Hallie Erminie Rives

“ He forced himself into the thicket from where he again heard a low sound—writhing, twisting his way through the thick, hindering stems, and there before him, in a little opening, he saw what appeared to be a prostrate human form.
He sprang toward it and drew the clinging boughs aside to let the moonlight in. Then he saw it was the figure of a woman. Two ghastly gashes, edged with crimson, stained the white flesh of her throat.
The awful meaning of the crime, as he thought of the headlong haste of the flying man, surged over Holmes. ”

“ All nature was in glad, gay earnest. Busy times, corn in blossom rustling in the breeze, blackberries were ripe, morning-glories under foot, the trumpet flower flaring above some naked girdled tree. Open meadows full of sun where the hot bee sucks the clover, the grass tops gather [Pg 112] purple, and ox-eyed daisies thrive in wide unshadowed acres.
“Just a year ago since I came to the South,” mused Elliott Harding, as he walked back and forth in his room, the deep bay window of which overlooked a lawn noticeably neat and having a representative character of its own. ”

“ Old and young women, as well as men, the well-to-do and the poor, were there. Neat, nice-looking young people, with happy, intelligent faces, kept time to the waltz and the cotillion, which were the order of the day. As the graceful figures animated the arbor, far away in the depths of the wood could be heard echoes of light-hearted talk and happy laughter. The very genius of frolic seemed to preside over the gathering.
Elliott stood near one end of the arbor and drew a long breath of pure delight at this, to him, truly strange and delightful pastoral. ”

“ At length, when Dorothy was born it was at the price of her mother’s [Pg 102] life. This was a terrific blow to the husband and father. He was inconsolable with grief. The child was sent to a kinsman for a few months, after which time Mr. Carr felt that he must have her ever with him. To him there was nothing so absorbing as the tender care of Dorothy. He was very prideful of her. He watched her daily growth and then, all at once, while he scarcely realized that the twilight of childhood was passing, the dawn came, and, like the rose vine by his doorway, she burst into bloom. ”

“ Why does the world look with such disapproval on self confidence? When a person is endowed with a vigorous brain, there is no better way for him to face the world than to start out with a full respect for his own talents, and unbounded faith in the possibilities that lie within him.
Elliott Harding’s belief in himself was not small, and the consciousness of his ability led him to work diligently for both honor and profit. ”

“ Though never again seeing his southern home, where he had planned to live his life in peace and useful happiness, it had held to the end a most sacred place in his memory—a memory which he truly hoped [Pg 15] would be transmittted to the heart and mind of his son. It was his last wish that the old homestead should remain as it was—closed to strangers—that no living being, unless of his own blood, should inhabit that abode of love and sorrow, that it be kept from the careless profanation of aliens. ”

“ Has the frequency of mob violence no alarming indications for you? Directed, as it more often is, against our negro population, instead of making better citizens of the depraved and deterring them from crime, it has a tendency to cultivate a race prejudice and stir up the worst of human passions. It is inculcating a disregard of law because it ignores that greatest principle of freedom—that every man is to be considered innocent until proven to be guilty by competent testimony.
“Judge Lynch is the enemy of law and strikes at the very foundation of order and civil government. ”

“ The earth smiled its gladness, and the laughing waters prattled of the kindness of the sun. When the dappled softness of the sky gave some earnest of its mood, a brisk south wind arose and the blessed rain came driving cold, yet most refreshing. ”

“ In the drama of all humanity, there is not a [Pg 82] figure more pathetic or touching than the figure of the slave, who followed his master to the battle-field, marched, thirsted and hungered with him, nursed, served and cheered him—that master who was fighting to keep him in slavery. This subject comprises a whole vast field of its own and if the history of it is ever written, it will be written in the literature of the south, for here alone lies the knowledge and the love. ”

“ As the volume of general applause lessened, the cry of “Holmes! Holmes!” was kept up with an insistence which might have induced a less capable man to respond. Nor would the enthused throng be quieted until John Holmes mounted the platform.
“It had not been my purpose, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “to address you to-day upon the subject touched upon by Mr. Harding, but, since he has modestly lectured us on our barbarity, I must say a word in defense of the South and southerners. He intimates that the curse of slavery still rests upon the southern states. ”

“ Nature had fashioned Elliott Harding [Pg 25] when in one of her kindly moods. She had endowed him with many gifts; good birth, sound health of body and mind, industry, resolution and ambition. Besides possessing these goodly qualifications, he stood six feet in height, and in breadth of shoulder, depth of chest, sturdiness of legs and arms, he had few superiors. There was, too, a nobility of proportion in his forehead that indicated high breeding and broad intellectuality, and his face was full of force and refinement. ”

“ I know that mingled with the love and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is yet in her heart all the love and reliance of childhood itself. When she is clinging to you the reliance of baby, girl and woman in one is upon you. All this I [Pg 150] have known since first I met you in your home life.”
With an air of perfect patience the old man remained mute, keeping his eyes cast down as though, in his habit of passive endurance, it was all one to him if it never came his turn to speak.
“Feeling that,” Elliott went on, “I have waited as long as it is in the nature of man to do. ”

“ The men doubting their senses, gazed at each other curiously, then they looked at Elliott again. With indescribable speed a spirit flew from mind to mind, seizing them all alike. Then without a word, silently, and as though abashed, they turned away. Elliott was left alone, surprised at his sudden triumph, gazing with a curious stare at the frowning walls of the dingy jail. ”

“ For a time they stood and looked at the scene of devastation, the ruins covered with abundant ivy that gleamed and trembled in the light of the sun. Then Elliott said slowly:
“My father’s wish is now beyond the reach of possible denial. Nature has destroyed it, just as he wished it should be done.” ”

