"That"s right, I believe," said Zebedee; "but I must say I agree with Doctor Green, and think under the circ.u.mstances that a short distance will help the acoustics."
The five song birds formed a half-circle a few feet from us, and, led by the sa.s.sy black one, poured forth their souls in melody. The leader seemed to be leader because he was the only one with shoes on. His shoes were ladies" b.u.t.toned shoes, much too long and on the wrong feet, which gave their proud possessor a peculiar twisted appearance. Having good black legs of his own, he needed no stockings.
"It must be a great convenience to be born with black legs," sighed Dee.
"You can go bare-legged when you"ve a mind to, and if you should be so prissy as to wear stockings, when they get holes in them they wouldn"t show."
The following is the song that the little boys sang, choosing it evidently from a keen sense of humor and appreciation of fun:
"How yer git on wid yer washin"?
"Berry well," yer say?
Better charge dem Yankee big price Fo" dey gits away.
Dey is come hyar fer de wedder, Pockets full ob money.
Some one got ter do dey washin", Glad it"s me, my honey.
Wen I ca"y in de basket, Eb"y week I laff Des ter see dem plunkin" out Dollah an" a ha"f.
Co"se I ain"t cha"ge home fo"ks dat, Eben cuff an" collah, Tro" in wid dey udder clo"s-- All wash fer a dollah.
Soon de Yankees will be gone, An" jes de po" fo"ke here; Cha"ge dem, honey, all yer kin Ter las" yer trou" de year."
When they finished this song, which was given in a high, peculiar, chanting tune, the little boy of the shoes began to dance, cutting the pigeon wing as well as it had ever been done on a vaudeville stage, I am sure, while the other four patted with such spirit and in such excellent time that Zebedee got up and danced a little _pas seul_, and Mrs. Green declared it was all she could do to keep from joining him.
"I learned to jig long before I did to waltz," she said, "and I find myself returning to the wild when I hear good patting."
"So did I," I said; "Tweedles can pat as well as a darky. We will have a dancing match some day, too."
The minstrels were remunerated beyond their dreams of avarice, and cantered off joyfully to buy groun"-nut cakes from the old mauma on the corner, where she sat with her basket of goodies on her lap, waving her palmetto fan, between dozes, to scare away the flies.
"Who"s the old cove over there with the Venus de Milo effect of arms?"
asked Zebedee, pointing to a much-mutilated statue near the Meeting Street entrance of the park.
"Why, that"s William Pitt. Louis Gaillard told me we would find it here," explained Dee. "He said it was erected in seventeen-sixty-nine by the citizens of Charleston in honor of his promoting the repeal of the Stamp Act. His arm got knocked off by a cannon ball in the siege of Charleston."
"This over here is Valentine"s bust of Henry Timrod," called Dum from a very interesting-looking bronze statue that had attracted her artistic eye all the time the little nigs were singing.
"Timrod! Oh, Edwin, he is the one I am most interested in in all South Carolina," and Mrs. Green joined Dum to view the bust from all angles.
Of course, all of us followed.
""Through clouds and through sunshine, in peace and in war, amid the stress of poverty and the storm of civil strife, his soul never faltered,"" read Mrs. Green from the inscription on the monument of one of the truest poets of the South. ""To his poetic mission he was faithful to the end. In life and in death he was "Not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."""
I whipped out my little notebook and began feverishly to copy the tribute. I found Mrs. Green doing the same thing in a similar little book.
""Not disobedient to the heavenly vision"! I should like to have such a thing on my monument. I used to think that just so I could make a lot of money I wouldn"t mind what kind of stuff I wrote; but now I do want to live up to an ideal," she exclaimed to me. "Do you feel that way?"
"I don"t know whether I do or not. I don"t believe I could stand the stress of having my ma.n.u.script rejected time after time and the storm of returning it again and again. I am afraid I"d be willing to have written the Elsie books just to have made as much money as they say the author of them has made. I know that sounds pretty bad, but----"
"I understand, my dear. I fancy my feeling as I do is something that has come to me just because the making of money is not of as much importance to me as it used to be. There was a time in my girlhood when I would have written Elsie books or even worse with joy just to make the money."
