Litchfield enquirer., 1878-03-28
[From scribner's Monthly.l KING DAVID.

men. Then what antics, what linked lines of scufhing, what double shuff1es, leaps, and somersaults, what rolling laughter; interspers- ed with short yelps, and guttural cries, as wild and free as the sounds the mustangs make, gambling on the plains! For King David's scholars were ack,-black as the ace of spades. He did not say that he knew very little about the ace. He said simply that his scholars were "colored ;" and sometimes he called them ''the Children of Ham," But SO l many mistakes were made over this title, in- spite of his careful explanations Cthe children having an undoubted taste for bacon) that he finally abandoned it, and fell back upon the national name of freedmen" title both good and true. He even tried to make it noble, speaking to them often of their wonderful lot as the emancipated teachers and helpers of their race; laying before them their mission in the future, which was to go over to Africa and wake out of their long sloth and slumber the thousands of souls therey But Cassius and Pompey had only mythic idea of Africa they looked at the globe as it was turned around, they saw it there on the other side, and then their attention wandered off to an adventurous ant, who was making the tour of Soudan, and crossing the mountains of Kong, as though they were nothing. "@s4 3h-.-L Lessons oyer, the scholars went home. The school master went home too, wiping, his fore head as he went. He was grave young man, tall and thin somewhat narrow chested, with the diffident air of a country student And yet this country student was here, far down in the South, hundreds of miles away from the New Hampshire village where he had thought to spend his life as teacher of the district school. Extreme near -sightedness, and an in- herited delicacy of constitution which he bore silently, had kept him out of the field during the days of the war. '|I should be only an encumbrance," he thought. But when the war was over, the fire which had burnt within burst forth in the thought, ''the Freedmen !" There was work fitted to his hand that one thing he could do My turn has come at last" he said. ''I feel the call to go." No body cared much because he was leaving. l ''Going down to teach the blacks ?? said the farmers. T don't see as you're called, David. We've paid dear enough to set 'em free, good ness knows, and now they ought to look out | for themselves"
 l But they must first be taught" said the school-master. ''Our responsibility is great our task is only just begun"
 Stuff 7" said the farmers. What with the graves down in the South, and the taxes up in the North, they were not prepared to hear any talk about beginning. Beginning, indeed! They called it ending. The slaves were freed and it was right they should be freed. But Ethan and Abner were gone, and their house
 
 blacks take care of themselves.
 So, all alone, down came David King, with such aid and instruction as the FreedlnGn's Bureau could give him, to this little settlement | among the pines, where the freedmen had 1 built some cabins in a careless way, and then seated themselves to wait fortune. Freedmen l Yes glorious idea! But how will it work it's way out into practical life? What are you | going to do with tens of thousands of ignorant, | childish, irresponsible souls thrown suddenly l upon your hands,-souls that will not long stay childish, and that have in them also all the capacities for evil that you yourselves have, you with your safeguards of genera | tions of conscious responsibility and self-gov- ernment, and yet-so many lapses This is what David King thought. He did not see his way exactly; no, nor the nations way. But he said to himself, ''I can at least begin l if I am wrong shall find it out in time. But now it seems to me that our first duty is to ed ucate them" So he began at "a, and e." you must not steal ;" ''you must not fight ;" ''you must wash your faces ;. which may be called,. l think, the first working-out of the emancipation problem.
 Jubilee town was the name of the settle ment and when the school-master announced his own, David King, the title struck the imi tative minds of the scholars, and, turning it around they made ''King David" of it, and kept it so. Delighted with the novelty, the Jubilee freedmen came to school in such num- bers that the master was obliged to classify them; boys and men in the mornings and af- ternoons the old people iii the evenings the young women and girls by themselves for an hour in the early morning. ''1 cannot do full justice to all," he thought, ''and in the men lies the danger, in the boys the hope the wo- men cannot vote. Would to God the men could not either, until they have learned to read and to write, and to maintain themselves respectablyr For, abolitionist as he was, David King would have given years of his life for the power to restrict the suffrage. Not having this power, however, he worked at the problem in the only wayleft open: 'Take two apples from four apples, Julius,-how many will be left ?" ''What is this hear, Cesar about stolen bacon p
 On this day the master went home, tired and dispirited; the novelty was over on both sides. He had been five months at Jubilee, and his scholars were more of puzzle to him than ever. They learned, some of them, readily but they forgot as readily. They had a vast his long words so quickly, and repeated them so volubly, with but slight comprehension of their meaning, that his sensitive conscience shrank from using them, and he was forced back upon rude plainness of speech which was pain to his pedagogic ears. Where he had once said, ''demean yourselves with so- briety," he now said ''don't get drunk" He would have fared better if he had learned to say uncle" and ''aunty," or 'maumer," in the familiar Southern fashion. But he had no knowledge of the customs ;-how could he have? He could only blunder on in his slow Northern way.
 His cabin stood in the pine forest, at little distance from the settlement he had allowed himself that grace. There was a garden around it, where Northern flowers came up af- ter while, "a little pale, perhaps, like Eng fish ladies in India, but doubly beautiful and dear to exiled eyes. The school-master had cherished from the first a wish for a cotton field,-a cotton-feld of his own. To him cotton-feld represented the South,-a cotton field in the hot sunshine, with a gang of slaves toiling under the lash of the overseer This might have been fancy picture and it might not. At any rate it was real to him. There was, however, no overseer now, and no lash no slaves and very little toll. The negroes would work only when they pleased and that was generally not at all. There was no doubt but that they were almost hopelessly improvi- dent and lazy. Entirely so," said the plant CTS 'Not quite," said the Northern school master. And therein lay the difference be- tween them.- s.s
 David lighted his fire of pitch pine, spread his little table, and began to cook his supper carefully. When it was nearly ready, he heard knock at his gate. Two representa- tive specimens of his. scholars were waiting without,-Jim, ield-hand, and woman named Esther, who had been house servant in planters's family. Jim had come ''to .borry an ax," and Esther to ask for medicine for sick child.
 'Where is your own ax, Jim ?'' said the school-master.
 Somehow cts rusty, sal1. Dey gets rusty mighty quick"
 sOf course, because you always leave them out in the rain. When will you learn to take care of your axes?'
 Don know, mars "-
 'I have told you not to call me master, 'said David. ''I am not your master"
 ''You's school-mars, l reckon" answered Jim, grinning at his repartee . ''Wen, Jim," said the scheol-master, relax ing into smile, ''you have the best of it this time; but you know quite well what mean You can take the ax but bring it back to- |