Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

The river made an irregular bend a short distance below, and I strolled that way, walking now on the thick masses of lespedeza that carpeted the old road-track, and now on the s...

"Now go, Miss Luke," Melvyna had said, waving her energetically away with the skimmer as she stood irresolute at the kitchen door. "'Twill do you a power of good, and they're ni...

"Oh!" said the little Sister--"oh!" and distressfully she covered her head with her hands, as if trying to shield herself from the terrible light of day. But the veil had gone d...

The expedition was to start on Monday night. The whole village, in the mean time, had been carefully intrusted with the secret that it was to go on Tuesday. But on Sunday evenin...

The master, toiling on at his vain task, was at his wit's end. "They will not work; before long they must steal," he said. He brooded and thought, and at last one morning he cam...

"Ma'm'selle," she said, dismissing herself and her fame with a wave of her white hand, "you have a treasure in Doro, a voice rare in a century; and, in the name of the world, I...

"House b'long to Mars' Ward's uncle; fine place once, befo' de war; he's dead now, and dah's nobuddy but Miss Bettina, an' she's gone off somewhuz. Propah place, sah, fur Mars'...

"Will you do us de hono', sah, to take de head ob de processio', sah?" said the leader, with a ceremonious bow. Now, the keeper had not much sympathy with the strewing of flower...

I had not told Felipa we were going; I thought it best to let it take her by surprise. I had various small articles of finery ready as farewell gifts, which should act as sponge...

But his eyes were to be opened. The last trump could not have startled him more than something he saw with his own eyes one day. It happened in this way: There was an accident o...

Old Dinah was delighted. Gardis brought out some of the half-year rent money, and a dinner was planned, of few dishes truly, but each would be a marvel of good cooking, as the o...

She flew off singing the name, followed by Drollo carrying his mistress's palmetto basket in his big patient mouth; but when I passed the house a few moments afterward she was s...

"We carried him back to the house, old Cassy and I, slowly, and with little regard for the bullets which now whistled through the air; for the first shots had brought together t...

The sketches included in this volume were written during a residence in the South, which has embraced the greater part of the past six years. As far as they go they record real...

"I dun know who wrote it, and I dun know as it's true. The paper was throwed into my room, through the winder, when there didn't happen to be anybody around. It was somebody as...

He began to prepare for the night. There was a knoll near by, and here he made a camp-fire, spending the time before sunset in gathering the wood by the slow process of climbing...

The old house was managed with the nicest care. Its thick coquina-walls remained solid still, and the weak spots in the roof were mended with a thatch of palmetto and tar, appli...

"No, she is not," replied the mother this time. "She begins to feel that her life is colorless and blank; I can see she does. She is not an ordinary girl, and needlework and hou...

One evening in January Deal came homeward as usual at sunset, and found a visitor. Carl introduced him. "My friend Schwartz," he said. Schwartz merited his name; he was dark in...

"Stuff!" said the farmers. What with the graves down in the South, and the taxes up in the North, they were not prepared to hear any talk about beginning. Beginning, indeed! The...

Although Deal worked hard in his fields all day, he did not cook. In a third out-building lived a gray-headed old negro with one eye, who cooked for the new tenant--and cooked w...

When at last he left her, he had made up his mind that he would try an experiment. He would help this child out of the quagmire of poverty, and give her, in a small way, a chanc...

"Then why do you so continually speak of him?" said Miss Duke sharply. Such prompt corroboration was not, after all, as agreeable as it should have been to a well-regulated mind.

It was Sunday, and when the three little church-bells rang, making a tinkling sound in the great valley, he walked over to the Episcopal church. He had a curiosity to see that g...

The breakfast-table was spread with snowy damask, worn thin almost to gossamer, and fairly embroidered with delicate darning; the cups and plates belonged to the crocodile set,...

The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe. Half choked, they beat with their...

"Then why not try to change it? I might lend you my old copies--those I used myself and still use. Here they are." And she took from her desk a number of small slips of paper, o...