t seemed to me, but I was assured afterward that he was
right; that the road actually runs across the country from Tallahassee
to St. Augustine, a distance of about two hundred miles. With company of
my own choosing, and in cooler weather, I thought I should like to walk
its whole length.[1] My young man was in no haste. With the reins (made
of rope, after a fashion much followed in Florida) lying on the forward
axle of his cart, he seemed to have put himself entirely at my service.
He had to the full that peculiar urbanity which I began after a while to
look upon as characteristic of Tallahassee negroes,--a gentleness of
speech, and a kindly, deferential air, neither forward nor servile, such
as sits well on any man, whatever the color of his skin.

[Footnote 1: But let no enthusiast set out to walk from one city to the
other on the strength of what is here written. After this sketch was
first printed--in _The Atlantic Monthly_--a gentleman who ought to know
whereof he speaks sent me word that my informants were all of them
wrong--that the road does not run to St. Augustine. For myself, I assert
nothing. As my colored boy said, "I ain't tried it."]

In that respect he was like another boy of about his own age, who lived
in the cabin directly before us, but whom I did not see till I had been
several times over the road. Then he happened to be at work near the
edge of the field, and I beckoned him to me. He, too, was serious and
manly in his bearing, and showed no disposition to go back to his hoe
till I broke off the interview,--as if it were a point of good manners
with him to await my pleasure. Yes, the plantation was a good one and
easily cultivated, he said, in response to some remark of my own. There
were five in the family, and they all worked. "We are all big enough to
eat," he added, quite simply. He had never been North, but had lately
declined the offer of a gentleman who wished to take him there,--him and
"another fellow." He once went to Jacksonville, but couldn't stay. "You
can get along without your father pretty well, but it's another thing to
do without your mother." He never meant to leave home again as long as
his mother lived; which was likely to be for some years, I thought, if
she were still able to do her part in the cotton-field. As a general
thing, the colored tenants of the cabins made out pretty well, he
believed, unless something happened to the crops. As for the old
servants of the H. family,