Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/395

 Reminiscences of the Sunny South.

��379

��saved to exercise eve lano;iino;e to con- vey to her mv loyalty to her secret, aiifl I think successfnlly.

One of the features of the social life of the Southern negro which I was very desirous to witness, it was my misfortune to miss, — a religious service conducted by a negro preach- er. But a wedding of the very first water I did have an ojiportunity to attend. The family were Northern people, and kind to their servants at all times, and the wedding feast would hardly have exhibited more cost, skill, or taste, had it been pre-' pared for a member of the family. It was served in the family dining-room, and the family waited u|)on the sable guests. A negro preacher in a white vest and necktie, with a showy pair of glasses astride his nose, performed the ceremony with much elocutionary unction. In the negro house at the rear of the back yard, two of the most accomplished i)erformers with the feet contributed a " shake-down," wiiich, though accompanied by music, had no more relation to its rhythm than have the gyrations of a buzz-saw. With- out the evidence of one's own eyes, such an exhibition of motion and vibrations of extremities could not be counted possible to human anatomy. Occasionally a leap straight upward of at least two feet seemed to charge the nerves and muscles of feet and legs with a renewed and electric ani- mation, that sent oft' sprays of motion like the falling fiery ribbons of a rocket. To imagine that these palpi- tant forms of dexteritv, seemins-lv exhaustless in force and energy, could ever tax your patience by their snail-like dragging slowness, was quite out of the question.

��The Southern negro in ante-helium days was as careless of any future need as the birds of the air, and re- sponded to any call for his peculiar gifts of mimicry and gleeful abandon as naturally as the birds did by song to the inspiration of sunshine and at- mosphere.

One of the most pronounced feat- ures of climate were the thunder and rain storms. Having great admira- tion for these heroic moods of nature in that latitude, the sublimity and magnificence of these displays afford- ed me an intoxication of delight. For two or three hours a continuous roll- ing and booming of thunder, not a. moment of interval, the lightning as continuously flashing in rhythmic reg- ularity. Water, not raining down or falling in streams, but filling the wide space as though the clouds had sud- denly let down an ocean of water that was everywhere, the ground a shallow lake from two to six inches in de[)th.

One morning is a vivid remem- brance, when a threatening shower had quickened the gathering at the school-room in which it was my duty to lead the sinoino- at the morninsT exercises. We iiad waited during the storm music which well-nigh made our voices inaudible, and held in ter- ror some of the scholars. Finally, near to ten o'clock, the storm ceased suddenly, instantly, as storms al- ways did, as though a faucet turned off water and electricity at one and the same time. The sun shone out, making every leaf on trees and shrubs seem the frame of millions of irrides- cent diamond globes, and we com- menced our mornina: sons;. Hardlv were we well begun when such a thrill- ing, nerve intoxicating, marvellous

�� �