The Upward Path Part 4

At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me how the crops needed the boys; and the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed, a.s.sured me that Lugene must mind the baby. "But we'll start them again next week." When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the doubts of the old folks about book-learning had conquered again, and so, toiling up the hill, and getting as far into the cabin as possible, I put Cicero "pro Archia Poeta" into the simplest English with local applications, and usually convinced them--for a week or so.

On Friday nights I often went home with some of the children,--sometimes to Doc Burke's farm. He was a great, loud, thin Black, ever working, and trying to buy the seventy-five acres of hill and dale where he lived; but people said that he would surely fail, and the "white folks would get it all." His wife was a magnificent Amazon, with saffron face and s.h.i.+ning hair, uncorseted and barefooted, and the children were strong and beautiful. They lived in a one-and-a-half-room cabin in the hollow of the farm, near the spring. The front room was full of great fat white beds, scrupulously neat; and there were bad chromos on the walls, and a tired center-table. In the tiny back kitchen I was often invited to "take out and help" myself to fried chicken and wheat biscuit, "meat"

and corn pone, string-beans and berries.

At first I used to be a little alarmed at the approach of bedtime in the lone bedroom, but embarra.s.sment was very deftly avoided. First, all the children nodded and slept, and were stowed away in one great pile of goose feathers; next, the mother and the father discreetly slipped away to the kitchen while I went to bed; then, blowing out the dim light, they retired in the dark. In the morning all were up and away before I thought of awaking. Across the road, where fat Reuben lived, they all went out-doors while the teacher retired, because they did not boast the luxury of a kitchen.

I liked to stay with the Dowells, for they had four rooms and plenty of good country fare. Uncle Bird had a small, rough farm, all woods and hills, miles from the big road; but he was full of tales,--he preached now and then,--and with his children, berries, horses, and wheat he was happy and prosperous. Often, to keep the peace, I must go where life was less lovely; for instance, 'Tildy's mother was incorrigibly dirty, Reuben's larder was limited seriously, and herds of untamed insects wandered over the Eddingses' beds. Best of all I loved to go to Josie's, and sit on the porch, eating peaches, while the mother bustled and talked: how Josie had bought the sewing-machine; how Josie worked at service in winter, but that four dollars a month was "mighty little"

wages; how Josie longed to go away to school, but that it "looked like"

they never could get far enough ahead to let her; how the crops failed and the well was yet unfinished; and, finally, how "mean" some of the white folks were.

For two summers I lived in this little world; it was dull and humdrum.

The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and the boys fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was "town,"--a straggling, lay village of houses, churches, and shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, d.i.c.ks, and Captains. Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored folks, who lived in three- or four-room unpainted cottages, some neat and homelike, and some dirty. The dwellings were scattered rather aimlessly, but they centered about the twin temples of the hamlet, the Methodist and the Hard-Sh.e.l.l Baptist churches. These, in turn, leaned gingerly on a sad-colored schoolhouse. Hither my little world wended its crooked way on Sunday to meet other worlds, and gossip, and wonder, and make the weekly sacrifice with frenzied priest at the altar of the "old-time religion." Then the soft melody and mighty cadences of Negro song fluttered and thundered.

I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hards.h.i.+p in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity. All this caused us to think some thoughts together; but these, when ripe for speech, were spoken in various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five or more years before had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time. The ma.s.s of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand, and therefore sank into listless indifference, or s.h.i.+ftlessness, or reckless bravado. There were, however, some--such as Josie, Jim and Ben--to whom War, h.e.l.l, and Slavery were but childhood tales, whose young appet.i.tes had been whetted to an edge by school and story and half-awakened thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World.

And their weak wings beat against their barriers,--barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim.

ERE SLEEP COMES DOWN TO SOOTHE THE WEARY EYES

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought The magic gold which from the seeker flies; Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought, And make the waking world a world of lies,-- Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn, That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,-- Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, Now all the griefs and heartaches we have known Come up like pois'nous vapors that arise From some base witch's caldron, when the crone, To work some potent spell, her magic plies.

The past which held its share of bitter pain, Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise, Comes up, is lived and suffered o'er again, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room; What ghostly shades in awe-creating guise Are bodied forth within the teeming gloom.

