The Contributors' Club

READING the newspapers, lately, I have come upon a number of letters criticising our dialect writers. I cannot now recall any prominent writer of dialect who is not arraigned by some one of these critics. Generally, the latter are people living in the locality described, or otherwise acquainted with the dialect, and presumably they ought to know what they are talking about. Nevertheless, I venture to fancy that, often, the writers have the facts on their side.

There are three difficulties about writing dialect which I do not think that the critics sufficiently consider. In the first place, the dialects of this country are mostly untraveled ground. They are not like the Scotch talk, for instance. That has been conventionalized. The words are all spelled in a recognized way. So much Scotch has been written, and so much written about Scotch, that no one needs to fall back upon his own phonetic imagination. Now we do. Our dialects have no spelling-books. I may except the Yankee, thanks to Mr. Lowell, but otherwise each writer has to do his own guessing at letters as representatives of sound. Here comes in the difficulty. The letters which represent one sound to the writer may represent quite another sound to the reader. As everybody knows, one of the young women called it “ Sykie,” and the other called it “ Peesish,” but they both spelled it Psyche. We are such inveterate readers that usually we see as well as hear a word. Very likely our mental spelling may differ from the dialect writer’s ; but really it does not follow that we are right and that he is wrong. At least, the chances are equal for and against him.

The second difficulty is of another character. It is hard to find dialect pure. Provincialisms are as catching as small-pox. Let a writer be as religiously accurate as he may, with his own ears to back every phrase that he uses; all the same, he will probably be accused of smuggling contraband dialect.

The third difficulty is the worst. As a matter of fact, the most trustworthy observers are not apt to be those who have always lived among the objects to be described. That which we hear every day, and have heard for an indefinite period, ceases to impress us, however striking. We miss fine points and details. Little turns of accent and tricks of expression slip off our observation, while a stranger instantly notices them. Frequent absences seem necessary to sharpen the native’s vision to the stranger’s keenness. Perhaps this is why natives and old residents almost invariably have a higher opinion of their section’s grammar than it deserves. If a writer report the ordinary speech of “ nice people ” with minute fidelity, ten to one he is informed that “such phrases are not current among ladies and gentlemen, though possibly used in the locality.”

No writer, I suppose, really dare report the speech of the so-called better classes just as it is uttered. The truth is, we are so accustomed to the errors in grammar and pronunciation of those about us that we have lost the power to perceive them. And this same habit of non-observation extends to the speech of the rest of the native’s world.

I don’t know any way of overcoming these three difficulties ; but I respectfully beg that they be considered.

— I trust that I have never intentionally exaggerated the importance of the modest place I hold in the congress of writers, and yet I blush to recall the startling pretension that is even now circulating in connection with my name, and through my own inadvertence. The case is unusual, to say the least. Two other instances, perhaps, exceed it in historical perplexity, — the ancient poet of whom it was affirmed,

and the aboriginal who, when questioned as to his birthplace, was wont to reply that he “ was born at Cape Cod, Nantucket, and all along the shore.” Now it is not difficult to believe that Bonus Homerus was nodding when he replied, as he must have been obliged often to reply, to letters and printed circulars inquiring the date and place of his birth, maiden name, titles of anonymous works, if any, etc. Thus at one time he might have designated Smyrna as his birthplace, at another Chios or Salamis; whence arose the urban contest commemorated in the familiar couplets. As to the aboriginal and his persistent assertions, there are pretty strong indications of willful mendacity. Like good Homer, I have nodded, but 1 have not, like the other, obstinately prevaricated ; yet when I read in one Index or Directory of Authors that 1 was born in Fairview, and in another that my advent occurred in Plainfield, I have a tingling sense of chagrin at the apparent imposition offered a too astute public, — for the public, although it good-naturedly and even zestfully accepts many biographical wonders and inconsistencies, and although it entertains the very highest opinion of your versatility, can scarcely be brought to believe that you have been able to confer upon even two places the honor of your nativity.

