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An' puttickly the Pussie an' Susie an' Great South Railroad an' State mawgage bawns in accawdeons perwidin! one school-house, som'er's in these-yeh th'ee counties, faw ev'y five mile' o' road they buil; an' a Leggettstown braynch road, yass, seh. An', Mr. March, yit, still, mo'over, perwiddin' the movin' the capital to Suez, away fum the corrup' influence of Pulaski City. Faw, Mr.
Betteh no terms than none at all; yass, sah." And so on. From this colloquy resulted the Negro farm-village of Leggettstown. In 1866-68 it grew up on the old Halliday place, which had reverted to the General by mortgage.
If he'd just consent to go under parole to Leggettstown an' tell them niggehs that if they'll simply lay down they ahms an' stay quietly at home jest faw a day aw two all 'll be freely fo'givm an' fo'gotten, seh! Instead o' that, he sits there, ca'mly smilin' you know his way an' threatenin' us with the ahm of the United States Gov'ment.
This he wished to do on what seemed to him an original plan, of which Leggettstown was only a clumsy sketch, a plan based on his belief in the profound economic value of "villages of small freeholding farmers, my dear sir!" "It's the natural crystal of free conditions!" John heard him say in the post-office corner of Weed & Usher's drug-store. Empty words to John.
Quite satisfied to be idle, but not to be alone, the maiden so early contrived with her Leggettstown vivacity to offend the old field hands, that the night found her with only herself and her cogitations for company.
Two shabby black men passed by on plough-mules, and between them, on a poor, smart horse, all store clothes, watch-chain, and shoe-blacking, rode the president of the Zion Freedom Homestead League, Mr. Cornelius Leggett, of Leggettstown. John went in.
So, thanks to Leviticus, the only man in Leggettstown who would stop at no pains to "suckumvent wickedness in high places," here she was, half-way to Widewood, and thus far safe against any unguessed machinations of the enemy or herself. In Suez, too, all went well. Before Mrs.
Yeste'd'y some of 'em taken a boyish notion to put some maasks on an' ride through Leggettstown in 'slo-ow p'ocession, with a sawt o' banneh marked, 'SEE YOU AGAIN TO-NIGHT. They had guns mo' f'om fo'ce o' habit, I reckon, than anything else you know how ow young men ah, seh one of 'em carry a gun a yeah, an' nevah so much as hahm a floweh, you know.
His villages are boun' han' an' foot to cotton fahmin' an' can't bring forth the higher industries; but now, without concealin' anything fum him or anybody of co'se we don't want to do that if we can get enough of his best village residenters fum Leggettstown an' Libbetyville to come up an' take lan' in Widewood faw we can give it to 'em an' gain by it, you know; an' a site or two faw a church aw school why, then, you know, when capitalists come up an' look at ow minin' lan's why, first thing you know, we'll have mines an' mills an' sto'es ev'y which away!"
Why, at Suez you'll see school-houses only five miles apart, from Wildcat Ridge where the niggers and mountaineers had that skirmish last fall clean down to Leggettstown! School-houses, why," the speaker chuckled at what was coming "one of 'em stands on the very spot where in '65 I found a little freckled boy trying to poke a rabbit out of a log with an old bayon "
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