Sally Dows | Page 6

turpentine knots was filling the train with
its stinging fragrance. The elder of the two Northern passengers, with
sharp New England angles in his face, impatiently glanced at his watch.
"Of all created shiftlessness, this beats everything! Why couldn't we
have taken in enough wood to last the ten miles farther to the terminus
when we last stopped? And why in thunder, with all this firing up, can't
we go faster?"
The younger passenger, whose quiet, well-bred face seemed to indicate
more discipline of character, smiled.
"If you really wish to know and as we've only ten miles farther to
go--I'll show you WHY. Come with me."
He led the way through the car to the platform and leaped down. Then
he pointed significantly to the rails below them. His companion started.
The metal was scaling off in thin strips from the rails, and in some
places its thickness had been reduced a quarter of an inch, while in
others the projecting edges were torn off, or hanging in iron shreds, so
that the wheels actually ran on the narrow central strip. It seemed
marvelous that the train could keep the track.
"NOW you know why we don't go more than five miles an hour, and--
are thankful that we don't," said the young traveler quietly.
"But this is disgraceful!--criminal!" ejaculated the other nervously.
"Not at their rate of speed," returned the younger man. "The crime
would be in going faster. And now you can understand why a good deal
of the other progress in this State is obliged to go as slowly over their
equally decaying and rotten foundations. You can't rush things here as
we do in the North."

The other passenger shrugged his shoulders as they remounted the
platform, and the train moved on. It was not the first time that the two
fellow-travelers had differed, although their mission was a common
one. The elder, Mr. Cyrus Drummond, was the vice-president of a large
Northern land and mill company, which had bought extensive tracts of
land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the
consulting surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's
opinions were a good deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a
self-satisfied and righteous ignorance of the actual conditions and
limitations of the people with whom he was to deal; while the younger
man, who had served through the war with distinction, retained a
soldier's respect and esteem for his late antagonists, with a
conscientious and thoughtful observation of their character. Although
he had resigned from the army, the fact that he had previously
graduated at West Point with high honors had given him preferment in
this technical appointment, and his knowledge of the country and its
people made him a valuable counselor. And it was a fact that the
country people had preferred this soldier with whom they had once
personally grappled to the capitalist they had never known during the
struggle.
The train rolled slowly through the woods, so slowly that the fragrant
pine smoke from the engine still hung round the windows of the cars.
Gradually the "clearings" became larger; they saw the distant white
wooden colonnades of some planter's house, looking still opulent and
pretentious, although the fence of its inclosure had broken gaps, and the
gate sagged on its single hinge.
Mr. Drummond sniffed at this damning record of neglect and
indifference. "Even if they were ruined, they might still have spent a
few cents for nails and slats to enable them to look decent before folks,
and not parade their poverty before their neighbors," he said.
"But that's just where you misunderstand them, Drummond," said
Courtland, smiling. "They have no reason to keep up an attitude
towards their neighbors, who still know them as 'Squire' so-and-so,
'Colonel' this and that, and the 'Judge,'--owners of their vast but

crippled estates. They are not ashamed of being poor, which is an
accident."
"But they are of working, which is DELIBERATION," interrupted
Drummond. "They are ashamed to mend their fences themselves, now
that they have no slaves to do it for them."
"I doubt very much if some of them know how to drive a nail, for the
matter of that," said Courtland, still good-humoredly, "but that's the
fault of a system older than themselves, which the founders of the
Republic retained. We cannot give them experience in their new
condition in one day, and in fact, Drummond, I am very much afraid
that for our purposes--and I honestly believe for THEIR good--we must
help to keep them for the present as they are."
"Perhaps," said Drummond sarcastically, "you would like to reinstate
slavery?"
"No. But I should like to reinstate the MASTER. And not for HIS sake
alone, but for freedom's sake and OURS. To be plain: since I have
taken up