Editor's Table [pp. 306-314]

Editor's Table.
"The Hireling and the Slave" is a composition which will hold a permanent
place in the country's literature and continue to call for the reader's admiration
long after the truths it so gracefully embodies have been recognized by all the
world, and this, because the work is no
feeble imitation of English models, but a
genuine offshoot of the soil of the palmetto and the cotton plant. Though the
form of the versification is old and familiar, the imagery and thought are original and glow with the light and warmth
of the Carolina sun. The following extract, presenting an outline of the industrial life of the slave, is as remarkable
for its beauty as its fidelity
And now, with sturdy hand and cheerful heart,
He learns to master every useful art,
T'o forge the axe, to mould the rugged share,
The ship's brave keel for angry waves prepare;
The rising wall obeys his plastic will,
And the loom's fabric owns his ready skill.
Where once the Indian's keen unerring aim
With shafts of feed transfixed the forest game,
Where painted warriors late in ambush stood,
And midnight war-whoops shook the trembling
wood,
The negro wins, with well-directed toil,
Its various treasures from the virgin soil;
Swept by his axe the forests pass away,
The dense swamp opens to the light of day;
The deep morass of weeds and fetid mud,
Now dry, now covered by the rising flood,
Its squares arranged by lines of bank and
drain,
Smniles with rich harvests of the golden grain,
That, wrought from ooze by nature's curious
art,
To pearly whiteness, cheers the negro's heart,
Smokes on the master's board in goodly show,
A mimnic pyramid of seeming snow,
And borne by commerce to each distant shore,
Supplies the world with one enjoyment more.
On upland slopes, with jungle lately spread,
The lordly maize uplifts its tasselled head;
Broad, graceful leaves of waving green appear,
And shining threads adorn the swelling earThe matchless ear, whose mnilky stores impart
A feast that mocks the daintiest powers of art
To every taste; whose riper bounty yields
A grateful feast amid a thousand fields,
And sent, on miercy's errand, from the slave,
To starving hirelings, saves them from the
grave.
In broader limits by the loftier maize,
The silk-like cotton all its wealth displays;
T'hrough forked leaves, in endless rows unfold
Gay blossoms tinged with purple dyes and
gold;
To suns autumnal bursting pods disclose
Their fleeces, spotless as descending snows
'l'hese, a rice freight, a thousand ships receive,
A thousand looms with fairy fingers weave;
And hireling multitudes in other lands
Are blessed with raiment from the negro's
hands.
Nor these alone they give, their useful toil
Lures the rich cane to its adopted soilThe luscious cane, whose genial sweets diffuse
More social joys than Hybla's honeyed dews
Without whose help no civic feast is made,
No bridle cake delights-without whose aid
China's enchanting cup itself appears
To lose its virtue, and no longer cheers;
Arabia's fragrant berry idly wastes
Its pure aroma on untutored tastes;
Limes of delicious scent and golden rind
Their pungent treasures unregarded find;
Ices refiresh the languid belle no more,
Anrid their lost coInfits infant worlds deplore.
The weed's soft influence, too, his hands pre pare,
That soothes the beggar's grief, the monarch's
care,
Cheers the lone scholar at his midnight work,
Subdues alike the Russian and the Turk,
The Saint beguiles, the heart of toil revives,
Ennuti itself of half its gloomi deprives;
In fragrant clouds involves the learned and
great,
In golden boxes helps the toils of state,
And, with strange magic and mysterioss charm,
Hunger can stay, and bores and duns disarm.
These precious products, in successive years,
Trained by a master's skill, the negro rears;
New life he gives to Europe's busy marts,
To all the world new comforts and newv arts
Loom, spinner, merchant, from his hands de rive
Their wealth, and mnyriads by his labor thrive
While slothful millions, hopeless of relief,
The slaves of pagan priest and brutal chief,
Harassed by wars upon their native shore,
Still lead the savage life they led before.
Instructed thus, and in the only school
Barbarians ever know-a master's rule,
The negro learns each civilizing art
That softens and subdues the savage heart,
Assumes the tone of those with whom he lives,
Acquires the habit that refinement gives,
And slowly learns, but surely, while a slave,
The lessons that his country never gave.
The following versified letter details the
White Sulphur and Sweet experiences of
a young friend, fromn whom we extorted
a promise, before his departure to the
Springs, that he would correspond regularly with the S. L. M. during the season.
Now that October has come and everybody
308
LOCTOBER