Georgia, where the sea croons to the sands and the
sands listen till they sink half drowned beneath the waters, rising
only here and there in long, low islands. The white folk of Altamaha
voted John a good boy,--fine plough-hand, good in the rice-fields,
handy everywhere, and always good-natured and respectful. But they
shook their heads when his mother wanted to send him off to school.
"It'll spoil him,--ruin him," they said; and they talked as though they
knew. But full half the black folk followed him proudly to the
station, and carried his queer little trunk and many bundles. And
there they shook and shook hands, and the girls kissed him shyly and
the boys clapped him on the back. So the train came, and he pinched
his little sister lovingly, and put his great arms about his mother's
neck, and then was away with a puff and a roar into the great yellow
world that flamed and flared about the doubtful pilgrim. Up the coast
they hurried, past the squares and palmettos of Savannah, through the
cotton-fields and through the weary night, to Millville, and came with
the morning to the noise and bustle of Johnstown.

And they that stood behind, that morning in Altamaha, and watched the
train as it noisily bore playmate and brother and son away to the
world, had thereafter one ever-recurring word,--"When John comes." Then
what parties were to be, and what speakings in the churches; what new
furniture in the front room,--perhaps even a new front room; and there
would be a new schoolhouse, with John as teacher; and then perhaps a
big wedding; all this and more--when John comes. But the white people
shook their heads.

At first he was coming at Christmas-time,--but the vacation proved too
short; and then, the next summer,--but times were hard and schooling
costly, and so, instead, he worked in Johnstown. And so it drifted to
the next summer, and the next,--till playmates scattered, and mother
grew gray, and sister went up to the Judge's kitchen to work. And
still the legend lingered,--"When John comes."

Up at the Judge's they rather liked this refrain; for they too had a
John--a fair-haired, smooth-faced boy, who had played many a long
summer's day to its close with his darker namesake. "Yes, sir! John
is at Princeton, sir," said the broad-shouldered gray-haired Judge
every morning as he marched down to the post-office. "Showing the
Yankees what a Southern gentleman can do," he added; and strode home
again with h