Certain passages have been interpreted most surprisingly
to signify a feeling against the colored race, that
is by no means mine. My only wish regarding these
people, to whom we owe an immeasurable responsibility,
is to see the best that is in them prevail. Discord
over this seems on the wane, and sane views gaining.
The issue sits on all our shoulders, but local variations
call for a sliding scale of policy. So admirably
dispassionate a novel as The Elder Brother, by Mr.
Jervey. forwards the understanding of Northerners
unfamiliar with the South, and also that friendliness
between the two places, which is retarded chiefly by
tactless newspapers.
Ah, tact should have been one of the cardinal virtues;
and if I didn’t possess a spice of it myself,
I should here thank by name certain two members of
the St. Michael family of Kings Port for their patience
with this comedy, before ever it saw the light.
Tact bids us away from many pleasures; but it can
never efface the memory of kindness.
I: A Word about My Aunt
Like Adam, our first conspicuous ancestor, I must
begin, and lay the blame upon a woman; I am glad to
recognize that I differ from the father of my sex
in no important particular, being as manlike as most
of his sons. Therefore it is the woman, my Aunt
Carola, who must bear the whole reproach of the folly
which I shall forthwith confess to you, since she
it was who put it into my head; and, as it was only
to make Eve happy that her husband ever consented
to eat the disastrous apple, so I, save to please
my relative, had never aspired to become a Selected
Salic Scion. I rejoice now that I did so, that
I yielded to her temptation. Ours is a wide country,
and most of us know but our own corner of it, while,
thanks to my Aunt, I have been able to add another
corner. This, among many other enlightenments
of navel and education, do I owe her; she stands on
the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I were
lacking in deference did I pass her and her Scions
by without due mention,—employing no English
but such as fits a theme so stately. Although
she never left the threshold, nor went to Kings Port
with me, nor saw the boy, or the girl, or any part
of what befell them, she knew quite well who the boy
was. When I wrote her about him, she remembered
one of his grandmothers whom she had visited during
her own girlhood, long before the war, both in Kings
Port and at the family plantation; and this old memory
led her to express a kindly interest in him.
How odd and far away that interest seems, now that
it has been turned to cold displeasure!
