Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookOpen Original Text ld or woman anywhere. It was a fine
mornin'.
"And I says to my neighbor, 'that's music, that is.'
"But he glared at me like he'd like to cut my throat.
"Presently the wind turned; it begun to thicken up, and a kind of gray
mist come over things; I got low-spirited d'rectly. Then a silver rain
began to fall; I could see the drops touch the ground; some flashed
up like long pearl ear-rings; and the rest rolled away like round
rubies. It was pretty, but melancholy. Then the pearls gathered
themselves into long strands and necklaces, and then they melted into
thin silver streams running between golden gravels, and then the
streams joined each other at the bottom of the hill, and made a brook
that flowed silent except that you could kinder see the music
specially when the bushes on the banks moved as the music went along
down the valley. I could smell the flowers in the meadows. But the sun
didn't shine, nor the birds sing; it was a foggy day, but not cold.
Then the sun went down, it got dark, the wind moaned and wept like a
lost child for its dead mother, and I could a-got up then and there
and preached a better sermon than any I ever listened to. There wasn't
a thing in the world left to live for, not a blame thing, and yet I
didn't want the music to stop one bit. It was happier to be miserable
than to be happy without being miserable. I couldn't understand
it. . . . . . . Then, all of a sudden, old Ruben changed his tune. He
ripped and he rar'd, he tipped and he tar'd, he pranced and he charged
like the grand entry at a circus. 'Peared to me like all the gas in
the house was turned on at once, things got so bright, and I hilt up
my head, ready to look any man in the face, and not afeared of
nothin'. It was a circus, and a brass band, and a big ball, all goin'
on at the same time. He lit into them keys like a thousand of brick,
he gave 'em no rest, day nor night; he set every living joint in me
agoin', and not bein' able to stand it no longer, I jumpt spang onto
my seat, and jest hollered:
"'_Go it, my Rube!_'
"Every blamed man, woman, and child in the house riz on me, and
shouted 'Put him out! Put him out!'
"With that some several p'licemen run up, and I had to simmer down.
But I would a fit any fool that laid hands on me, for I was bound to
hear Ruby out or die.
"He had changed his tune agin. He hopt-light ladies and tip-toed fine
from eend to eend of the key-board. He played soft, and low, and
solemn. I heard the church bells over the hills. The candles in heaven
was lit, one by one. I saw the stars rise. The great organ of eternity
began to play from the world's end to the world's end, and all the
angels went to prayers. Then the music changed to water, full of
feeling that couldn't be thought, and began to drop--drip, drop, drip,
drop--clear and sweet, like tears of joy fallin' into a lake of glory.
"He stopt a minute or two, to fetch breath. Then he got mad. He run
his fingers through his hair, he shoved up his sleeves, he opened
his coat-tails a leetle further, he drug up his stool, he leaned
over, and, sir, he just went for that old pianner. He slapt her
face, he boxed her jaws, he pulled her nose, he pinched her ears,
and he scratched her cheeks, till she farly yelled. He knockt her
down and he stompt on her shameful. She bellowed like a bull, she
bleated like a calf, she howled like a hound, she squealed like a
pig, she shrieked like a rat, and then he wouldn't let her up. He
run a quarter-stretch down the low grounds of the bass, till he got
clean into the bowels of the earth, and you heard thunder galloping
after thunder, through the hollows and caves of perdition; and then
he fox-chased his right hand with his left till he got away out of
the trible into the clouds, whar the notes was finer than the pints
of cambric needles, and you couldn't hear nothin' but the shadders
of 'em. And then he wouldn't let the old pianner go. He fetchet up
his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up his center,
he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by platoons,
by company, by regiments, and by brigades. He opened his cannon,
siege-guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder, big
guns, little guns, middle-sized guns, round shot, shell, shrapnel,
grape, canister, mortars, mines, and magazines, every livin' battery
and bomb a goin' at the same time. The house trembled, the lights
danced, the walls shuk, the floor come up, the ceilin' come down,
the sky split, the ground rockt--BANG! With that _bang!_ he lifted
hisself bodily into the ar', and he come down with his knees, his
ten fingers, his ten toes, his elbows, and his nose, strikin' every
single solitary key on that pianner at the same time. The thing
busted and went off into seventeen hundred and fifty-seven thousand
five hundred and forty-two hemi-demi-semi-quivers, and I know'd no
mo'."
SARAH ANNE DORSEY.
~1829=1879.~
MRS. DORSEY, daughter of Thomas G. P. Ellis, was born at Natchez,
Mississippi, and was a niece of Mrs. Catherine Warfield who left to
her many of her unpublished manuscripts. She was finely educated and
travelled extensively. In 1853 she was married to Mr. Samuel W. Dorsey
of Tensas Parish, Louisiana. Here she found scope for her energies in
the duties of plantation life. She established a chapel and school for
the slaves, and her account of the success of her plans gained her the
title of "Filia Ecclesiae" from the "Churchman." She afterwards used
"Filia" as a pen-name.
[Illustration: ~University of Mississippi, University P. O., Miss.~]
Their home being destroyed during the war in a skirmish which took
place in their garden, and in which several men were killed, Mr. and
Mrs. Dorsey removed to Texas. They afterwards returned to Louisiana;
and in 1875, upon the death of Mr. Dorsey, Mrs. Dorsey made her home
at "Beauvoir," her place in Mississippi. Here she spent her time in
writing, and also acted as amanuensis to Jefferson Davis in his great
work, "Rise and Fall of the Confederacy." At her death, which occurred
at New Orleans, whither she had gone for treatment, she left
"Beauvoir" by will to Mr. Davis and his daughter Winnie.
Her "Life of Allen" is of great historical and biographical merit.
WORKS.
Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, of Louisiana.
Lucia Dare, [novel].
Atalie, or a Southern Villeggiatura.
Agnes Graham, [novel].
Panola, a Tale of Louisiana.
A CONFEDERATE EXILE ON HIS WAY TO MEXICO, 1866.
(_From Recollections of Henry W. Allen, Ex-Gov. of Louisiana._[26])
The people wept over Allen's departure. They followed him with tears
and blessings, and would have forced on him more substantial tokens of
regard than words of regret. They knew he had no money--his noble
estates had long been in possession of the enemy; hundreds of
hogsheads of sugar had been carried off from his plundered
sugar-houses; his house was burned, his plantation, a wide waste of
fallow-fields, grown up in weeds. He had nothing but Confederate and
State money. One gen Previous Next |