"I can"t quite believe it. You look so spirituelle, and I believe you have always been obedient to the heavenly vision."
"Look on this side," said my new friend, laughing and blushing in such a girlish way that it seemed ridiculous to talk of her girlhood as though it had pa.s.sed. "This inscription is more utilitarian:
""This memorial has been erected with the proceeds of the recent sale of a very large edition of the author"s poems, by the Timrod Memorial a.s.sociation, of South Carolina."
"and then:
""Genius, like Egypt"s Monarch, timely wise, Erects its own memorial ere it dies."
"Oh, Edwin, look! Here is the ode that mother sings to little Mildred, here on the back of the monument. Mildred is my baby, you know," she said, in explanation to us, "and mother sings the most charming things to her."
"Please read it to us, Molly; I didn"t bring my gla.s.ses."
That is what Professor Green said, but when we had known him longer we found out he was not so very dependent on gla.s.ses that he could not read an inscription carved in one-inch letters, but that he always made his wife read aloud when he could. When she read poetry, it was music, indeed. It seems he first realized what he felt for her when she read the "Blessed Damosel" in his cla.s.s at college. He had been her instructor, as he had Miss Ball"s.
"This ode of Timrod"s was sung for the first time on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead at Magnolia Cemetery, here in Charleston, in sixty-seven, so I am told."
No wonder Professor Edwin wanted his Molly to read the poem! Her voice was the most wonderfully sympathetic and singularly fitted to the reading of poetry that I have ever heard. I longed for my father to hear her read. He could make me weep over poetry when I would go dry-eyed through all kinds of trouble, and now Mrs. Green had the same power:
""Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause; Though yet no marble column craves The pilgrim here to pause.
""In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, And somewhere, waiting for its birth, The shaft is in the stone!
""Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms.
""Small tributes! but your shades will smile More proudly on these wreaths today, Than when some cannon-moulded pile Shall overlook this bay.
""Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned!""
We were all very quiet for a moment and then St. Michael"s bells rang out six-thirty o"clock, and in spite of poetical emotions we knew the pangs of hunger were due and it was time for dinner.
We were to sit together at a larger table that evening at dinner, to the satisfaction of all of us.
"It is a mutual mash," declared Dee, when we went to our room to don dinner clothes. "The Greens seem to like us, and don"t we just adore the Greens, though!"
"I believe I like him as much as I do her," said Dum. "Of course, he is not so paintable. She makes me uncertain whether I want to be a sculptor or a painter. I have been thinking how she would look in marble, and while she has good bones, all right, and would show up fine in marble, she would certainly lose out if she had to be pure white and could not have that lovely flush and those blue, blue eyes and that red-gold hair."
"I don"t see why you talk about Mrs. Green"s bones!" exclaimed Dee, rather indignantly. "I can"t see that her bones are the least bit prominent."
"Well, goose, I mean her proportions. Beauty, to my mind, does not amount to a row of pins if it is only skin deep; it"s got to go clean through to the bones."
"Well, I don"t believe it. I bet you Mrs. Green"s skeleton would look just like yours or mine or Miss Plympton"s or anybody else"s."
"You flatter yourself."
"Well, girls," I cried, feeling that pacific intervention was in order, "there"s no way to prove or disprove except by X-ray photography so long as we have Mrs. Green on this mundane sphere. I certainly would not have a row over it. Mrs. Green"s bones are very pleasingly covered, to my way of thinking."
"They are beautiful bones, or their being well covered would not make any difference. Just see here"--and Dum began rapidly sketching a skull and then piling up hair on it and putting in a nose and lips, etc.--"can"t you see if the skull is out of proportion with a jimber jaw and a bulging forehead that all the pretty skin on earth with hair like gold in the sunset would not make it beautiful?"
"Well, I know one thing," put in Dee: "I know you could take a hunk of clay and start to make a mouse and then change your mind and keep on piling clay on, and shaping it, and patting it, and moulding it until you had turned it into a cat. If you can do that much, I should like to know why the Almighty couldn"t do the same thing. Couldn"t He start with chunky bones, and then fill them out and mould the flesh, pinching in here and plumping out there until He had made a tall and slender person?"