Colonel Carter of Cartersville | Page 3

punching
the fire, brushing the sparks from the pile of plates, and testing the
temperature of the claret lovingly with the palms of his hands.
He is perhaps fifty years of age, tall and slightly built. His iron gray
hair is brushed straight back from his forehead, overlapping his collar
behind. His eyes are deep-set and twinkling; nose prominent; cheeks
slightly sunken; brow wide and high; and chin and jaw strong and
marked. His moustache droops over a firm, well-cut mouth and unites
at its ends with a gray goatee which rests on his shirt front.
Like most Southerners living away from great cities his voice is soft
and low, and tempered with a cadence that is delicious.
He wears a black broadcloth coat,--a double-breasted garment,--with
similar colored waistcoat and trousers, a turn-down collar, a shirt of
many plaits which is under-starched and over-wrinkled but always
clean, large cuffs very much frayed, a narrow black or white tie, and
low shoes with white cotton stockings.
This black broadcloth coat, by the way, is quite the most interesting
feature of the colonel's costume. So many changes are constantly made
in its general make-up that you never quite believe it is the same
ill-buttoned, shiny garment until you become familiar with its
possibilities.
When the colonel has a funeral or other serious matter on his mind, this
coat is buttoned close up under his chin showing only the upper edge of
his white collar, his gaunt throat and the stray end of a black cravat.
When he is invited to dinner he buttons it lower down, revealing as
well a bit of his plaited shirt, and when it is a wedding this old stand-by
is thrown wide open discovering a stiff, starched, white waistcoat with
ivory buttons and snowy neck-cloth.
These several make-ups used once to surprise me, and I often found
myself insisting that the looseness and grace with which this garment
flapped about the colonel's thin legs was only possible in a brand-new

coat having all the spring and lightness of youth in its seams. I was
always mistaken. I had only to look at the mis-mated buttons and the
raveled edge of the lining fringing the tails. It was the same coat.
The colonel wore to-night the lower-button style with the white tie. It
was indeed the adjustment of this necessary article which had
consumed the five minutes passed in his dressing-room, slightly
lengthened by the time necessary to trim his cuffs--a little nicety which
he rarely overlooked and which it mortified him to forget.
What a frank, generous, tender-hearted fellow he is: happy as a boy;
hospitable to the verge of beggary; enthusiastic as he is visionary;
simple as he is genuine. A Virginian of good birth, fair education, and
limited knowledge of the world and of men, proud of his ancestry,
proud of his State, and proud of himself; believing in states' rights,
slavery, and the Confederacy; and away down in the bottom of his soul
still clinging to the belief that the poor white trash of the earth includes
about everybody outside of Fairfax County.
With these antecedents it is easy to see that his "reconstruction" is as
hopeless as that of the famous Greek frieze, outwardly whole andyet
always a patchwork. So he chafes continually under what he believes to
be the tyranny and despotism of an undefined autocracy, which, in a
general way, he calls "the Government," but which really refers to the
distribution of certain local offices in his own immediate vicinity.
When he hands you his card it bears this unabridged inscription:--
Colonel George Fairfax Carter, of Carter Hall, Cartersville, Virginia.
He omits "United States of America," simply because it would add
nothing to his identity or his dignity.
* * * * *
"There's Fitz," said the colonel as a sharp double knock sounded at the
outer gate; and the next instant a stout, thick-set, round-faced man of
forty, with merry, bead-like eyes protected by big-bowed spectacles,

pushed open the door, and peered in good-humoredly.
The colonel sprang forward and seized him by both shoulders.
"What the devil do you mean, Fitz, by comin' ten minutes late? Don't
you know, suh, that the burnin' of a canvasback is a crime?
"Stuck in the snow? Well, I'll forgive you this once, but Chad won't.
Give me yo' coat--bless me! it is as wet as a setter dog. Now put yo'
belated carcass into this chair which I have been warmin' for you, right
next to my dearest old friend, the Major. Major, Fitz!--Fitz, the Major!
Take hold of each other. Does my heart good to get you both together.
Have you brought a copy of the prospectus of our railroad? You know I
want the Major in with us on the groun' flo'. But