-six years ago. Yes (in answer to a laughing comment by his wife), I wanted some one to mind me in those days. That poaching trouble came about this way. I had charge for my master of a piece of railway that ran through Lord--------‘s preserves, in Wales. There were very strict rules about trespassing on the lines then, because folks there didn’t like our line, and had been putting things on it to upset the trains. One day I saw two keepers coming down the line, with a labourer I knew between them. He was all covered with blood, from a wound in his head. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘what’s the matter now?’ ‘I’ve been out of work,’ he said, ‘this three weeks, and I was digging out a rabbit to get something to eat, when they came up and broke my head.’ From that time the keepers and I quarrelled. I summonsed them, and got them fined for trespassing on the line; and then they got me fined for trespassing on their covers. We watched one another like hawks. I’d often lie out at night for hours in the cold, in a ditch, where I knew they’d want to cross the line, and then jump up and catch them; and they’d do the same by me. Once they got me fined £3: 10s. for poaching. I remember it well. I was that riled, I said to the justices right out, ‘How long do you think it’ll take me, gentlemen, to pay all that money, with hares only 1d. apiece?’ Then I went in for it. I remembered the text, ‘What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ I did it. I used to creep along at night, all up the fences, and feel for the places where the hares came through, and set my wires; and I’d often have ten great ones screaming and flopping about like mad. And that’s what the keepers were, too. I’ve given a whole barrowful of hares away to the poor folk of a morning. Well, I know (in answer to an interpellation of Mrs. Hill), yes, ’twas all wrong, and I was a wild chap in those days. Then I begun to hear talk about America, and all there was for a man to see and do there, so I left my master, and we came over, twenty-seven years ago. At first I took charge of gentlemen’s gardens, in New York and New Jersey. Then we went to Miscejan, where I could earn all I wanted. Money was of no account there for a good man in those days, but the climate was dreadful sickly, and we had our baby; the first we had in twelve years, and wanted to live on bread and water, so as we could save him. So we went up right amongst the Indians, to a place they call Grand Travers, a wonderful healthy place, on a lake in the pine-forest country, as it was then. I went on to a promontory, where the forest stood, not like it does here, but the trees that thick, you had scarce room to swing an axe. Well, it was a beautiful healthy place, and we and baby throve, and I soon made a farm; and then folk began to follow after us, and before I left, there were twenty-three saw-mills, cutting up from 80,000 to 150,000 feet a day, week in and out. They’ve stripped the country so now, that there’s no lumber for those mills to cut, and most of them have stopped. I used to have a boat, with just a small sail, and I’d take my stuff down in the morning, and trade it off to the lumber-men, and then sail back at night, for the wind always changed and blew back in the evenings, most part of the year. Well, then, the war came, and for two years I kept thinking whether I oughtn’t to do my part to help the Government I’d lived under so long. Besides, I hated slavery. So in the third year I made up my mind, and ’listed in the Michigan Cavalry. I took the whole matter before the Lord, and prayed I might do my duty as a soldier, and not hurt any man. Well, we joined the Cavalry, near 60,000 strong down in these parts; and I was at Knoxville, and up and down. It was awful, the language and the ways of the men, many of them at least, swearing, and drinking, and stealing any kind of thing they could lay hands on. Many’s the plan for stealing I’ve broken up, telling them they were there to sustain the flag, not to rob poor folks. I spoke very plain all along, and got the men, many of them any way, to listen. I got on famously, too, because I was never away plundering, and my horse was always ready for any service. An officer would come in, after we had had a long day’s work, to say a despatch or message must go, and no horse in our company was fit to go but mine, so the orderly must have him; but I always said no, I was quite ready to go myself, but would not part company from my horse. The only time 1 took what was not mine was when we surprised a Confederate convoy, and got hold of the stores they were carrying. There they were lying all along the roads, greatcoats and blankets, and meal bags, and good boots, with English marks on them. My Cæsar, how our men were destroying them! I got together a lot of the poor, starving folk out of the woods that both sides had been living on, and loaded them up with meal and blankets. My Cæsar, how I loved to scatter them English boots! They never had seen such before. No, sir (in reply to one of us), I never fired a shot all that time, but I had hundreds fired at me. I’ve been in the rifle-pits, and now and again seen a fellow drawing a bead on me, and I’d duck down and hear the bullet ping into the bank close above. They got to employ me a good deal carrying despatches and scouting. That’s how I got took at last. We were at a place called Strawberry Plains, with Breckenridge’s division pretty near all round us. I was sent out with twelve other men, to try and draw them out, to show their force and position; and so we did, but they were too quick for us. Out they came, and it was a race back to our lines down a steep creek. My horse missed his footing, and down we rolled over and over, into the water. When I got up, I was up to my middle, and, first thing I knew, there was a rebel, who swore at me for a G--d d------Yankee, and fired his six shooter at me. The shot passed under my arm, and before he could fire again an officer ordered him on, and gave me in charge. I was taken to the rear, and marched off with a lot of prisoners. The rebels treated me as if I’d been their father, after a day or two. I spoke out to them about their swearing and ways, just as I had to our men; and I might have been tight all the time I was a prisoner, only I’m a temperance man. They put me on their horses on the march, and I was glad of it, for I was hurt by my roll with my horse, and had about the chest. After about six days I got my parole, with five others. They were hard pressed then and didn’t want us toting along. Then we started north, with nothing but just our uniforms, and they full of vermin. The first house we struck I asked where we could find a Union man about there. They didn’t know any one, didn’t think there was one in the county. I said that was bad, as we were paroled Union soldiers,--and then all was changed. They took us in and wanted us to use their beds, which we wouldn’t do, because of the vermin on us. They gave us all they had, and I saw the women, for I couldn’t sleep, covering us up with any spare clothes they’d got, and watching us all night long. They sent us on to other Union houses, and so we got north. I was too ill to stay north at my old work, so I sold my farm, and came south to Knoxville, where I had come to know many kind, good people, in the war. They were very kind, and I got work at the improvements on Mr. Dickenson’s farm (a model farm we had gone over), and in other gentlemen’s gardens. But I didn’t get my health again, so eight years ago I came to this place on the mountains, which I knew was healthy, and would suit me. Well, they all said I should be starved out in two years and have to quit, but before three years were out I was selling them corn and better bacon than they’d ever had before. Some of ’em begin to think I’m right now, and there’s a deal of improvement going on, and if they’d only, as I tell ’em, just put in all their time on their farms, and not go loafing round gunning, and contented with corn-dodgers and a bit of pork, and give up whisky, they might all do as well as I’ve done. I should like to go back once more and see the old country; but I mean to end my days here. There’s no such country that I ever saw. The Lord has done all for us here. And it seems like dreams, that I should live to see a Rugby up here on the mountains. I mean to take a lot in the town, or close by, and call it Newnham Paddocks. So I shall lay my bones, you see, in the same place, as it were, that I was reared in.”