What echoes great of sad and soul-sick cries, And pangs of vague inexplicable pain That pay the spirit's ceaseless enterprise, Come thronging through the chambers of the brain, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, Where ranges forth the spirit far and free?

Through what strange realms and unfamiliar skies Tends her far course to lands of mystery?

To lands unspeakable--beyond surmise, Where shapes unknowable to being spring, Till, faint of wing, the Fancy fails and dies Much wearied with the spirit's journeying, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, Now questioneth the soul that other soul-- The inner sense which neither cheats nor lies, But self exposes unto self, a scroll Full writ with all life's acts unwise or wise, In characters indelible and known; So, trembling with the shock of sad surprise, The soul doth view its awful self alone, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes, The last dear sleep whose soft embrace is balm, And whom sad sorrow teaches us to prize For kissing all our pa.s.sions into calm, Ah, then, no more we heed the sad world's cries, Or seek to probe th' eternal mystery, Or fret our souls at long-withheld replies, At glooms through which our visions cannot see, When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes.

THE LAND OF LAUGHTER

ANGELINA W. GRIMKE

Once upon a time there were two dear little boys, and they were all alone in the world. They lived with a cruel old man and old woman, who made them work hard, very hard--all day, and beat them when they did not move fast enough, and always, every night, before they went to bed. They slept in an attic on a rickety, narrow bed, that went screech! screech!

whenever they moved. And, in the summer, they nearly died with the heat up there; and in the winter with the cold.

One wintry night, when they were both weeping very bitterly after a particularly hard beating, they suddenly heard a pleasant voice saying:

"Why are you crying, little boys?"

They looked up, and there in the moonlight, by their bed, was the dearest little old lady. She was dressed all in grey, from the peak of her little pointed hat to her little, buckled shoes. She held a black cane much taller than her little self. Her hair fell about her ears in tiny, grey corkscrew curls; and they bobbed about as she moved. Her eyes were black and bright--as bright as--well, as that lovely, white light in the fire. And her cheeks were as red as an apple.

"Why are you crying, little boys?" she asked again, in a lovely, low, little voice.

"Because we are tired and sore and hungry and cold; and we are all alone in the world; and we don't know how to laugh any more. We should so like to laugh again."

"Why, that's easy," she said, "it's just like this," and she laughed a little, joyous, musical laugh. "Try!" she commanded.

They tried, but their laughing boxes were very rusty and they made horrid sounds.

"Well," she said, "I advise you to pack up, and go away, as soon as you can, to the Land of Laughter. You'll soon learn there, I can tell you."

"Is there such a land?" they asked doubtfully.

"To be sure there is," she answered, the least bit sharply.

"We never heard of it," they said.

"Well, I'm sure there must be plenty of things you never heard about,"

she said just the "leastest" bit more sharply. "In a moment you'll be telling me the flowers don't talk together, and the birds."

"We never heard of such a thing," they said in surprise, their eyes like saucers.

"There!" she said, bobbing her little curls. "What did I tell you. You have much to learn."

"How do you get to the Land of Laughter?" they asked.

"You go out of the eastern gate of the town, just as the sun is rising; and you take the highway there, and follow it; and if you go with it long enough, it will bring you to the gate of the Land of Laughter. It is a long, long way from here; and it will take you many days."

The words had scarcely left her mouth when, lo! the little lady disappeared, and where she had stood was the white square of moonlight--nothing else.

And without more ado these two little boys put their arms round each other, and fell fast asleep. And in the grey, just before daybreak, they awoke and dressed; and putting on their little ragged caps and mittens, for it was a wintry day, they stole out of the house, and made for the eastern gate. And just as they reached it and pa.s.sed through, the whole east leapt into fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Land of Laughter]

All day they walked, and many days thereafter; and kindly people, by the way, took them in and gave them food and drink and sometimes a bed at night. Often they slept by the roadside; but they didn't mind that for the climate was delightful--not too hot, and not too cold. They soon threw away their ragged little mittens.

They walked for many days; and there was no Land of Laughter. Once they met an old man, richly dressed, with s.h.i.+ning jewels on his fingers, and he stopped them and asked:

"Where are you going so fast, little boys?"

"We are going to the Land of Laughter," they said very gravely.

"That," said the old man, "is a very foolish thing to do. Come with me and I will take you to the Land of Riches. I will cover you with beautiful garments, and give you jewels and a castle to live in with servants and horses and many things besides."