stiny in our
Southern states. The education and preparation for citizenship of
nearly eight millions of people is a tremendous task, and every lover
of humanity should count it a privilege to help in the solution of a
problem for which our whole country is responsible.

HOT-FOOT HANNIBAL by Charles W. Chesnutt

"I hate and despise you! I wish never to see you or speak to you again!"

"Very well; I will take care that henceforth you have no opportunity to
do either."

These words--the first in the passionately vibrant tones of my
sister-in-law, and the latter in the deeper and more restrained accents
of an angry man--startled me from my nap. I had been dozing in my
hammock on the front piazza, behind the honeysuckle vine. I had been
faintly aware of a buzz of conversation in the parlor, but had not
at all awakened to its import until these sentences fell, or, I might
rather say, were hurled upon my ear. I presume the young people had
either not seen me lying there,--the Venetian blinds opening from the
parlor windows upon the piazza were partly closed on account of the
heat,--or else in their excitement they had forgotten my proximity.

I felt somewhat concerned. The young man, I had remarked, was proud,
firm, jealous of the point of honor, and, from my observation of him,
quite likely to resent to the bitter end what he deemed a slight or
an injustice. The girl, I knew, was quite as high-spirited as young
Murchison. I feared she was not so just, and hoped she would prove more
yielding. I knew that her affections were strong and enduring, but that
her temperament was capricious, and her sunniest moods easily overcast
by some small cloud of jealousy or pique. I had never imagined, however,
that she was capable of such intensity as was revealed by these few
words of hers. As I say, I felt concerned. I had learned to like Malcolm
Murchison, and had heartily consented to his marriage with my ward; for
it was in that capacity that I had stood for a year or two to my wife's
younger sister, Mabel. The match thus rudely broken off had promised to
be another link binding me to the kindly Southern people among whom I
had not long before taken up my residence.

Young Murchison came out of the door, cleared the piazza in two strides
without seeming aware of my presence, and went off down the lane at a
furious pace. A few moments later Mabel began playing the piano loudly,
with a touch that indicated anger and pride and