The Freed Boy in Alabama

It was an April day in the South—not windy and blustering, with the remembrances of March still clinging about it, but warm and lovely, mild and balmy, with spring beauty and promise of good over everything. The grass was springing everywhere, and the buds on the trees were bursting into blossom, and one could gather tender leaves and delicate sprays of white and hold them with the tender, caressing touch which we give to all that heralds spring. It was a good day to breathe the soft, mild air, to be among the growing things and dismiss winter from the mind; and, above all, it was one of those days when the restless feeling we all have sometimes returns in full force, and the thought of coming life and energy in the natural world fills the mind with a longing to do something more than sit still and enjoy.

All this—not exactly in this form, but the substance of this—with a restless, unsatisfied feeling, was possessing and fast getting control of Tom Alson, as he sat on a box in front of a store in Huntsville, idly tapping one foot after the other against its wooden sides. He had anything but an ambitious, energetic look, but then Tom never showed his feelings, and any one gazing at him would hardly have imagined that at this very moment he was longing to go out into the world and “do something.”

Certainly the man who came up to him just then had very little idea of the lofty thought in which Tom was indulging, for he gave him only a hasty glance before he addressed him.

“Say, boy, want to hire out?” asked the man.

Tom started and roused himself: “I was not thinking of it, sir,” he replied.

“Well, think of it now, then; I am trying to find boys to work for Mr. Sutherland on his plantation, about twenty miles out. They are growing corn and cotton. I’d be glad to have you go; give you six dollars a month and board.”

“No, sir,” replied Tom; “I think I will not hire out this summer.”

“Oh think again! Six dollars a month is no mean pay, and I’ve a lot of Huntsville niggers going along.”

“No, sir,” replied Tom again, decidedly, and rising as he spoke, as if not wishing to continue the conversation.

“What’s to hinder you?” asked the man.

“I am going to school, sir,” returned the boy, knowing that this would put a stop to the urging; and it was successful, for the man, with a few coarse words about “niggers and education,” turned suddenly and walked away, and Tom, with his hands in his pockets, sauntered off in an opposite direction, whistling.

He came up to his home by and by, and found his sister Martha in a chair outside the door, busied with some sewing. He sat down on a step near and watched her swift-moving hand in silence for some minutes, with his eyes on her work and his thoughts a long way off.