“Those flashes of marvellous light point to the existence of dormant faculties, which, unless God can be supposed to have over-furnished the soul for its appointed field of action, seem only to be awaiting more favorable circumstances, to awaken and disclose themselves.”—John James Tayler.

While the carriage is rolling on, and the occupants are getting better acquainted, let us hurry forward and clear the way by a few explanations.

Vance and his party had now been several days in New York, occupying contiguous suites of rooms at the Astor House. The ladies consisted of Clara, Madam Volney, and Mrs. Ripper (late Mrs. Gentry). Esha was, of course, of the party. She had found her long-lost daughter in Hattie, or Mrs. Davy, now a widow, whose testimony came in to fortify the proofs that seemed accumulating to place Clara’s identity beyond dispute. Hattie joyfully resumed her place as Clara’s femme de chambre, though the post was also claimed by the unyielding Esha.

The gentlemen of the party included Mr. Winslow, Mr. Semmes, Mr. Ripper, Captain Onslow, Colonel Delancy Hyde, and a youth not yet introduced.

Never had Vance showed his influence in so marked a degree as in the change he had wrought in Hyde. Detecting in the rascal’s affection for a widowed sister the one available spot in his character, Vance, like a great moral engineer, had mounted on that vantage-ground the guns which were to batter down the citadels of ignorance, profligacy, and pride, in which all the regenerative capabilities of Hyde’s nature had been imprisoned so long. The idea of having that poor toiling sister—her who had “fust taught him to make dirt-pies, down thar by the old duck-pond”—rescued with her children from poverty and suffering, placed in a situation of comfort and respectability, was so overpowering to the Colonel, that it enabled Vance to lead him like a child even to the abjuring of strong drink and profanity. Cut off from bragging of his Virginia birth and his descent from the Cavaliers,—made to see the false and senseless nature of the slang which he had been taught to expectorate against the “Yankees,”—Hyde might have lost his identity in the mental metamorphosis he was undergoing, were it not that a most timely substitute presented itself as a subject for the expenditure of his surplus gas.

Vance had collected and arranged a body of proofs for the establishment of Clara’s identification as the daughter of Henry Berwick; but, if Colonel Hyde’s memory did not mislead him, there was collateral evidence of the highest importance in those old letters from Charlton, which might be found in a certain trunk in the keeping of the Widow Rusk in Alabama. With deep anxiety, therefore, did they await the coming of that youthful representative of the Hyde family, Master Delancy Hyde Rusk.

The Colonel stood on the steps of the Astor House from early morn till dewy eve, day after day, scrutinizing every boy who came along. Clad in a respectable suit of broadcloth, and concealing the shorn state of his scalp under a brown wig, he did no discredit to the character of Mr. Stetson’s guests. His patience was at length rewarded. A boy, travel-soiled and dusty, apparently fifteen years old, dressed in a butternut-colored suit, wearing a small military cap marked C. S. A., and bearing a knapsack on his back, suddenly accosted Colonel Hyde with the inquiry, “Does Mr. William C. Vance live here?” In figure, face, and even the hue of his eyebrows, the youth was a miniature repetition of the Colonel himself; but the latter, in his wig and his new suit, was not recognized till the exclamation, “Delancy!” broke in astonishment from his lips.

“What, uncle? Uncle Delancy?” cried the boy; and the two forgot the proprieties, and embraced in the very eyes of Broadway. Then the Colonel led the way to his room.

“Is this ’ere room yourn, Uncle D’lancy? An’ is this ’ere trunk yourn? And this ’ere umbrel? Crikee! What a fine trunk! And do you and the damned Yankees bet now on the same pile, Uncle D’lancy?”

“Delancy Hyde Rusk,” said the Colonel solemnly, “stahnd up thar afore me. So! That’ll do! Now look me straight in the face, and mind what I say.”

“Yes, uncle,” said Delancy junior, deeply impressed.

“Fust, have yer got them air letters?”

“Yes, uncle, they’re sewed inter my side-pocket, right here.”

“Wal an’ good. Now tell me how’s yer mother an’ all the family.”

“Mother’s middlin’ bright now; but Malviny, she died in a fit last March, and Tom, the innocent, he died too; and Charlotte Ann, she was buried the week afore your letter cum; and mother, she had about gi’n up; for we hadn’t a shinplaster left after payin’ for the buryin’, and we thowt as how we should have ter starve, sure; and lame Andrew Jackson and the two young ’uns, they wahr lookin’ pretty considerable peakid, I kn tell yer, when all at wunst your letter cum with four hunderd dollars in it. Crikee! Didn’t the old woman scream for joy? Didn’t she hug the childern, and cry, and laugh, and take on, till we all thowt she was crazy-like? And didn’t she jounce down on her knees, and pray, jest like a minister does?”

