“Get out of the way, you damned Yankee,” shrieked the crackers, “or we’ll riddle you with bullets.”  Then they gave the far-reaching, fiendish, rebel yell.

“Shoot,” I replied, “if you want to be hung.”

—­“Boys,” I said, turning to the darkies, “what’s the matter?”

“Oh, boss, massa Linkum’s dead, de Dimikrat am Presidunt, und we poo’ niggers be slabes agin.  We fight, we die, but we won’t be slabes agin, neber.”

Again came the roar of rifles behind me and the minnie balls went shrieking over our heads.  “Boys,” I shouted, “you are mistaken.  A million Northern soldiers will march down here if necessary to prevent that; go at once to your homes; I will take care of you.”  Slowly the colored men, who trusted me implicitly, melted away in the darkness.  Again the rebel yell, again the rifle shots high in the air.  “Gentlemen,” said I, to the menacing whites, “come with me to the Hall, I want to talk with you.”

“To hell with you!” they yelled, but followed me into the building.

When they had sullenly taken seats, with guns threateningly at the ready, they glared at me like tigers ready to spring.  Soon a man, I had, on my way, sent to the store, arrived with a box of good Florida cigars, and I quietly passed them around to my “lions couchant,” took a seat on the platform facing them, lit up, and commenced the enjoyment of a silent smoke, they following suit.

The tender of a cigar in the South is a recognition of comradeship which is a most potent mollifier.  At last they brought their guns to the ground arms, parade rest, and the leader, an ex-Confederate officer, drawled out, “Wall, Yank, what do you want of we uns?”

“Just as you please, gentlemen, peace or war?”

“We are smoking the pipe, or cigar, of peace, Yank.”

“So mote it be, brothers,” said I, knowing that they were all members of the mystic tie.  “We meet on the level, let us part on the square.”

“So mote it be,” was the response in a regular lodge room chorus.

A few quick signs were exchanged between chair and settees, the ice was broken, the “lodge was opened in due form;” there was no longer any restraint, for we were all members of the most ancient fraternal order on earth, of which the wisest man who ever lived was founder.  They had not known this before.  The white dove descended, and they promised on the sacred oath which makes all men brothers, to molest the negroes no more.  We had a jolly good time, gave each other the Grand Masonic grip and departed to our homes.

As I walked, I saw several dark figures dodging from tree to tree, and all that night my dusky-hued friends kept vigilant watch and ward about our cottage.  The next morning many valiant war-men in time of peace, but peace-men in time of war, told me what brave fighting they would have done for my protection had I but called upon them to do so.

I stocked the lake with excellent food fish obtained from the National Fish Commissioner, built good sidewalks, arched by beautiful shade trees; and many prominent men bought lands in our town.  We passed an ordinance forbidding the use of our public thoroughfares to cattle and hogs, and for a while the air quivered with the squealings of infuriated razor backs.