Hampton

“ Hampton scarcely noted this marvellous change; to him it was no uncommon spectacle. He pushed his way through the noisy throng with eyes ever watchful for the faces. His every motion was that of a man who had fully decided upon his course. Through the widely opened doors of the Occidental streams of blue and red shirted men were constantly flowing in and out ”

“ Such a home is a beacon-light in the community to diffuse intelligence and the spirit of order and progress. That is what Hampton is doing. It is building homes and schools all through the South. What a cloud of witnesses we should have, could we summon those seven hundred graduates, each one bringing the implements of his trade—the carpenter with his saw, the blacksmith with his hammer, the harnessmaker with his knife, the farmer with his hoe! What a long line there would be of the graduates alone! ”

“ Hampton slowly picked his way back through the darkness down the silent road, his only guide those dim yellow lights flickering in the distance. He walked soberly, his head bent slightly forward, absorbed in thought. Suddenly he paused, and swore savagely, his disgust at the situation bursting all bounds; yet when he arrived opposite the beam of light streaming invitingly forth from the windows of the first saloon, he was whistling softly, his head held erect, his cool eyes filled with reckless daring.
It was Saturday night, and the mining town was already alive. ”

“ Hampton Roads is not the Champs-Elysées of the South, but a long wet stretch of track east of Virginia,—the Midway Plaisance of the Salted Sea. The Merrimac steered for the Cumberland, rammed her, and the Cumberland sunk like a stove-lid, with all on board. ”

“ Hampton could scarcely refrain from forming a mental picture of the woman who would most naturally preside within so unpolished an abode—an angular, hard-featured, vinegar-tempered creature, firm settled in her prejudices and narrowed by her creed. Had the matter been left at that moment to his own decision, this glimpse of the house would have turned them both back, but the girl unhesitatingly pressed forward and turned defiantly in through the gateless opening. ”

“ It was not the soft greensward of Hampton Court—so soft that it almost resembled the richest velvet in the thickness of its texture—nor was it the beds of flowers, with their variegated hues, which encircled the foot of every tree, with rose-trees many feet in height, embracing most lovingly their trunks—nor even the enormous lime-trees, whose branches swept the earth like willows, offering a ready concealment for love or reflection beneath the shade of their foliage—it was none of these things for which Charles II. loved his palace of Hampton Court. ”

“ When the tumult had quieted a little, and Marie had partially recovered, Hugh managed to escape from the crush of excited people, and drove rapidly homeward.
The crowd, now thoroughly good-natured, drifted back into the streets of Meade, and then celebrated, in various ways, the noted event. Every man in the vast throng inquired of his neighbor, over and over, where he supposed Major Hampton was. ”

“ Beyond these a slender cleft, bordered by gnarled roots of low bushes, promised a somewhat easier and securer passage toward the summit. Hampton's face became deathly white as they began the perilous climb, but his hand remained steady, his foot sure, while the girl moved forward as if remaining unconscious of the presence of danger, apparently swayed by his dominant will to do whatsoever he bade her. More than once they tottered on the very brink, held to safety merely by desperate clutchings at rock or shrub, yet never once did the man loosen his guarding grasp of his companion. ”

“ Few of the older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers arrived from nowhere to install themselves—with no baggage to speak of—in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. ”

“ At Hampton I found the opportunity—in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries provided by the generous—to get training in the classroom and by practical touch with industrial life,—to learn thrift, economy, and push. I was surrounded by an atmosphere of business, Christian influence, and spirit of self-help, that seemed to have awakened every faculty in me, and caused me for the first time to realise what it meant to be a man instead of a piece of property. ”

“ Hampton was clothed in black, standing straight as an arrow, his shoulders squared, his head held proudly erect, while his cool gray eyes studied the face of the other as he had been accustomed to survey his opponents at the card-table. Brant looked the picture of a soldier on duty, trim, well built, erect, his resolute blue eyes never flinching from the steady gaze bent upon ham, his bronzed young face grave from the seriousness of his mission. Neither was a man to temporize, to mince words, or to withhold blows ”

“ We of the present Hampton, we who love this old place either because it is our home by inheritance or adoption must carry on and remember that we are its guardians and makers and that the Hampton of the future will be the sort of place we are making it today. ”

“ The effect of the whole, threaded by winding roads, shaded by trees, and interspersed with gardens and shrubs, is picturesque and practically convenient. The main value of Hampton, however, is found in what is done within these buildings—the teaching, the industries, the making of character. ”

“ Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. ”

“ The trustees were in session on Wednesday, the 22d, on which day also was held the first meeting of the graduates of Hampton Institute. There were assembled in the beautiful “Whittier Chapel,” on the upper floor of Virginia Hall, a large representation of the 277 who had gone out, most of them as teachers of their race. Of that whole number, not a complaint has been made. They have become good and useful citizens, maintaining the high moral tone of Hampton, and evidencing that growth in character which is the best witness to the existence of a true life within. ”

