Part 21 (2/2)

Our patriarch host had been a captain in the rebel arht,” as he quaintly termed it His wife had blest hi in this delightful climate, where he said, ”no one ever died; they sirounds beyond the stars” When a baby was born or a child married, this chief of the tribe ”hitched on” another house, until now the one-story dwellings covered an acre of his vast lands

He and his tribe raised on his great far he needed to eat, drink, or to wear: his wife and daughters spun and wove their clothing froinned on his own fields; the delicious syrup and sugar which adorned and sweetened the mountains of rye pancakes and floods of horown, and ground on his own soil

He grew his own tobacco, tea, peanuts, oranges, figs, pineapples, bananas; he fattened his cattle and hogs on his own cassava and the abundant wild grasses; his flocks of sheep ”cut their own fodder,” and the wool and mutton was all clear profit This ”Cracker” family was the happiest and most independent I ever saw on earth

All around this plantation are millions of uncultivated acres where the wretches of our city sluies and Rockefellers would only loan the funds to colonize them there

The millions of dollars, noorse than wasted by our selfish millionaires? could thus soonthis free delightful life for several days, and ere on the point of departing, I said to our host, ”Captain, we have enjoyed your hospitality im toward hiry fire, he shot out his fist to strike hbor said, ”Don't hit him Cap, he don't know no better, he's a Yank” ”Wall Yank,” drawled this six feet of fighting man, ”seein' ye don't know no better, I'll let ye off this time; but I don't keep no tarvern, and when me and my family come yure e'll all stop with yew, that'll even it up” As I looked at the fifty yawning caverns of chewingtheiven hi cheers and waving of hands, each one of which resembled in size the tail-board of a coal-cart

On another occasion while scouring the Florida country for lands for colonizing purposes in coht us in the dense forest; our horses stumbled over immense fallen trees, the owls hooted, the wild cats screamed, the thunder roared, occasionally a pine fell splintered by the lightning, the rain fell in torrents, and we see black hours supperless and coht shi+ning through the open door of a log hut; a dozen curs gave tongue and went for our legs till a sharp yell froenuine Cracker appeared, and seeing our dripping forers, lite, jest in ti and hominy” He led our tired steeds into the leanto, fed them, and ushered us into his one-room shanty, where his lank wife and a dozen children silently h board table ”Mother,” said the master, ”more hoe-cake, more bacon,” and the obedient woh on to the blade of a coirl held over the ”fat-wood” fire until it browned; another tossed so skillet, and soon, in spite of the slovenly cooking, we ”fell to” in a desperate atte appetite Then we told all the stories we could recall or invent to satisfy the starving intellects of these lonesome denizens of the ood ”Come, chilluns, to bed,” said our host, and they were all stacked one over the other on the one corn-shuck couch where a chorus of snores proved they were in the land of dreams

Our host relapsed into silence and see some profound probleers, reckon ye haint gut any of the rale critter, have ye? no corn juice pison nor nuthin'? reckon I was born dry!” My guide in reply produced a long flat bottle of about his own size, and passed it with ”try that Kunnel” There was a sound of e demijohn was reluctantly withdrawn from his cavernlike mouth with a joyous ”Ah, that's the rale stuff, have so enough to drain the dregs, and presto! they beaers,” ejaculated this typical Cracker, ”this is the dog-gondest place ter git er drink yer ever seed Aour caounty went dry last 'lection, and tother day er went to the spensary ter git suht be sick er sunthin, ther wouldn't let ive me 'scripshun 'thout snake-bite er sunthin--went ter only snake er knowed on fer a bite, und the dog-goned critter sed all his bites wuz spoke for three weeks ahed Dunno what ud er dun if you uns hedn't cuers, you take aour bed, we sleep on floo”

Then he took the ”kids” one by one, and set them up with their backs to the side of the shanty, and we, not daring to beard the lion in his den by declining, obeyed The next side the children on the floor, while the oldon the bed Verily, ”For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, the heathen 'Cracker' is peculiar”

CHAPTER xxxII

LOOKING FORWARD

When I riting the last words of the preceding chapter of this book, and was about to

”Heed my tired pen's entreaty, And say, oh, friends, _valete_,”

I see to awake fro instruence extraneous to myself to expose to an incredulous public the hts of a lifetime

I had decided to relieve the patience of my readers with the thirty-first chapter; but when the retrospective kaleidoscope closed, a vision rose before me so vivid, so real, that I aa reality

It is Christmas day in the year of our Lord, 1910; the thunder-cloud, which for ed with pent-up lightnings, and overspreading our entire national horizon, bursts with the fury of a cyclone

The greatti conspiracy of the e and professional classes to bind to their chariot-wheels those who labored with their hands Gigantic trusts had ”cornered” all the necessaries of life, and a few lily-fingered plutocrats in their marble palaces dictated to the horny-handed sons of toil the aes, and the prices they must pay for every needed article, until every job of work and every bone of charity was fought for by multitudes who e the pangs of hunger

When the people rallied at the polls, and elected to the high offices members of their own unions, the millionaires bribed these officials to obey their every command, and these rowing ranks of the oppressors

Even the alhout the Republic, whose treasuries had absorbed countless millions of dollars, had proved areat universities had long idolized plug-ugly football kickers and baseball sluggers to the utter ignoring of scholarshi+p, until the hordes of elee the so-called students created a reign of terror where they were located, and far surpassed in ferocity even the gladiators of ancient Roreatest universities was fought out with almost inconceivable fury on ”Soldiers' Field”

Irresistible bodies ions, each phalanx would conquer or die, and die they did by scores; they kicked and slugged like maniacs until separated by the co cities, and more were killed and wounded than in the entire Spanish War When night fell, thousands of collegians invaded the capitol of the State, and with savage yells and wedge-rushes drove all citizens fro the actors hiskey bottles stolen from the saloons in which they had smashed thousands of dollars' worth of costly furniture; they stole every sign froht their fancy; no woies were stopped by the bayonets of the national guard

Such ”scholars” as these had for h these educationalthe ranks of the professional classes to suffocation Legions of unscrupulous lawyers, aria, infested every city and town, busy as de witnesses to perjury, bull-dozing the innocent even unto death with the full connivance of the plunder-sharing judges, until the jails were croith victieous fees