Bricks Without Straw Part 54

"MULBERRY HILL, Wednesday, March 5, 1873.

"Miss MOLLIE AINSLIE:

"Through the kindness of our good friend, Captain Pardee, I send you this letter, together with an instrument, the date of which you will observe is the same as that of my former letter. You will see that I have regarded myself only as a trustee and a beneficiary, during life, of your self-denying generosity. The day after I received your gift, I gave the plantation back to you, reserving only the pleasing privilege of holding it as my own while I lived.

The opportunity which I then hoped might some time come has now arrived. I can write to you now without constraint or bitterness.

My pride has not gone; but I am proud of you, as a relative proud as myself, and far braver and more resolute than I have ever been.

"My end is near, and I am anxious to see you once more. The dear old plantation is just putting on its spring garment of beauty.

Will you not come and look upon your gift in its glory, and gladden the heart of an old woman whose eyes long to look upon your face before they see the brightness of the upper world?

"Come, and let me say to the people of Horsford that you are one of us--a Richards worthier than the worthiest they have known!

"Yours, with sincerest love,

"HESTER RICHARDS LE MOYNE.

"P. S.--I ought to say that, although Hesden is one of the witnesses to my will, he knows nothing of its contents. He does not know that I have written to you, but I am sure he will be glad to see you.

"H. R. LE M."

III.

Mrs. Le Moyne received the following letter in reply: "March 15, 1873.

"MY DEAR MRS. LE MOYNB:

"Your letter gave me far greater pleasure than you can imagine.

But you give me much more credit for doing what I did than I have any right to receive. While I know that I would do the same now, to give you pleasure and save you pain, as readily as I did it then from a worse motive, I must confess to you that I did it, almost solely I fear, to show you that a Yankee girl, even though a teacher of a colored school, could be as proud as a Southern lady. I did it to humiliate _you._ Please forgive me; but it is true, and I cannot bear to receive your praise for what really deserves censure.

I have been ashamed of myself very many times for this unworthy motive for an act which was in itself a good one, but which I am glad to have done, even so unworthily.

"I thank you for your love, which I hope I may better deserve hereafter. I inclose the paper which you sent me, and hope you will destroy it at once. I could not take the property you have so kindly devised to me, and you can readily see what trouble I should have in bestowing it where it should descend as an inheritance.

"Do not think that I need it at all. I had a few thousands which I invested in the great West when I left the South, three years ago, in order to aid those poor colored people at Red Wing, whose sufferings appealed so strongly to my sympathies. By good fortune a railroad has come near me, a town has been built up near by and grown into a city, as in a moment, so that my venture has been blessed; and though I have given away some, the remainder has increased in value until I feel myself almost rich. My life has been very pleasant, and I hope not altogether useless to others.

"I am sorry that I cannot do as you wish. I know that you will believe that I do not now act from any un-worthy motive, of from any lack of appreciation of your kindness, or doubt of your sincerity.

Thanking you again for your kind words and hearty though undeserved praises, I remain,

"Yours very truly,

"MOLLIE AINSLIE."

"Hesden," said Mrs. Le Moyne to her son, as he sat by her bedside while she read this letter, "will you not write to Miss Ainslie?"

"What!" said he, looking up from his book in surprise. "Do you mean it?"

"Indeed I do, my son," she answered, with a glance of tenderness.

"I tried to prepare you a surprise, and wrote for her to come and visit us; but she will not come at my request. I am afraid you are the only one who can overcome her stubbornness.

"I fear that I should have no better success," he answered.

Nevertheless, he went to his desk, and, laying out some paper, he placed upon it, to hold it in place while he wrote, a great black hoof with a silver shoe, bearing on the band about its crown the word "Midnight." After many attempts he wrote as follows:

"Miss MOLLIE AINSLIE:

"Will you permit me to come and see you, upon the conditions imposed when I saw you last?

"HESDEN LE MOYNE."

IV.

While Hesden waited for an answer to this letter, which had been forwarded through Captain Pardee, he received one from Jordan Jackson. It was somewhat badly spelled, but he made it out to be as follows:

"EUPOLIA, KANSAS, Sunday, March 23, 1873.

"MY DEAR LE MOYNE:

"I have been intending to write to you for a long time, but have been too busy. You never saw such a busy country as this. It just took me off my legs when I first came out here. I thought I knew what it meant to 'git up and git.' n.o.body ever counted me hard to start or slow to move, down in that country; but here--G.o.d bless you, Le Moyne, I found I wasn't half awake! Work? Lord! Lord! how these folks do work and tear around! It don't seem so very hard either, because when they have anything to do they don't do nothing else, and when have nothing to do they make a business of that, too.

"Then, they use all sorts of machinery, and never do anything by hand-power that a horse can be made to do, in any possible way.

The horses do all the ploughing, sowing, hoeing, harvesting, and, in fact, pretty much all the farm-work; while the man sits up on a sulky-seat and fans himself with a palm-leaf hat. So that, according to my reckoning, one man here counts for about as much as four in our country.

