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The summons was answered by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity, who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the door, and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Further back in the passageway, the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father's return.
Of the two that immediately preceded her in age, a boy of five years, and a girl of three, who were sold when she was an infant, she heard much; and she wishes that all who would fain believe that slave parents have not natural affection for their offspring could have listened as she did, while Bomefree and Mau-mau Bett,-their dark cellar lighted by a blazing pine-knot,-would sit for hours, recalling and recounting every endearing, as well as harrowing circumstance that taxed memory could supply, from the histories of those dear departed ones, of whom they had been robbed, and for whom their hearts still bled.
One live member is likely to irritate the repose of the whole body. Their faint stirrings of progress are pathetic. They have an electric plant, but, as I have noted before, the lights therefrom show a strong trace of their pine-knot heredity, and go out on all important occasions, whether of festivity or tragedy.
All were held in candlesticks, made of wire, brass, pewter, copper, or iron, the more elegant, of silver, with snuffers of the same metals. In the very modest homes, the pine-knot served as a means of illumination, the turpentine in the wood fibers causing it to burn brightly until consumed. A Domestic Scene at Jamestown About 1625
It flares up eagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keep up the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, have not considered it in its relation to young love. In the remote settlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it endures to sit up by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world of sentiment and of letters.
"Here's one ready made to hand," cried Maxton, seizing a huge pine-knot and lighting it. "Some one must stay behind to look after our things. The new-comers who camped beside us to-day are not used to mining life, and don't sufficiently know the terrors of Lynch law. Do you stop, Maxton. Now then, the rest of you, come along."
It flares up eagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keep up the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, have not considered it in its relation to young love. In the remote settlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it endures to sit up by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world of sentiment and of letters.
Thomas W. Cobb, in his education, suffered the penalties imposed in this particular by a new country; his opportunities, however, were improved to their greatest possible extent, and he continued to improve in learning to the day of his death. In boyhood he ploughed by day, and studied his spelling-book and arithmetic by night lighting his vision to the pursuit of knowledge by a pine-knot fire.
He entered the place, and ventured up behind a small cabin which stood apart from the house. Through one of its many crannies he easily detected the African mute crouched before a flickering pine-knot, his head on his knees, fast asleep. He concluded to enter the mansion, and, with that view, stood and scanned it.
And to-day, complacent enough, he sat upon the rickety fence at home, oracularly disparaging the equestrian accomplishments of the town's noted champion. "I dunno I dunno," said his young companion doubtfully. "Hackett sets mighty firm onto his saddle. He's ez straight ez any shingle, an' ez tough ez a pine-knot. He come up hyar las' summer war it las' summer, now?
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