“Did she? Did she, Delancy? Tell it over to me again. Did she raally pray?”

“I reckon she didn’t do nothin’ else.”

“Try ter think what she said, Delancy. Try ter think. It’s important.”

“Wal, ’ was all about the Lord Jesus, and Brother D’lancy, and not forsakin’ the righteous, and bless the Lord, O my soul, and the dear angels that was took away, and then about Brother D’lancy again, and might the Lord put his everlastin’ arms about him, and might the Lord save his soul alive, and all that wild sort of talk, yer know. Why, uncle! Uncle D’lancy! What’s the matter with yer?”

Yes! the old sinner had boo-hooed outright; and then, coveringcovering his face with his hands, he wept as if he were making up for a long period of drought in the lachrymal line.

We have spoken of the influence which Vance had applied to this stony nature. We should have spoken of other influences, perhaps more potent still, that had reached it through Peek. Before the exodus from New Orleans, Peek had introduced him to certain phenomena which had shaken the Colonel’s very soul, by the proofs they gave him of powers transcending those usually ascribed to mortals, or admitted as possible by science. The proofs were irresistible to his common sense, First, That there was a power outside of himself that could read, not only his inmost nature, but his individual thoughts, as they arose, and this without any aid from him by look, word, or act.

Here was a test in which there was no room left for deception. The savans can only explain it by denying it; and there are in America more than three millions of men and women who khow what the denial amounts to. Given a belief in clairvoyance, and that in spirits and immortality follows. The motto of the ancient Pagan theists was, “Si divinatio est, dii sunt.”^[45]

Secondly, Hyde saw heavy physical objects moved about, floated in the air, made to perform intelligent offices, and all without the intervention of any agencies recognized as material.

The hard, cold atheism of the man’s heart was smitten, rent, and displaced. For the first time, he was made to feel that the body’s death is but a process of transition in the soul’s life; that our trials here have reference to a future world; that what we love we become; that heavenly thoughts must be entertained and relished even here, if we would not have heaven’s occupations a weariness and a perplexity to us hereafter. For the first time, the awful consciousness came over him as a reality, that all his acts and thoughts were under the possible scrutiny of myriads of spiritual eyes, and, above them all, those Supreme eyes in whose sight even the stars are not pure,—how much less, then, man that is a worm! For the first time, he could read the Bible, and catch from its mystic words rich gleams of comforting truth. For the first time, he could feel the meaning of that abused and uncomprehended word, pardon; and he could dimly see the preciousness of Christ’s revelations of the Father’s compassion.

Return we to the interview between uncle and nephew. Having wiped his eyes and steadied his voice, the Colonel said: “Delancy Hyde Rusk, yer’ve got ter larn some things, and unlarn others. Fust of all, you’re not to swar, never no more.”

“What, Uncle D’lancy! Can’t I swar when I grow up? You swar, Uncle D’lancy!”

“I’m clean cured of it, nevvy. Ef ever you har me swar again, Delancy Hyde Rusk, you jes tell me of ’t, an’ I’ll put myself through a month’s course of hard-tack an’ water.”

“Can’t I say hell, Uncle D’lancy, nor damn?”

“You’re not ter use them words profanely, nevvy, unless you want that air back of yourn colored up with a rope’s end. Now look me straight in the face, Delancy Hyde Rusk, an’ tell me ef yer ever drink sperrits?”

“Wall, Uncle D’lancy, I promised the old woman—”

“Stop! Say you promised mother.”

“Wall, I promised mother I wouldn’t drink, and I haven’t.”

“Good! Now, nevvy, yer spoke jest now of the Yankees. What do yer mean by Yankees?”

“I mean, uncle, ev’ry man born in a State whar they hain’t no niggers to wallop. Yankees are sneaks and cowards. Can’t one Suth’n-born man whip any five Yankees?”

“I reckon not.”

“What! Not ef the Suth’n man’s Virginia-born?”

“I reckon not. Delancy Hyde Rusk, that’s the decoy the ’ristocrats down South have been humbuggin’ us poor whites with tell the common sense is all eat clean out of our brains. They stuff us up with that air fool’s brag so we may help ’em hold on ter thar niggers. Whar did the Yankees come from? They camed from England like we did. They speak English like we do. Thar ahnces’tors an’ our ahnces’tors war countrymen. Now don’t be sich a lout as ter suppose that ’cause a man lives North, and hain’t no niggers ter wallop, he must be either a sneak or a coward, or what Jeff Davis calls a hyena.”

