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قراءة كتاب The heart of happy hollow A collection of stories
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The heart of happy hollow A collection of stories
Transcriber's Note:
Dialect and inconsistent spelling have been preserved.
In The Scapegoat, Part II, text appears to be missing between "hard" and "brought" in the sentence "The school-teacher is giving you a pretty hard brought the school-children in for chorus singing, secured an able orator, and the best essayist in town."
THE HEART OF
HAPPY HOLLOW
*
A Collection of Stories
Reprint, 1904
Dodd, Mead and Co., New York.
Contents
Foreword 3
One: THE SCAPEGOAT 5
Two: ONE CHRISTMAS AT SHILOH 21
Three: THE MISSION OF MR. SCATTERS 29
Four: A MATTER OF DOCTRINE 45
Five: OLD ABE'S CONVERSION 53
Six: THE RACE QUESTION 63
Seven: A DEFENDER OF THE FAITH 67
Eight: CAHOOTS 73
Nine: THE PROMOTER 81
Ten: THE WISDOM OF SILENCE 95
Eleven: THE TRIUMPH OF OL' MIS' PEASE 103
Twelve: THE LYNCHING OF JUBE BENSON 111
Thirteen: SCHWALLIGER'S PHILANTHROPY 121
Fourteen: THE INTERFERENCE OF PATSY ANN 129
Fifteen: THE HOME-COMING OF 'RASTUS SMITH 137
Sixteen: THE BOY AND THE BAYONET 145
THE HEART OF HAPPY HOLLOW
To My Friend
Ezra M. Kuhns
*
Foreword
Happy Hollow; are you wondering where it is? Wherever Negroes colonise in the cities or villages, north or south, wherever the hod carrier, the porter, and the waiter are the society men of the town; wherever the picnic and the excursion are the chief summer diversion, and the revival the winter time of repentance, wherever the cheese cloth veil obtains at a wedding, and the little white hearse goes by with black mourners in the one carriage behind, there—there—is Happy Hollow. Wherever laughter and tears rub elbows day by day, and the spirit of labour and laziness shake hands, there—there—is Happy Hollow, and of some of it may the following pages show the heart.
The Author.
One
THE SCAPEGOAT
I
The law is usually supposed to be a stern mistress, not to be lightly wooed, and yielding only to the most ardent pursuit. But even law, like love, sits more easily on some natures than on others.
This was the case with Mr. Robinson Asbury. Mr. Asbury had started life as a bootblack in the growing town of Cadgers. From this he had risen one step and become porter and messenger in a barber-shop. This rise fired his ambition, and he was not content until he had learned to use the shears and the razor and had a chair of his own. From this, in a man of Robinson's temperament, it was only a step to a shop of his own, and he placed it where it would do the most good.
Fully one-half of the population of Cadgers was composed of Negroes, and with their usual tendency to colonise, a tendency encouraged, and in fact compelled, by circumstances, they had gathered into one part of the town. Here in alleys, and streets as dirty and hardly wider, they thronged like ants.
It was in this place that Mr. Asbury set up his shop, and he won the hearts of his prospective customers by putting up the significant sign, "Equal Rights Barber-Shop." This legend was quite unnecessary, because there was only one race about, to patronise the place. But it was a delicate sop to the people's vanity, and it served its purpose.
Asbury came to be known as a clever fellow, and his business grew. The shop really became a sort of club, and, on Saturday nights especially, was the gathering-place of the