“ So it is to the soldier of the ‘Lost Cause’ that all honor and praise must be given for the present prosperity of the land. And it becomes us as heirs of his sacrifice and of the fruits of his toil, to lend our every effort to the full garnering of the harvest.
“As the giant West has sprung up from the sap of the East, so must the South rise up by strength drawn from the soil of the North. ”

“ The thistle and the pale poppy grew in fragrant tangle with the wild ivy and Virginia creeper, and wilful weeds thrust their way across the gravel walks.
Sadly old residents saw the place approaching the last stages of decay—saw this house, once the pride of the town, in its decrepitude and loneliness the plaything of the elements.
“A noble wreck! It must have a history of some kind,” strangers would remark.
“Ah, that it has, and a sombre one it is!” any man or woman living near would [Pg 11] have answered, as they recalled the history of Richard Harding’s home. ”

“ Mid the stormy scenes a quarter of a century ago, when the bugle called the sons of the south to war, they went, leaving their wives, mothers, children and homes in the hands of the slaves who, though their personal interests were on the other side, were true to their trust, protected the helpless women and children and earned for them their support by the sweat of their own brow, and with a patience unparalleled left the question of freedom to the arbitrament of war. Their behavior under manifold temptations was always kindly and respectful, and never one raised an arm to molest the helpless. ”

“ Very soon after the feast was ended, Elliott saw John Holmes and a party of men coming toward him.
To a casual reader of the human countenance, it would be evident at a first glance that Holmes was a man of no small worldly knowledge, and as he now appeared with his companions one could discern that this superiority was recognized by them and that he held a certain position of authority, in fact that he was a man accustomed to rule rather than be ruled. ”

“ Even the veterans of the community seemed to enjoy the spirit of the sport. Elliott particularly noted the rapt enjoyment of a group of old men silver haired, ruddy skinned, keen eyed, who once seen, remained penciled upon the gazer’s memory—each head a worthy sketch. ”

“ But when a man is deprived of his liberty by incarceration in the jail and thus shorn of his power of self protection, it is the acme of dishonor and cowardice to wrest him from the grasp of the law and deprive him of his life upon evidence that possibly might not convict him before a jury. ”

“ The South will advance under it.”
“I wish I could believe it; the chances are all against us. Why did you ever want to take such a risk?” and the air of the little, slender, determined maiden marked the uncompromising rebel.
Elliott deliberately arose. His face was earnest and full of a strange power.
“It hurts me to displease you, Dorothy, but I must direct my own will and conscience. To hold your respect and my own, I must be a man,—not a compromise.” ”

“ The soft south wind waved the white locks fringing his temples. One shaking hand lay helplessly on the arm of the chair, the other [Pg 208] held loose grasp of a remotely-dated family monthly. His gray eyes, bright and clear in spite of their fine, crape-like setting of wrinkles, were absently turned to the sky. They kindled as Elliott laid a hand gently upon his shoulder. ”

“ The unpicturesque things are those in which man’s artificial selection reigns supreme.
Had Elliott’s order-loving mother been with him, she would have observed that this park was ill-maintained, and that she would dearly love to have the thinning out and regulating of its trees. Whereas, to his less orderly fancy, it presented a most agreeable appearance. There was Nature’s charm wholly undisturbed by man, and what perhaps added the finishing [Pg 86] touch to his satisfaction was the exceeding number of maples, in the perfect maturity of their growth. ”

“ The kind old eyes would follow her with pathetic eagerness, not reproaching or reproving, only always questioning: “Is this to be the man who shall open the new world’s doors for her; who shall give her the first glimpse of that wonderful joy called love?” ”

“ The temper of the people might be seen in the burst of rage that swept over the [Pg 211] crowd when the atrocious deed was described.
Elliott Harding, with his usual aspect of dignity, had schooled his face into a cold passiveness, but though outwardly calm, his pulse was throbbing with the fierceness of fever beats. A stranger entering the courtroom would never have selected him from the group of men as the one whose life had been crushed out by the object of this trial. ”

“ A time will come when our southern governors will order a special term of Superior Court to try speedily a criminal and invariably fix the death penalty for the offense which is largely responsible for lynching. How much graver, deeper, more human now, must seem to you our tragedies and our defense. We would indeed welcome a worthier mode or the day when there will be no such tragedies.”
That night as the sheriff and his family sat in their lighted room, a man outside [Pg 230] kept patient tryst, every fiber of his being directly concerned in the slightest movement or sound. ”

“ The world prophesied that his widow would soon forget the wishes of the dead, but as witness that she had thus far kept faith, there stood the closed, abandoned home, upon which Nature alone laid a destroying hand. ”

“ Our future with all its limitless possibilities—this future which is to warm the great breast of the business world toward us, this future which shall shower upon us the fullness of earth—is all with you. ”

“ We are as mindful as others of the dangerous tendency of resorting to lawlessness, but strangers cannot understand the situation as well as those who are personally familiar with it and have suffered by it. It is much to be regretted, of course, that lynchings occur, but it is far more to be regretted that there are so many occasions for them. When the sanctity of woman is violated, man, if man he be, cannot but choose to avenge it. If the villain did not commit the crime for which this penalty is inflicted, then we would not be inflamed to summary vengeance. ”

“ She cherished a bitter resentment for the slaveholders, vowing that it was barbarous and inhuman to own human beings as her husband and neighbors did. Though expressing pity for the poor, simple, dependent creatures, she did little [Pg 13] to make their tasks more healthful and reasonable ones, or to render them more capable and contented.
Her baby’s nurse was the one servant of her household who met with gracious treatment at her hands. This old slave came to her endowed with the womanly virtues of honor, self-respect and humility. ”

“ More than one thousand human lives forfeited to Judge Lynch form the South’s record for the past ten years. What a horrible record! It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness can exist in communities supposed to be civilized. ”