Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/361

 criticism: "Now, I got to pull down de gap, I suppose! Yo' so sp'ilt yo' kyahn hardly walk. Jes' ez able to git over it as I is! Jes' like white folks—think 'cuz you's white and I's black, I got to wait on yo' all de time. Ne'm mine, I ain' gwi' do it!" As his dogship marched sedately through the "gap" and down the road, the negro suddenly discovered a stranger looking on, and hastened to remark somewhat apologetically: "He know I don mean nothin' by what I sez. He's Marse Chan's dawg, an' he's so ole he kyahn git long no pearter. He know I'se jes' prodjickin' wid 'im."

The darky explained to the stranger that "Marse Chan" (or Channin') was his young master, that the place with "de rock gate-pos's" which the stranger had just passed was "ole Cun'l Chamb'lin's," and that since the war "our place" had been acquired by certain "unknowns" who were probably "half-strainers."

At the request of the stranger to tell him all about "Marse Chan" the old negro recalled, "jes' like 't wuz yistiddy," how "ole marster" (Marse Chan's father), smiling "wus'n a 'possum," came out on the porch with his new-born son in his arms, and catching sight of Sam (the narrator, who was then but eight years old), called him up on the porch and put the baby in his arms, with the solemn injunction that Sam was to be the young master's body servant as long as he lived. "Yo' jes' ought to a-heard de folks sayin', 'Lawd! marster, dat boy'll drap dat chile!' 'Naw, he won't,' sez marster; 'I kin trust 'im.'" And then the old master walked after Sam carrying the young master, until Sam entered the house and laid his precious burden on the bed.

Sam recalled, too, how Marse Chan, when in school, once carried Miss Anne, Colonel Chamberlin's little daughter, on his shoulders across a swollen creek, and how the next day, when his father gave him a pony to show his pleasure over his son's