Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/48

40 I was inclined to criticize the establishment, which was not altogether what I had been led to expect.

"I allow he a'n't a fust-class hoss," said Elijah. "Only give three dollars for him. Feed is skurce and high. But let him rest this winter, and git some meal in him, and he'll make a plough crack next spring."

"What are you going to do with those corn-stalks?"

"Fodder for the hoss. They're all the fodder he'll git till night; for we're go'n' into a country whar thar's noth'n' mo' for an animal to eat than thar is on the palm of my hand."

I took a seat beside him, and made use of the stalks by placing a couple of bundles between my back and the sharp board which travellers were expected to lean against. Elijah cracked his whip, the horse frisked his tail, and struck into a cow-trot which pleased him.

"You see, he'll snake us over the ground right peart!"

He proceeded to tantalize me by telling what a mule he had, and what a little mare he had, at home.

"She certainly goes over the ground! I believe she can run ekal to anything in this country for about a mile. But she's got a set of legs under her jest like a sheep's legs."

He could not say enough in praise of the mule.

"Paid eight hundred dollars for him in Confederate money. He earned a living for the whole family last winter. I used to go reg'lar up to Chancellorsville and the Wilderness, buy up a box of clothing, and go down in Essex and trade it off for corn."

"What sort of clothing?"

"Soldiers' clothes, from the battle-fields. Some was flung away, and some, I suppose, was stripped off the dead. Any number of families jest lived on what they got from the Union armies in that way. They'd pick up what garments they could lay hands on, wash 'em up, and sell 'em. I'd take a blanket, and git half a bushel of meal for it down in Essex. Then I'd bring the meal back, and git may-be two blankets, or a blanket and a coat, for it. All with that little mule. He'll haul a load for ye! He'll stick to the ground go'n' up hill jest like a dry-land tarrapin! But I take the mare when I'm in a hurry; she makes them feet rattle ag'in' the ground!"

We took the plank road to Chancellorsville, passing through a waste country of weeds or undergrowth, like every other part of Virginia which I had yet seen.

"All this region through yer," said Elijah, "used to be grow'd up to corn and as beautiful clover as ever you see. But since the wa', it's all turned out to bushes and briers and hog-weeds. It's gittin' a start ag'in now. I'll show 'em how to do it. If we git in a crap o' wheat this fall, which I don't know if we sha'n't, we kin start three big teams, and whirl up twenty acres of land directly. That mule," etc.

Elijah praised the small farmers.

"People in ordinary sarcumstances along yer are a mighty industrious people. It's the rich that keep this country down. The way it generally is, a few own too much and the rest own noth'n'. I know hundreds of thousands of acres of land put to no uset, which, if it was cut up into little farms, would make the country look thrifty. This is mighty good land; clay bottom; holds manure jest like a chany bowl does water. But the rich ones jest scratched over a little on 't with their slave labor, and let the rest go. They wouldn't sell: let a young man go to 'em to buy, and they'd say they didn't want no poo' whites around 'em; they wouldn't have one, if they could keep shet of 'em. And what was the result? Young men would go off to the west, if they was enterpris'n', and leave them that wa'n't enterpris'n' hyer to home. Then as the old heads died off, the farms would run down. The young women would marry the lazy young men, and raise up families of lazy children."

The country all about Fredericksburg was very unhealthy. Elijah, on making inquiries, could hear of scarcely a family on the road exempt from sickness.