the president of the board of trustees, delivered the sheepskins to the young doctors in Latin; and this circumstance reminded Major Smith of an anecdote on old Judge Blandford, who had just resigned from the Supreme bench. Here is the story:

"On one occasion a doctor sued a man for his medical bill of fifteen dollars and the man employed Mark Blandford, who had just hung out his shingle, to fight the case; for he said the doctor was no account and he discharged him. The doctor swore to his account and Mark called for his license or his diploma, and made the point that no doctor had a right to practice without one, and he read the law to the squire. And so the old judge told the doctor to show his sheepskin. He said he had one at home, and asked for leave to get it. It was just six miles to town and he rode in a hurry and returned in a sweat of perspiration. With an air of triumph he handed it over to Mark and said: 'Now what have you got to say?' Mark unrolled it and saw that it was in Latin. The doctor's name was John William Head, but the Latin made it Johannes Gulielmus, filius, Caput. That was enough for Mark. He made the point that it was not a diploma but an old land-grant that was issued in old colony times to a man by the name of Caput. The doctor raved furiously, but Mark stuck to it that there was no mention in the document of John William Head—that it was issued to Johannes Gulielmus, filius, Caput-an altogether different person, and he asked the doctor please to read the thing to the court. Of course the doctor couldn't do it and he lost his case. The old squire said that he didn't know whether it was a land-grant or a diploma or a patent for some machine; and if the doctor couldn't read it he wasn't fitten to practice medicine."

Born in Gwinnett county, Georgia, in 1826, where some twenty years later he married the sister of the late Judge N. L. Hutchins, Major Smith died in Bartow county in this State in 1903 at the ripe old age of seventy-seven years. Elder in the Presbyterian church, soldier, lawyer, farmer, author, philosopher and humorist, he had lived to celebrate the golden anniversary of his nuptials, and had never laid aside his pen until compelled to do so by the Death Angel which had literally overtaken him in his harvest fields, still binding his mellow sheaves of grain. Sunshine died perceptibly from out the sky when the announcement went forth that genial Bill Arp was no more, and the great reading public for whom he had so often wrought the miracle of turning tears into smiles now paid him the sorrowful but affectionate tribute of turning smiles into tears.

CHAPTER XLVII.

W

"Uncle Remus.”

ITH the feudal system of the old South the ante-bellum negro received his death-blow; and, if the pale glint of an unextinguished life-spark still feebly animates his now tottering frame, he merely lingers upon the scene of his former activities like the moss-clad remnant of some ancient ruin. He is no longer the trumpet-lunged and iron-sinewed laborer of the early sixties who breasted the billowy waves of grain under the noonday heat of the mid-summer sun. His eyes which are now dim and dewy like the early dawn in which, fresh from his child-like slumbers, he used to rise, are only waiting as then for the miracle-touch of the Morning Light. His hair, which once rivaled his skin, has now gathered the cotton for the last long journey. He must carry the staple to the valley-downs beyond the hills because his heart still beats between the furrows; and he will be all the happier in his heavenly robes if he can still bear the fleece of his native fields. He looks with kingly contempt upon the unfortunate scions of his race who have never known the good old days before the war. He is out of touch with the dusky generations which are rising up around him; and he turns with homesick eyes from the slavery of the new freedom to the freedom of

the old slavery away back on the sun-bathed and plentyfilled plantations of Dixie. Ichabod is written upon his house, and brambles and briars breed pestilence around his cabin. But he little minds the Present since amid all the changes of fortune he can still hold the Past. Todays may be dark and to-morrows may be still darker. But yesterdays are all serene; and, wrapping himself in warm recollections, he hastens from cheerless Nows and hurries to golden Long Agoes. He never knew what it was to be hungry then. "Marster's darkey” enjoyed master's bounty. New clothes were provided before old ones drooped or dropped. If sick the doctor always came; but now the step upon the door-sill means the tax man or the undertaker. He does not wait for spring to come before he decorates his master's grave; but underneath December's sky he keeps it fresh and green with memory's April bloom. Living the old days over he once more clutches at the fiddle. He wakes the old-time dance. He revives the ancient tunes. And yonder perched upon the shuck-pile he dispenses music like Apollo mounted on Olympus. He repeats again the old stories which rapt and eager childhood could never hear too often. He wends his way again to the big house on Christmas morning. He drops the seed once more into the furrow; and once more the hillocks like inverted clouds burst upward into snow. He takes the bridle-path to the cabin-door or skirts the roadside to the country church; and over the heaving mounds of 'earth he bends with moistened eyelids untutored to read the head-stones but unable to forget the inmates.

To contend that the old-time negro was in every respect an improvement upon the modern type is to challenge certain contradiction and perhaps to ignore proof. He was not an ideal at best; nor was he an unregenerate at worst. Even the most religious were notorious backsliders who were constantly lapsing into "the beggarly elements of the world"; but even the most irreligious were seldom hardened offenders or pronounced criminals such as the tardy processes of law are now too slow to punish. They had much in common with Peter, but they drew back with instinctive dread of Judas. Faults which spring from impulse or from ignorance may prove costly, but they come within the pale of forgiveness; and most of the errors of the ante-bellum darkey were venial. Without the sense of ownership which the Anglo-Saxon has been centuries in acquiring and has not yet fully acquired, it is not surprising that the barnyard population was sometimes reduced without an exchange of barter or the watermelonpatch too often thrust itself in the path of temptation ; but these predatory excursions were usually inexpensive and harmless and they were palliated, if not excused, by the logic that the booty in question helped to make muscle and the muscle helped to make cotton.

The ante-bellum negro was an exponent of contented if not always of industrious labor. He felt no envy of capital and he rarely if ever resorted to strikes; and this was less because of the futility of resistance than because of the disinclination to resist. He was satisfied with his lot because, humble though it was, it was menaced by no anxieties and burdened by no responsibilities and cares. knew that the wolf was not in barking distance of his cabin-door and that the seed of the righteous were not more

He