If I may so far indulge in local geography, I will premise that Fairview and Plainfield are contiguous townships. Each has its “ centre,” totally unlike the other in physical and moral characteristics. As I remember, and as I have been assured by competent judges, Fairview had thrift and amenity, Plainfield an uninviting environment and a certain decadent tendency from the first. Touching the causes underlying this difference, it was frequently remarked, “ Fairview, you know, was settled by — Yankees, while Plainfield was settled by — Yankees.” (Unwillingness to cast reflections upon any State composing the glorious nucleus of commonwealths which we revere as New England moves me thus to resort to the dash.)

The beloved old farmhouse through whose windows I first saw the light, and where much of my childhood was happily spent, was situated (it must be confessed !) in Plainfield; but then, the township line was distant not ten rods from its very walls. The commercial transactions, social intercourse, postal communications, of the family were all had with or through Fairview: the spirit and traditions of the kind of Yankees who had founded Fairview were one with the spirit and traditions of our household. Occasional exercise of the sovereign privilege of a voter was the only fact that served to remind us of the Plainfield tie; and as this privilege pertained but to a limited portion of the household, the fact carried only half weight of conviction. After years of absence from my early home, and still entertaining a reminiscent partiality for Fairview, it was but natural that I should come to regard that village as my birthplace, and to so announce it whenever the question of birthplace arose. This slight inaccuracy of statement, had I but adhered to it, would have produced no ill results ; but in an unfortunate hour, by the chance word of an elderly relative, my Plainfield origin was brought to light. And was I, after all, a native of abjured, unblest Plainfield? A swift recollection of its doleful little church, — paintless, roof wanting many a shingle, the three-pronged steeple (thefourth corner ornament having been carried away in an immemorial storm) ; and then the desolate pump in the arid centre of the village, — the stumps of Ozymandias in the desert were scarcely more forlornly suggestive; the remembered dejected tones of the poultry that hunted grasshoppers in the wilted roadside herbage,—all wrought powerfully upon sensibilities not the most callous. If it were, if it could be at any future time, any slight distinction to have afforded me nativity, was it not fitting that Plainfield should profit by such inconsiderable fortuitous advantage? At all events, it would be well to state the simple truth. Thereafter I uniformly wrote “ Plainfield,” in reply to the question of the index-maker. And what has resulted ? I have, so to speak, pitted Plainfield against Fairview in a highly emulative strife, and now observe with curious interest the nearly balanced fortunes of the antagonists. Not, however, that these remote idyllic and blameless villages consciously contend ; not that either is likely to be apprised of its victory when the hour of victory arrives, for they know not their Homer. I had, indeed, hoped that the public in general might not become cognizant of the competition,— that each worthy reader of indexes might, with selective tranquillity, affix his faith either to Fairview or to Plainfield. But no. Already the discrepancy has been marked for jocose and sarcastic newspaper comment, and — a yet more alarming phase of the mischief— I have received private communications from agitated and harassed strangers, who to the goading cares of the autograph-seeker add the special crux presented by the ambiguous record of my nativity. I ought to rejoice that I still live to relieve their flattering solicitude for exact knowledge on a point of such vital importance. My sentiment is singularly devoid of benevolence : I simply regret, very deeply, the day when my elderly relative pointed out my harmless error, and I revised my reckonings.