“Ain’t we down South the master race, Uncle D’lancy?”

“Wall, nevvy, in some respects we air; in some respects not. In dirt an’ vermin, ignorance an’ sloth, our poor folks kn giv thar poor folks half the game, an’ beat ’em all holler. In brag an’ swagger our rich folks kn beat thars. But I’ll tell yer what it is, nevvy: ef, as the slaveholders try to make us think, it’s slavery that makes us the master race, then we must be powerful poor cattle to owe it to niggers and not to ou’selves that we’re better nor the Yankees. Now mind what I’m goin’ ter say: the best thing for the hull Suth’n people would be to set ev’ry slave free right off at wunst.”

“What, Uncle D’lancy! Make a nigger free as a white man? Can’t I, when I’m a man, own niggers like gra’f’her Hyde done? What’s the use of growin’ up ef I can’t have a nigger to wallop when I want ter, I sh’d like ter know?”

“Delancy Hyde Rusk, them sentiments must be nipped in the bud.”

The Colonel went to the door and locked it, then cast his eyes round the room as if in search of something. The boy followed his movements with a curiosity in which alarm began to be painfully mingled. Finally, the Colonel pulled a strap from his trunk, and, approaching Delancy junior, who was now uttering a noise between a whimper and a howl, seized him by the nape of the neck, bent him down face foremost on to the bed, and administered a succession of smart blows on the most exposed part of his person. The boy yelled lustily; but after the punishment was over, he quickly subsided into a subdued snuffling.

“Thar, Delancy Hyde Rusk! yer’ll thahnk me fur that air latherin’ all the days of yer life. Ef I’d a-had somebody to do as much for me, forty yars ago, I shouldn’t have been the beast that Slavery brung me up ter be. Never you talk no more of keepin’ niggers or wallopin’ niggers. They’ve jest as much right ter wallop you as you have ter wallop them. Slavery’s gone up, sure. That game’s played out. Thank the Lord! Jest you bar in mind, Delancy Hyde Rusk, that the Lord made the black man as well as the white, and that ef you go fur to throw contempt on the Lord’s work, he’ll bring yer up with a short turn, sure. Will you bar that in mind fur the rest of yer life, Delancy Hyde Rusk?”

“Yes, Uncle D’lancy. I woan’t do nothin’ else.”

“An’ ef anybody goes fur to ask yer what you air, jest you speak up bright an’ tell him you’re fust a Union man, an’ then an out-an’-out Abolitionist. Speak it out bold as ef you meant it,—Ab-o-litionist!”

“What, uncle! a d-d-da—”

The boy’s utterance subsided into a whimper of expostulation as he saw the Colonel take up the strap.

But he was spared a second application. Having given him his first lesson in morals and politics, Colonel Hyde made him wash his face, and then took him down-stairs and introduced him to Vance. The latter received with eagerness the precious letters of which the boy was the bearer; at once opened them, and having read them, said to Hyde: “I would not have failed getting these for many thousand dollars. Still there’s no knowing what trap the lawyers may spring upon us.”

Turning to Delancy junior, Vance, who had opened all the windows when the youth came in, questioned him as to his adventures on his journey. The boy showed cleverness in his replies. It was a proud day for the elated Hyde when Vance said: “That nephew of yours shall be rewarded. He’s an uncommonly shrewd, observing lad. Now take him down-stairs and give him a hot bath. Soak him well; then scrub him well with soap and sand. Let him put on an entire new rig,—shirt, stockings, everything. You can buy them while he’s rinsing himself in a second water. Also take him to the barber’s and have his hair cut close, combed with a fine-tooth comb, and shampooed. Do this, and then bring him up to my room to dinner. Here’s a fifty-dollar bill for you to spend on him.”

Three hours afterwards Delancy junior reappeared, too much astonished to recognize his own figure in the glass. Colonel Hyde had thenceforth a new and abounding theme for gasconade in describing the way “that air bi, sir, trahv’ld the hull distance from Montgomery ter New York, goin’ through the lines of both armies, sir, an’ bringin’ val’able letters better nor a grown man could have did.”

A dinner at Vance’s private table, with ladies and gentlemen present, put the apex to the splendid excitements of the day in the minds of both uncle and nephew.