The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1921-11-11

70 come from SUCH - OAcl1 1cA ~
1860, it would never have been sufi-
Gent to raise ripple
But to suit the ideas and purposes
Of quite other folks than those Uncle
Ben called kith and kin, there rose
over his head the terrible storm Of
1s6O-65. When it had all blown over
and peace sreigned for brief spell,
before the carpet Dagger invasion,
Ben found himself bewiIdered, IN
sure, badly unsettled by the new
regime. His people were restless,
filed with illusory notions tending to-
ward nomadic and proportionateIy
shiftless habits Another storm broke
CT different character but more near
" affecting the people Uncle Ben
knew personally than the war itself
For some years Ben claims that he
lay low, like Bre'r Rabbit, and pussy
footed through scary times. Finally
for years he found adjustment for
himself as tenant and eked out a
living on cotton. Meanwhile, the vii
lagos grew into towns, some Of the
towns into cities. Nearly twenty
years ago he wandered to the city
and took to odd jobs, draying, work
ling gardens and anything that turn
ed up Today old Ben is feeble,
quite past any work and plainly
draws near to that same call. which
summoned his former master to the
| great beyond many years ago. Those
things which linked this aged negro
to other white masters in the long
ago and the places that knew them
will know them no more.
Old Uncle Ben today totters still
among the living, but was made what
he is in a mould long ago shattered.
None that are Southern born ever
can miss instant recognition of the
stamp impressed upon the negroes
grown mature by 1860 The peculiar
institution" was scrapped in the
wreckage of war, but its work has
remained ever since in the character
and manners of the race drilled and
trained in that marvellous industrial
and social school for child race.
The pity of it is that few remain
to show how well they learned to
labor, respect authority and to prac-
Etice the simple courtesy that helps
so much to smooth life'S way These
few survivors seem to haunt the hust-
ling life of our time as gradually
fading shadows of another age, all
but forgotten now.
For some of us elders Of the white
race there is pathOs that stirS al
most affectionate concern for these
rare survivors and in their attitude
toward us we can feel a response,
rooted in consciousness of some
thing IN common that the twentieth
century South has not known and
never will The Old South 80 de
war; had its faults, short comings
and evils, but it had its fragrant
leisures, gentle hammered elegance,
warm Inequalities, elusive graces
that somehow are gone for us and
! that other life, for better or for worse,
was made by white and black to-
| gether. Both belong in the picture
It was civilization born of cooper
alton between the two on peculiar
set Of terms. The terms were cancel
| ed. The picture swiftly changed and
the original can never be seen again.
The Confederate soldier and the ante
/ bellum negro-these two figures, so
distinct, yet such intimate and essen
ltial parts of the tale that history
must ever tell-they are both going
out together and then will indeed
have withdrawn from the stage where
an ever newer South holds sway
4 Dc To f1x< krrx.,c