"I have moved from where I first settled, which was in a county adjoining this. I found that my notion of just getting a plantation to settle down on, where I could make a living and be out of harm's way, wasn't the thing for this country, nohow. A man who comes here must pitch in and count for all he's worth. It's a regular ground-scuffle, open to all, and everybody choosing his own hold.

Morning, noon, and night the world is awake and alive; and if a man isn't awake too, it tramps on right over him and wipes him out, just as a stampeded buffalo herd goes over a hunter's camp.

"Everybody is good-natured and in dead earnest. Every one that comes is welcome, and no questions asked. Kin and kin-in-law don't count worth a cuss. n.o.body stops to ask where you come from, what's your politics, or whether you've got any religion. They don't care, if you only mean 'business.' They don't make no fuss over n.o.body.

There ain't much of what we call 'hospitality' at the South, making a grand flourish and a big lay-out over anybody; but they just take it, as a matter of course, that you are all right and square and honest, and as good as anybody till you show up diferent. There ain't any big folks nor any little ones. Of course, there are rich folks and poor ones, but the poor are just as respectable as the rich, feel just as big, and take up just as much of the road. There ain't any crawling nor cringing here. Everybody stands up straight, and don't give nor take any sa.s.s from anybody else. The West takes right hold of every one that comes into it and makes him a part of itself, instead of keeping him outside in the cold to all eternity, as the South does the strangers who go there.

"I don't know as you'd like it; but if any one who has been kept down and put on, as poor men are at the South, can muster pluck enough to get away and come here, he'll think he's been born over again, or I'm mistaken. n.o.body asks your politics. I don't reckon anybody knew mine for a year. The fact is, we're all too busy to fuss with our neighbors or cuss them about their opinions. I've heard more politics in a country store in Horsford in a day than I've heard here in Eupolia in a year--and we've got ten thousand people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I wouldn't go back and live in that d--d hornet's nest that I felt so bad about leaving--not for the whole State, with a slice of the next one throwed in.

"I've meant to tell you, a half dozen times, about that little Yankee gal that used to be at Red Wing; but I've been half afraid to, for fear you would get mad about it. My wife said that when she came away there was a heap of talk about you being sorter 'sweet'

on the 'n.i.g.g.e.r-school-marm.' I knew that she was sick at your house when I was there, and so, putting the two together, I 'llowed that for once there might be some truth in a Horsford rumor. I reckon it must have been a lie, though; or else she 'kicked' you, which she wouldn't stand a speck about doing, even if you were the President, if you didn't come up to her notion. It's a mighty high notion, too, let me tell you; and the man that gits up to it'll have to climb.

Bet your life on that!

"But that's all no matter. I reckon you'll be glad to know how she's gettin' on out here, anyhow. She come here not a great while after I did; but, bless your stars, she wasn't as green as I, not by any manner of means. She didn't want to hide out in a quiet part of the country, where the world didn't turn around but once in two days. No, sir! She was keen--just as keen as a razor-blade.

She run her eye over the map and got inside the railroad projects somehow, blessed if I know how; and then she just went off fifty miles out of the track others was taking, and bought up all the land she could pay for, and got trusted for all the credit that that brought her; and here she is now, with Eupolia building right up on her land, and just a-busting up her quarter-sections into city lots, day after day, till you can't rest.

"Just think on't, Moyne! It's only three years ago and she was teaching a n.i.g.g.e.r school, there in Red Wing; and now, G.o.d bless you, here she is, just a queen in a city that wasn't nowhere then.

I tell you, she's a team! Just as proud as Lucifer, and as wide-awake as a hornet in July. She beats anything I ever did see. She's given away enough to make two or three, and I'll be hanged if it don't seem to me that every cent she gives just brings her in a dollar.

The people here just worship her, as they have a good right to; but she ain't a bit stuck up. She's got a whole lot of them Red Wing n.i.g.g.e.rs here, and has settled them down and put them to work, and made them get on past all expectation. She just tells right out about her having taught a n.i.g.g.e.r school down in Horsford, and n.o.body seems to think a word on't. In fact, I b'lieve they rather like her better for it.

"I heard about her soon after she came here, but, to tell the truth, I thought I was a little better than a 'n.i.g.g.e.r-teacher,' if I was in Kansas. So I didn't mind anything about her till Eupolia began to grow, and I came to think about going into trading again. Then I came over, just to look around, you know. I went to see the little lady, feeling mighty 'shamed, you may bet, and more than half of the notion that she wouldn't care about owning that she'd ever seen me before. But, Lord love you! I needn't have had any fear about that. n.o.body ever had a heartier welcome than she gave me, until she found that I had been living only fifty miles away for a year and hadn't let her know. Then she come down on me--Whew! I thought there was going to be a blizzard, sure enough.

"'Jordan Jackson,' said she, 'you just go home and bring that wife and them children here, where they can see something and have a rest.'

"I had to do it, and they just took to staying in Eupolia here nigh about all the time. So I thought I might as well come too; and here I am, doing right well, and would be mighty glad to see an old friend if you could make up your mind to come this way. We are all well, and remember you as the kindest of all old friends in our time of need.

"I never wrote as long a letter as this before, and never 'llow to do it again.