— We are, at our house, I confess, a rather sombre family. There are no young children among us. The elderly people are silent by temperament, and grow more silent as age comes on. There is never any ill-temper in the house, — never any bickering, or nagging ; no spiteful epigrams, or sidelong sarcasms. We seem really to like each other, although we are all “ blood-relations.” We get on, therefore, from year to year. No doubt we seem to others a happy family, and perhaps we are ; but we are never a merry family. The house is so built that the rooms where the sun shines liberally are not the rooms most used ; not the rooms, for example, that we are accustomed to use together. The heating apparatus is that most successful and most lugubrious one,—steam. The radiators are large black surfaces, with just enough of gilt at edge and corner to make the black hopelessly conspicuous, flattening themselves against the wall as if they were aware of their ugliness. No blazing, and sparkling, and cheerily snapping open fire illuminates any of the “living” rooms. (The kitchen is the most cheerful place in the house,— as I have occasionally seen it, empty and deserted, after the cook and the maid had retired at night, — with the rich hot coals still sending out their rays merrily through chink and crevice of the range, for the sole benefit of the house-cat, Stretched out with full abandon on the toastinghot hearth.) Our deplorable habit, at meals, is to attend to the business in hand with grave decorum,—very decently and in order, no doubt, but for the most part silently. I have known some one of us, apparently for the moment sensible of something oppressive in this gravity, to venture on a frivolous remark, and to have it received in silence, as a thing not congruous with the roast meat, especially during the solemn action of its being carved and distributed. We come down to breakfast not at all out of humor (we are not invalids), but disposed to a very calm and peaceful demeanor. We wish each other good morning with a genuine affection, but the remark, having been responded to, is not followed up. An observation concerning the weather does not usually lead anywhere. When we have a more lively visitor, we easily fall in with his mood, and are capable of a good deal of sprightliness on such an occasion, — not in the least labored or affected, either; but by ourselves we are habitually silent, and occupied with our own sedate reflections. All

All this makes — I cannot but see it and feel it, much as I myself share in the responsibility — a sombre house.

But there is one bright spot, and that furnishes the text of my utterances now upon the subject. It is the tame canary, “ Johnny-quil.” Not only is he himself always cheerful (and who ever saw a well canary depressed?), but he is the cause of cheerfulness in others. In the midst of one of our long silences we hear his little pipe ringing out from his sunny eyrie in the porch or the sittingroom, and some one remarks, “Just hear Johnny-quil ! ” Our barometers all go up ten degrees. Besides, everybody chirrups to him. It is not only, therefore, what he says to us, but what we say to him, that makes him the enlivener of the family. You can’t exactly chirrup to a grown-up human being, — especially if he is carving a fowl, or reading a religious newspaper. But it is always possible, and apparently always inevitable, to say something chipper and chirpy to the bird, as we pass his cage. I have noticed this odd thing: that when Rhodora, or Penelope, or Cassandra, stops at the cage, and says some little nonsensical thing to the small yellow songster, or half whistles to him in passing, not only does he pipe up, but pretty soon you hear her own voice, from a distant room, humming a bit of some gay waltz or madrigal. The unconscious lifting of one’s own more sober mood to the higher level of the bird’s irrepressible good spirits lasts on a little beyond the instant. I recommend him and his merry kind to other silent houses. He is worth his weight in sunshine.

— The little town of Port Hudson, as I remember it, stands on a high bluff which guards the outer sweep of a bend in the Mississippi River, about a hundred miles above New Orleans. A long ascending road, cut deeply through the tenacious clay, up from the water’s edge, gave access to the plateau above. From the top of this bluff, and especially from the windows of the houses facing on it, the long reach of the river, whether up or down, was in full sight, and the eager eye could catch the first glimpse of the steamer from above, rounding the far-off Point Coupée.

One of my most vivid early recollections is that of landing at this place, from such a steamer, in the small hours of a cold December night. The red glare of the pitch-pine fires in iron baskets thrust out from the steamer’s deck weirdly lighted up the scene, in spite of a pouring rain, as my father and mother plodded up the hill, followed by the negro hands carrying my little brother and me in their arms, to the town above.

In that place, in the following spring and summer, we children spent many bright and happy days, greatly interested especially in the comings and goings of the steamboats, whose piercing whistle and solemn muffled puffs could be heard even before they hove in sight. A little above the town was a wooded spot, portions of which were used as a place of burial; but all unawed by this, we little boys chose one spreading beech-tree, which we made our summer retreat, and where we spent many an hour playing, reading, or confiding to each other our ideas of what we were going to be and to do, and watching for the up-river boats.

