Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1885-02-28
A Legend Of Old Virginia.

The South more than any other sec.
ton of the country, is rich IN legendary
love, and hre-side "reminiscences. The
cause of this. / attribute mainly to the
fact that the percentage of hteracy
there, as compared with the North, Yves
almost as three to one, among the white
population before the war, and as to the
slave population, there was scarcely one
in thousand who could read. And to
this latter class, whose imaginatiOns and
memories are naturally warm and vivid,
is the credit largely due for perpetuation
of the unWritten history and wild ira
ditiOns of the semi-trOpic side Of the
United States.
AS the old ballads of Scotland and Ire
land which grew out of the enthusiasm
and poetic temperament of the common
people, who could neither read
nor write, are the tenderest and truest
to nature of any in the world, so the
wild and weird stories, handed down
from generation to generation, as re-
heaTsed by the back-WOOdsman and
cOlOred seers around the cabin freside,
at the South would, if it were possible to
gather them in, furnish material for a
dozen VOlumns of tales and rOmances of
exciting interest.
How freshly my memOry-reads some
of those pleasuTable experiences, when
blood-curdliDg ghost stories with which
they were RECALLED by some turbaned old
sibyi, in the old plantation days, when
had slipped away from the "big house"
to visit one Of the negro cabins of a
Winter night. And with what keen rel
ish I enjoyed that strange ecstacy which
results from being scared half to death at
listening to the most appalling ghost
story that ever fell from the lips of sable
n =, h--z-Ah 10
duslzy audience, which formed a semi
circle around the immense fireplace,
would listen with distended eyes, believ-
ing, as I did, that every word was gospel
truth, while occasionally they glanced
with trepidatiOn at the door and dark re-
cesses of the great log cabin, which was
lighted only by the Pickering and fitfnl
blaze of burning hickory logs on the
hearth.
Many Of the stories were not the mere
creations of imagination and fiction, but
were founded on facts and thrilling ad-
ventures Of the Revolutionary and Indi-
an wars, which have been preserved in
this manner.
Often do these old times and tales re-
cur to me, generally from some incident
which strikes a particular key OF memo
ry, and sends it bounding back along the
track of time, gathering up every word
ana Cetau OF some heretofore IOTgOLUen
narrative.
While casually looking over the pages
of an old volume of United States history
recently, 1 came across q passage which
in a flash recalled a story Of this charac-
ter told me In my childhood by one who
in all probability never saw a printed
book save the Bible, and that in the
hands of the preacher, in her life; the
sequel to which is authenticated rs 6
part of the written history of the cOuR
try, and which has induced this pro
lOgue.
The narrator was an old slave woman
on nv grandfather's plantation, who haC
been brought from Virginia to Kentucky
about the close of the Revolutionary
war, when she was but a girl. Having
with her mother, been purchased from {
member of the famous Randolph family
Her name was America, Aunt 'Meriea
as we all called her. She had the story
from her mother, and while it is com
paratively a simple one, yet give 1t Al
q fair illustration of the idea I have at
tempted to advance, and of the clos
affinity existing between the scholarly
and polished written history of the land
and its crude, illiterate, but ofton as re