I do not pretend that these were his exact words,--the whole had to be condensed to come within your space,--but they are not far off. It was now past nine, the time for retiring, when Amos told us that he always ended his day with family prayers. A psalm was read, and then we knelt down, and he prayed for some minutes. Extemporary prayers always excite my critical faculty, but there was no thought or expression in this I could have wished to alter. Then we turned in, I, after a pipe in the verandah, in one clean white bed, and two of the boys in the big one in the opposite corner. There I soon dozed off, watching the big, smouldering, white pine-log away in the depth of the chimney-nook, and the last flickerings of the knobs of pitch pine in front of it, between the iron dogs, and wondering in my mind over the brave story we had just been listening to, so simply told (of which I fear I have succeeded in giving a very poor reflection), and whether there are not some--there cannot, I fear, be many--such lives lying about in out-of-the-way corners, on mountain, or plain, or city. My last conscious speculation was whether the Union would have been saved if all Union soldiers had been Amos Hills.

I waked early, just before dawn, and was watching alternately the embers of the big log, still aglow in the deep chimney, and the white light beginning to break through the honeysuckles and vines which hung over the verandah, and shaded the wide, open window, when the clock struck five. The door opened softly, and in stepped Amos Hill in his stockings. He came to the foot of our beds, picked up our dirty boots, and stole out again, as noiselessly as he had entered. The next minute I heard the blacking brushes going vigorously, and knew that I should appear at breakfast with a shine on in which I should have reason to glory, if I were preparing to walk in Bond Street, instead of through the scrub on the Cumberland Mountains. I turned over for another, hour’s sleep (breakfast being at 6.30 sharp), but not without first considering for some minutes which of us two--if things were fixed up straight in this blundering old world--ought to be blacking the other’s boots. The conclusion I came to was that it ought _not_ to be Amos Hill.

The Negro “Natives”, Rugby, Tennessee, 30th October 1880.

There is one inconvenience in this desultory mode of correspondence,--that one is apt to forget what one has told already, and to repeat oneself. I have written something of the white native of these mountains; have I said anything of his dark brother? The subject is becoming a more and more interesting and important one every day, through all these regions. In these mountains, the negro, perhaps, can scarcely be called a native. Very few black families, I am told, were to be found here a year or two since. My own eyes assure me that they are multiplying rapidly. I see more and more black men amongst the gangs on roads and bridges, and come across queer little encampments in the woods, with a pile of logs smouldering in the midst, round which stand the mirth-provoking figures of small black urchins, who stare and grin at the intruder on horseback, till he rides on under the gold and russet and green autumnal coping of hickories, chestnuts, and pines.