In these delightful rambles to the beech, we were often looked after, or called home from them, by a worthy negro man, named Obediah, — or Obed, as we called him,— whom my father owned. Our little heads were not troubled about the slavery question; nor Obed’s either, at that time, for he was as devoted to us, though Geordie was only four and I six years old, as we to him.

In that sultry August, when the smaller streams were dry and the ground was parched with thirst, my little brother was taken sick. No nurse could watch more tenderly and faithfully by his bedside, or take my poor anxious mother’s place more nearly, than Obed, and to none could she more confidently leave him. When our well gave out and our neighbors padlocked theirs, and refused “ a cup of cold water ” to the sick child, Obed went into the country to get fresh spring water for him, —going by night, lest it should be taken away from him.

When Geordie died, the faithful negro was inconsolable. He requested that Geordie might be buried under the beech-tree ; and begged that no one but him might dig the little grave.

I do not remember how Obed ceased to be ours. That fall was one of great and wide-spread business disaster and financial reverses, and about that time we all left Port Hudson.

Four or five years later, Obed stopped me suddenly in Tchoupitoulas Street, New Orleans. The good creature was overjoyed to meet his “ young massa” once more. Nothing would do but I must come and see and breakfast with him the very next Sunday morning — when he would have some time to himself — in the upper story of a cotton warehouse, where he was a sort of porter and watchman.

Early the next Sunday morning, about six or seven o’clock, I made my appearance, accordingly, at the warehouse; and there was Obed waiting for me at the great street door. He took me up to his quarters in the fourth story, where I found a table ready, spread for one. But it was a feast for half a dozen at least, and enough to make us all sick. Oranges, bananas, figs, nuts and raisins, lemonade, cakes and jellies, for which, very possibly, he had spent all the money he personally possessed in the world. And Obed asked nothing better than to stand behind my chair and wait on me feasting on these dainties ; and then to have me tell him all about my parents and myself during the intervening years since the summer of my little brother’s death. When the past had been exhausted, we turned to the future, and he exhorted me that when I grew up and became a man I must be sure and buy him back again.

I next heard of Obed as being “ a hand,” and afterwards a steward, on a Mississippi River steamer, in which service he continued for several years; indeed, almost, if not quite, down to the period of the war, which, if he were still living then, set him free.

I heard of him for the last time from a gentleman formerly in business with my father, and whom, not long before the war, I met in Washington. He had had occasion to go up and down the Mississippi very frequently, and often on the steamer on which Obed was employed.

This gentleman told me that once, when the steamboat was stopping for an hour or two at Port Hudson, to take in cotton, Obed asked him to go ashore with him for a little walk along the bluffs. He willingly did so. Obed carried a hammer and some nails in a bucket. Straight to the little grave he went, — to the beech-tree where he had laid my brother. He straightened up the head and foot stones; he repaired the broken fence; he restored the turf, reverently clearing away the dry leaves and sticks upon the grave, and trimmed and watered the flowers still growing there.

This was nearly twenty years after my brother’s death; and, on inquiring, the gentleman learned that, during the entire period of Obed’s employment on the river, some ten or twelve years, whenever the boat stopped at Port Hudson long enough, and he could get permission, he had gone up to the spot to care for and to keep in order that little grave.

The war came but a few years after. I can almost imagine him, fighting there in the Federal army, in defense of the place where we children had once played, and perhaps he was among those who fell near the spot where he had buried the child who, had he lived, would then have been a man. But if nothing else is left, the memory of that negro’s undying love for that little child cannot fade away from his brother’s heart.

A great deal is said and written in these days, pro and con, of the intellectual capacity of the freedmen and of the probability that they can be made good citizens. Enough has not yet been said or written of their moral qualities. I offer this simple story of one negro’s faithful love in illustration of much that might be said.