And through the dream the lovers dreamed Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights streamed; The sunshine seemed to bless, The air was a caress. Not she who lightly scoffed was there, With jewels in her midnight hair, Her dark, disdainful eyes, And proud lips worldly-wise; But she who could for love dispense With all its gilded accidents, And trust her heart alone, Found love and gold her own. THE FREEDMAN'S STORY. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. The manuscript of the following pages has been handed to me with the request that I would revise it for publication, or weave its facts into a story which should show the fitness of the Southern black for the exercise of the right of suffrage. It is written in a fair, legible hand; its words are correctly spelled; its facts are clearly stated, and--in most instances--its sentences are properly constructed. Therefore it needs no revision. On reading it over carefully, I also discover that it is in itself a stronger argument for the manhood of the negro than any which could be adduced by one not himself a freedman; for it is the argument of facts, and facts are the most powerful logic. Therefore, if I were to imbed these facts in the mud of fiction, I should simply oblige the reader to dredge for the oyster, which in this narrative he has without the trouble of dredging, fresh and juicy as it came from the hand of Nature,--or rather, from the hand of one of Nature's noblemen,--and who, until he was thirty years of age, had never put two letters together. The narrative is a plain and unpretending account of the life of a man whose own right arm--to use his own expression--won his rights as a freeman. It is written with the utmost simplicity, and has about it the verisimilitude which belongs to truth, and to truth only when told by one who has been a doer of the deeds and an actor in the scenes which he describes. It has the further rare merit of being written by one of the "despised race"; for none but a negro can fully and correctly depict negro life and character. General Thomas--a Southern man, and a friend of the Southern negro--was once in conversation with a gentleman who has attained some reputation as a delineator of the black man, when a long, lean, "poor white man," then a scout in the Union army, approached the latter, and, giving his shoulder a familiar slap, accosted him with,-- "How are you, ole feller?" The gentleman turned about, and forgetting, in his joy at meeting an old friend, the presence of this most dignified of our military men, responded to the salutation of the scout in an equally familiar and boisterous manner. General Thomas "smiled wickedly," and quietly remarked,-- "You seem to know each other." "Know _him_!" exclaimed the scout. "Why, Gin'ral, I ha'n't seed him fur fourteen year; but I sh'u'd know him, ef his face war as black as it war one night when we went ter a nigger shindy tergether!"