I am coming to the conclusion that wherever work is to be had, in Tennessee, at any rate, there will the negro be found. He seems to gather to a contractor like the buzzards, which one sees over the tree-tops, to carrion. And unless the white natives take to “putting in all their time,” whatever work is going will not long remain with them. The negro will loaf and shirk as often as not when he gets the chance, but he has not the same craving for knocking off altogether as soon as he has a couple of dollars in his pocket; has no strong hunting instinct, and has not acquired the art of letting his pick drop listlessly into the ground with its own weight, and stopping to admire the scenery after every half-dozen strokes. The negro is much more obedient, moreover, and manageable,--obedient to a fault, if one can believe the many stories one hears of his readiness to commit small misdemeanours and crimes, and not always small ones, at the bidding of his employers. There is one thing, however, which an equally unanimous testimony agrees in declaring that he will not do, and that is, sell his vote, or be dragooned into giving it for any one but his own choice; he may, indeed, be scared from voting, but cannot be “squared,” a singular testimony, surely, of his prospective value as a citizen. Equally strong is the evidence of his resolute determination to get his children educated. In some Southern States the children are, I believe, kept apart, but in the only school I have had the chance of seeing, black and white children were together. They were not in class, but in the front of the barn-like building, used both for church and school, having just come out for the dinner hour. There was a large, sandy, trampled place under the trees, by no means a bad play-ground, on which a few of the most energetic, the blacks in the majority, were playing at some game as we came up, the mysteries of which I should have liked to study. But the longer we stayed, the less chance there seemed of their going on, and the game remains a mystery to me still. Where these children, some fifty in number, came from, is a problem; but there they were, from somewhere. And everywhere, I hear, the blacks are forcing the running, with respect to education, and great numbers of them are showing a thrift and energy which are likely to make them formidable competitors in the struggle for existence in all states south of Kentucky, at any rate.

In one department (a very small one, no doubt), they will have crowded out the native whites in a very short time, if I may judge by our experience in this house. We number two ladies and six men, and our whole service is done by one boy. Our first experiment was with a young native, who “reared up” on the first morning at the idea of having to black boots. This prejudice, I think I told you, was removed for the moment, and he stayed for a few days. Where it was he “weakened on us” I could not learn for certain, but incline to the belief that it was either having to carry the racquets and balls to the lawn-tennis ground, or to get a fire to burn in order to boil the water for a four-o’clock tea. Both these services were ordered by the ladies, and I thought I saw signs (though I am far from certain) that his manly soul rose against feminine command. Be that as it may, off he went without warning, and soon after Amos Hill arrived, with almost pathetic apologies and a negro boy, short of stature, huge of mouth, fabulous in the apparent age of his garments, named Jeff. He had no other name, he told us, and did not know whether it signified Jefferson or Geoffrey, or where or how he got it, or anything about himself, except that he had got our place at $5 a month,--at which he showed his ivory, “some!”

From this time all was changed. Jeff, it is true, after the first two days, gave proofs that he was not converted, like the white housemaid who had learned to sweep under the mats. His sweeping and tidying were decidedly those of the sinner, and he entirely abandoned the only hard work we set him, as soon as it was out of sight from the Asylum. It was a path leading to a shallow well, which the boys had dug at the bottom of the garden. The last twenty yards or so are on a steeper incline than the part next the house, so Jeff studiously completed the few feet that were left to the brow, and never put pick or shovel on the remainder, which lay behind the friendly brow of the slope. But in all other directions, where the work was mainly odd jobs, a respectable kind of loafing, Jeff was always to the fore, acquitting himself to the best, I think, of his ability. We did not get full command of him till the arrival of a young Texan cattle-driver, who taught us the peculiar cry for the negro, by appending a high “Ho” to his name, or rather running them together, so that the whole sounded, “Hojeff!” as nearly as possible one syllable. Even the ladies picked up the cry, and thenceforward Jeff’s substitute for the “Anon, anon, sir!” of the Elizabethan waiter was instantaneous. He built a camp-oven, like those of the Volunteers at Wimbledon, and neater of construction, from which he supplied a reasonably constant provision of hot water between six and six, of course cutting his own logs for the fire. His highest achievement was ironing the ladies’ cotton dresses, which they declared he did not very badly. Most of us entrusted him with the washing of flannel shirts and socks, which at any rate were faithfully immersed in suds, and hung up to dry under our eyes. The laundry was an army tent, pitched at the back of the Asylum, where Jeff spent nearly all his time when not under orders, and generally eating an apple, of which there was always a sack, a present from some ranche-owner, or brought over from the garden, lying about, and open to mankind at large. I never could find out whether he could read. One evening he came up proudly to ask whether his mail had come, and sure enough when the mail arrived there was a post-card, which he claimed. We thought he would ask one of us to read it for him, but were disappointed. He had a habit of crooning over and over again all day some scrap of a song. One of these excited my curiosity exceedingly, but I never succeeded in getting more than two lines out of him--

Oh my! oh my! I’ve got a hundred dollars in a mine!

One had a crave to hear what came of those 100 dollars. It seems it is so almost universally. The nearest approach to a complete negro ditty which I have been able to strike is one which the Texan gives, with a wonderful roll of the word “chariot,” which cannot be written. It runs:--

The Debbie he chase me round a stump,

Gwine for to carry me home;

He catch me most at ebery jump,

Gwine for to carry me home.

Swing low, sweet chay-o-t,

Gwine for to carry me home.

The Debbie he make one grab at me,

Gwine, etc.,

He missed me, and my soul goed free,

Gwine, etc.

Swing low, etc.

Oh! won’t we have a gay old time,

Gwine, etc.

A eatin’ up o’ honey, and a drinkin’ up o’ wine.

Gwine, etc.

Swing low, etc.