"But, madam, you are the first person I should laugh with." "I don't see how you can laugh at anybody after what we have gone through with lately, blood spattered on our door-sill; but I actually believe that you have been gayer since that awful event." With that remark she flounced out of the room, and the old man sat there, looking out into the blue space of the speckless day, silent and absorbed. After a time he turned his old eyes slowly upon me. "The youth whose promise in life embraces the prospect of a broad scope should be taught that at the end of it all--this alluring rain-bow--lies disappointment. Sometimes when I have seen my men in the field, with no thought of the morrow and with never a worry except some trifling physical ill, I have wished that I was one of them. I started out wrong," he went on, shaking his head slowly up and down. "Horses can be called back from a false spurt in the race, and another start taken, but men must go on. Dan, I have stood by and seen you trying to educate yourself, and I have said nothing, although I know that education is often the sensitizing of a nerve that leads to misery. To be a gentleman means to possess a large ability to feel, and to feel is to worry, to brood and to suffer. Men of the North and gentlemen of the South, the phrase has gone forth. Our old Virginia blood is gentle, in society; but alone, it is hot with the lingering fire of the cavalier. Do you know what I am saying?" he asked, deepening the wrinkles in his brow. "No, sir; I don't know that I do." "I suppose not. I have been beating the devil around an oratorical stump, sir," he said, his scrawny, red neck stiffening. "I don't know that I understand myself. Is that Bob or Clem coming up the stairs? It's Bob. Glad to see you doing so well," he added, getting up. And standing for a moment, he put his hand on my head. "You are a noble fellow, even if you are a slave and a negro."