Produced by Greg Bergquist, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: Dialect and inconsistent spelling have been preserved. In The Scapegoat, Part II, text appears to be missing between "hard" and "brought" in the sentence "The school-teacher is giving you a pretty hard brought the school-children in for chorus singing, secured an able orator, and the best essayist in town." THE HEART OF HAPPY HOLLOW _A Collection of Stories_ PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR Reprint, 1904 Dodd, Mead and Co., New York. _Contents_ _Foreword_ 3 _One_: THE SCAPEGOAT 5 _Two_: ONE CHRISTMAS AT SHILOH 21 _Three_: THE MISSION OF MR. SCATTERS 29 _Four_: A MATTER OF DOCTRINE 45 _Five_: OLD ABE'S CONVERSION 53 _Six_: THE RACE QUESTION 63 _Seven_: A DEFENDER OF THE FAITH 67 _Eight_: CAHOOTS 73 _Nine_: THE PROMOTER 81 _Ten_: THE WISDOM OF SILENCE 95 _Eleven_: THE TRIUMPH OF OL' MIS' PEASE 103 _Twelve_: THE LYNCHING OF JUBE BENSON 111 _Thirteen_: SCHWALLIGER'S PHILANTHROPY 121 _Fourteen_: THE INTERFERENCE OF PATSY ANN 129 _Fifteen_: THE HOME-COMING OF 'RASTUS SMITH 137 _Sixteen_: THE BOY AND THE BAYONET 145 To My Friend Ezra M. Kuhns _Foreword_ Happy Hollow; are you wondering where it is? Wherever Negroes colonise in the cities or villages, north or south, wherever the hod carrier, the porter, and the waiter are the society men of the town; wherever the picnic and the excursion are the chief summer diversion, and the revival the winter time of repentance, wherever the cheese cloth veil obtains at a wedding, and the little white hearse goes by with black mourners in the one carriage behind, there--there--is Happy Hollow. Wherever laughter and tears rub elbows day by day, and the spirit of labour and laziness shake hands, there--there--is Happy Hollow, and of some of it may the following pages show the heart. The Author. _One_ THE SCAPEGOAT I The law is usually supposed to be a stern mistress, not to be lightly wooed, and yielding only to the most ardent pursuit. But even law, like love, sits more easily on some natures than on others. This was the case with Mr. Robinson Asbury. Mr. Asbury had started life as a bootblack in the growing town of Cadgers. From this he had risen one step and become porter and messenger in a barber-shop. This rise fired his ambition, and he was not content until he had learned to use the shears and the razor and had a chair of his own. From this, in a man of Robinson's temperament, it was only a step to a shop of his own, and he placed it where it would do the most good. Fully one-half of the population of Cadgers was composed of Negroes, and with their usual tendency to colonise, a tendency encouraged, and in fact compelled, by circumstances, they had gathered into one part of the town. Here in alleys, and streets as dirty and hardly wider, they thronged like ants.