“ Hampton nodded.
“Beverly is a town north o' Salem. You can find Foster & Levett's wharf easy enough. Meet me on that wharf tomorrow night—say, eight o'clock.”
“Right, matey.”
“You have money?”
“Plenty. The world's a good place, so hurray! See you later.”
Hampton turned toward the road. Even if his worst fears were true, even if duty led him by the hard path, even if one had gone out of his life for ever—here another had come back into it with warmth of friendship. He was not minded to lose Job Warlock, as he had probably lost Nelly Barnes. ”

“ He was little inclined to admit, even to himself, that he had been fairly hit, yet the truth remained that this girl was beginning to interest him oddly. He admired her sturdy independence, her audacity of speech, her unqualified frankness. Mr. Hampton was a thoroughgoing sport, and no quality was quite so apt to appeal to him as dead gameness. ”

“ Hampton's gray eyes looked for a long moment fixedly into her darker ones, while the two took mental stock of each other. He realized the utter futility of any further argument, while she felt instinctively the cool, dominating strength of the man. ”

“ He ran up the steps to Hampton House, pushed open the broad, white door and entered the big colonial hallway. At the far end a cheerful fire was cracking in a generous chimney place, lighting up the dim gilt frames and dull canvases of the portraits of bygone Hilltonians that looked severely down from the walls. ”

“ The old town, extending from Poplar to Hammersmith, will be the nucleus, and the various railway lines will be the projecting rays.
There are still, however, some few nooks within reach of the metropolis which have not been be-villaged and be-terraced out of all look of rural charm, and the little village of Hampton, with its old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river, is one of them, in spite of the triple metropolitan waterworks on the one side, and the close vicinity on the other of Hampton Court, that well-loved resort of cockneydom. ”

“ In 1856 he was elected Commonwealth's attorney to the "game-cock town of Virginia," historic and picturesque old Hampton, which was the centre of a charming and cultivated society and which had already claimed him as her "bard." For as Henry Ellen he had contributed to various southern publications, his poems in "The Southern Literary Messenger" attracting much gratifying attention. ”

“ A mile or so distant was the place he called home, with a jeer in his heart at the word. He had no affection for it, or for the man who lived there; none received, none given. If he went on, he anticipated biting words, harsh words, a flame of anger rising in him against the dour and godly man who lived by the letter of the Scriptures and knew not the spirit which lay behind them.
Of his own will, Hampton would have avoided all this. He would have gone on to Beverly, where he knew that, welcome or not, certain work awaited him. Yet duty impelled him home. ”

“ I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.
After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Vermont. ”

“ During the thirty-six years of its history, Hampton has sent into the world about 1,200 graduates and 5,000 undergraduates, many of whom have taken with them the spark that has started many other Hamptons, large and small, among the Negroes of the South and the Indians of the West. Hampton's success, and indeed the success of any institution, depends not so much upon the scholastic attainments of its pupils as upon the work that those who have received its instruction accomplish. ”

“ Hampton is the head of Kennebecasis River navigation for steamboats; and as all the pleasant resorts just named are either on the river or near it, those who summer in this neighborhood will soon become familiar with the enjoyable scenery of the Kennebecasis. At Hampton-by-the-River, it should be added, there is a comfortable homelike hotel or stopping-place. The surroundings of the whole village are all picturesque, and such as conduce to pleasure in walks, drives and rambles. ”

“ Hampton rolled over and shoved his legs at the ragged hole. Movement cost him a good deal of pain, of course, though not enough to hamper him in action; he wriggled into the hole, felt his feet gripped from the outside, and presently scraped through into the open air. Eli caught and supported him, helped him find his feet. ”

“ Satan performed his part of the contract to the letter. On the first day of every month the boots, which were hung on the crane in the fireplace the night before, were found in the morning stuffed full of guineas. It is true that Hampton had ransacked the village for the largest pair to be found, and had finally secured a brace of trooper’s boots, which came up to the wearer’s thigh; but the contract merely expressed boots, and the devil does not stand upon trifles.
Hampton rolled in wealth. Everything prospered. ”

“ So tremendous was the revulsion that Hampton lay for a long while unable to speak, unable to trust himself; until at length he put lips to ear and broke silence with shaken accents. So in the darkness of the slave-pen came to be delivered the message from father to son. Then, after a little, Hampton mentioned that hole in the wall.
“A night's work will finish it,” said Eli, little more than forming the words with his lips. “But it's no good, Dick. Can't get away. No hope on earth. Pap Hoskins is in the game with me, and so is that big Frenchman with the blue-black beard. ”

“ Hampton jingled the gold in his pocket, then thoughtfully got out his pipe and lighted it. He was quite aware of the high compliment that had been paid him, and found it puzzling. Any company could open its books, and have every berth, every bit of stock, subscribed in a day's time. There was no trouble about men wanting to go—the difficulty lay in getting passage. If, as men did, a man were to lay the keel of a schooner or brig on the ocean-side of his farm land, he could have an entire company formed and paid up before the ship's timbers were in place. ”

“ In speaking of East Hampton and the habitudes of its people, the late President Dwight said, emphatically: "A general air of equality, simplicity, and quiet is visible here in a degree perhaps singular. Sequestered in a great measure from the busy world, the people exhibit not the same activity and haste, which meet the eye in some other places. ”