Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/80

62 We had a notable example of this one morning not long after my arrival at Swallow Barn. Meriwether had given several indications immediately after breakfast of a design to pour out upon us the gathered ruminations of the last twenty-four hours, but we had evaded the storm with some caution, when the arrival of two or three neighbors,—plain, homespun farmers,—who had ridden to Swallow Barn to execute some papers before Frank as a magistrate, furnished him with an occasion that was not to be lost. After dispatching their business he detained them, ostensibly to inquire about their crops and other matters of their vocation, but, in reality, to give them that very flood of politics which we had escaped. We, of course, listened without concern, since we were assured of an auditory that would not flinch. In the course of this disquisition he made use of a figure of speech which savored of some previous study, or, at least, was highly in the oratorical vein. "Mark me, gentlemen," said he, contracting his brow over his fine thoughtful eye and pointing the forefinger of his left hand directly at the face of the person he addressed—"mark me, gentlemen; you and I may not live to see it, but our children will see it, and wail over it—the sovereignty of this Union will be as the rod of Aaron; it will turn into a serpent and swallow up all that struggle with it." Mr. Chub was present at this solemn denunciation and was very much affected by it. He rubbed his hands with some briskness and uttered his applause in a short but vehement panegyric, in which were heard only the detached words—"Mr. Burke—Cicero."

The next day Ned and myself were walking by the school-house and were hailed by Rip from one of the windows, who, in a sly undertone, as he beckoned us to come close to him, told us, "if we wanted to hear a regular preach, to stand fast." We could look into the schoolroom unobserved, and there was our patriotic pedagogue haranguing the boys with a violence of