Chapter 27

THE YANKEE-SCHOOL-MISTRESS.

The house was a large, old-fashioned frame building, square as a packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common "corn-crackers" I had seen at the country meeting-house. The Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our host led the way directly to the sitting-room. There we found a bright, blazing fire, and a pair of bright sparkling eyes, the latter belonging to a blithesome young woman of about twenty, with a cheery face, and a half-rustic, half-cultivated air, whom our new friend introduced to us as his wife.

"I regret not having had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. S---- before, but am very happy to meet her now," said the Colonel, with all the well-bred, gentlemanly ease that distinguished him.

"The pleasure is mutual, Colonel J----," replied the lady, "but thirty miles in this wild country, should not have made a neighbor so distant as you have been."

"Business, madam, is at fault, as your husband knows. I have much to do; and besides, all my connections are in the other direction--with Charleston."

"It's a fact, Sally, the Colonel is the d---- busy man in these parts. Not content with a big plantation and three hundred niggers, he looks after all South Carolina, and the rest of creation to boot," said our host.

"Tom will have his joke, Madam, but he's not far from the truth."

Seeing we were dripping wet, the lady offered us a change of clothing, and retiring to a chamber, we each appropriated a suit belonging to our host, giving our own to a servant, to be dried.

Arrayed in our fresh apparel, we soon rejoined our friends in the sitting-room. The new garments fitted the Colonel tolerably well, but, though none too long, they were a world too wide for me, and as my wet hair hung in smooth flat folds down my cheeks, and my limp shirt-collar fell over my linsey coat, I looked for all the world like a cross between a theatrical Aminodab Sleek and Sir John Falstaff, with the stuffing omitted. When our hostess caught sight of me in this new garb, she rubbed her hands together in great glee, and, springing to her feet, gave vent to a perfect storm of laughter--jerking out between the explosions:

"Why--you--you--look jest like--a scare-crow."

There was no mistaking that hearty, hoydenish manner; and seizing both of her hands in mine, I shouted: "I've found you out--you're a "country-woman" of mine--a clear-blooded Yankee!"

"What! _you_ a Yankee!" she exclaimed, still laughing, "and here with this horrid 'secesherner,' as they call him."

"True as preachin', Ma'am," I replied, adopting the drawl--"all the way from Down East, and Union, tu, stiff as buckram."

"Du tell!" she exclaimed, swinging my hands together as she held them in hers. "If I warn't hitched to this 'ere feller, I'd give ye a smack right on the spot. I'm _so_ glad to see ye."

"Do it, Sally--never mind _me_," cried her husband, joining heartily in the merriment.

Seizing the collar of my coat with both hands, she drew my face down till my lips almost touched hers (I was preparing to blush, and the Colonel shouted, "Come, come, I shall tell his wife"): but then turning quickly on her heel, she threw herself into a chair, exclaiming, "_I_ wouldn't mind, but the _old man would be jealous_." Addressing the Colonel, she added, "_You_ needn't be troubled, sir, no Yankee girl will kiss _you_ till you change your politics."

"Give me that inducement, and I'll change them on the spot," said the Colonel.

"No, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do," replied the planter; "the conversion wouldn't be genuwine--besides such things arn't proper, except 'mong blood-relations--and all the Yankees, you know are first-cousins."

The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of its genial, good humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal pay to come South as a teacher. A sister accompanied her, and about a year after their arrival, she married a neighboring planter. Wishing to be near her sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for life in that wild region. "I like the country very well," she added; "it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are _so_ slow, and _so_ careless, and _so_ dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry the very life out of me. I do believe I'm the hardest mistress in all the district."

I learned from her that a majority of the teachers at the South are from the North, and principally, too, from New England. Teaching is a very laborious employment there, far more so than with us, for the Southerners have no methods like ours, and the same teacher usually has to hear lessons in branches all the way from Greek and Latin to the simple A B C. The South has no system of public instruction; no common schools; no means of placing within the reach of the sons and daughters of the poor even the elements of knowledge. While the children of the wealthy are most carefully educated, it is the policy of the ruling class to keep the great mass of the people in ignorance; and so long as this policy continues, so long will that section be as far behind the North as it now is, in all that constitutes true prosperity and greatness.

The afternoon wore rapidly and pleasantly away in the genial society of our wayside-friends. Politics were discussed (our host was a Union man), the prospects of the turpentine crop talked over, the recent news canvassed, the usual neighborly topics touched upon, and--I hesitate to confess it--a considerable quantity of corn whiskey disposed of, before the Colonel discovered, all at once, that it was six o'clock, and we were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but regretful "good-bye" to our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.

The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning. We gave them the reins, and, jogging on at their leisure, it was ten o'clock at night before they landed us at the little hamlet of W---- Station, in the state of North Carolina.