RODMAN THE KEEPER

SOUTHERN SKETCHES

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
AUTHOR OF "EAST ANGELS" "ANNE" "FOR THE MAJOR" ETC.

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

DEDICATED

T O   T H E   M E M O R Y   O F

MY MOTHER.

PREFACE.

THE sketches included in this volume were written during a residence in the South, which has embraced the greater part of the past six years. As far as they go they record real impressions; but they can never give the inward charm of that beautiful land which the writer has learned to love, and from which she now severs herself with true regret. Two of these sketches have appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," four in "Appletons' Journal," and one each in "Scribner's Monthly," "The Galaxy," "Lippincott's Monthly," and "Harper's Magazine."

C. F. W.

CONTENTS.

RODMAN THE KEEPER.

"KEEPER of what? Keeper of the dead. Well, it is easier to keep the dead than the living; and as for the gloom of the thing, the living among whom I have been lately were not a hilarious set."

John Rodman sat in the doorway and looked out over his domain. The little cottage behind him was empty of life save himself alone. In one room the slender appointments provided by Government for the keeper, who being still alive must sleep and eat, made the bareness doubly bare; in the other the desk and the great ledgers, the ink and pens, the register, the loud-ticking clock on the wall, and the flag folded on a shelf, were all for the kept, whose names, in hastily written, blotted rolls of manuscript, were waiting to be transcribed in the new red-bound ledgers in the keeper's best handwriting day by day, while the clock was to tell him the hour