He could almost hear the song of the gayly hued birds as they called out to their mates in the glossy foliage overhead. Here wuz home, here wuz peace, here wuz independence for a long-enslaved and tortured people. Hard work he knew there must be, and perhaps hard fare for a time; but the reward would be so sweet that it would sweeten toil. It would not be like the hopeless, onthanked-for, onrewarded drudgery for them who returned insults and curses for patient labor, and too often blows and stingin’ lashes. Felix and Hester wuz makin’ all preparations to go with Victor. On him Victor counted as one who could be relied upon to help the weaker ones, to be a guide and an example of what the black man could do and be. For Felix, so far as he knew, had not a drop of white blood in his veins, and he wuz faithful, honest, hard-workin’ and intelligent. Three times he had had his home broken up and his earnings stolen from him by this cursed, unslain spirit of slavery. But he had agin, by his industry and frugality and by Hester’s help, earned and laid by the sum Victor thought necessary for each colonist to possess, and he and Hester wuz ready to make another start in the New Republic. He had decided not to build another home in the soil guarded by the American eagle. He knew the fowl to be largely boasted about as bein’ the first and noblest bird beneath the skies. But he felt that he had been pecked by its too sharp bill, he had been clawed by its talons, he had been wearied by its loud, boastin’, resonant voice. No, he would make no more homes under the skies where that eagle built its nest. He wuz ready for a newer republic. He felt that he would ruther dare the soft embraces of the biggest African serpents than be enfolded about by our beneficent civilization. He wuz embittered, that wuz a fact. But when we see what he had gone through, I don’t know as anybody could blame him. But anyway, he wuz ready to go. And so the days rolled by one after another, as they always will, whether you are gay or sorrowful, whether the hours seem weighted down with lead or tipped with fleet sunbeams. And to Genieve and Victor all sadness and shadows lay fur away like a faint cloud in the horizon, almost unseen and forgotten in the clear sunshine of their happiness. For true love will make happiness everywhere. Everything looked prosperous, and I had got my edgin’ done, and Maggie and I had made the nice linen garments and ornimented ’em with the lace. They looked beautiful. Little Snow’s work on the napkins wuz done, and the cat stitch almost completed—a few stitches only of the cat remained to do, then they would be done. Maggie had completed her pretty embroidered covers, and they lay folded up on top of a pretty sashay-bag of sweet perfumery in the bureau-draws of the handsome chamber set, and that wuz all packed away in a strong box ready for the voyage.