The Little Brown Jug at KildareNicholson, Meredith
General
The Little Brown Jug at Kildare
Nicholson, Meredith
Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Governors -- Fiction; Humorous stories; North Carolina -- Fiction; South Carolina -- Fiction
Several matters of considerable importance await the governor's
return. Among these is the matter of dealing with the notorious
Bill Appleweight. It is understood that the North Carolina
officials are unwilling to arrest Appleweight, though his
hiding-place in the hills on the border near Kildare is well known.
Although he runs back and forth across the state line at pleasure,
he is a North Carolinian beyond question, and it's about time
Governor Dangerfield took note of the fact. However, the governor
of South Carolina may be relied on to act with his usual high sense
of public duty in this matter.
Professor Griswold was not pleased to learn that the governor was still
absent from the capital. He felt that he deserved better luck after the
trouble he had taken to warn the governor. His conscience had got the
better of his comfort--he knew that, and he wrote a telegram to the law
firm at Richmond with which he was consultant, asking that a meeting
with certain clients arranged for to-day be deferred twenty-four hours.
It was now Tuesday; he had no further lectures at the university until
the following Monday, and after he had taken his bearings of Columbia,
where it occurred to him he had not an acquaintance, he walked toward
the capitol with a well-formed idea of seeing the governor's private
secretary--and, if that person appeared to be worthy of confidence,
apprising him of the governor's danger.
Standing in the many-pillared portico of the capitol, Griswold turned to
look down upon Columbia, a city distinguished to the most casual eye by
streets an acre wide! And having an historical imagination and a
reverence for the past, Griswold gave himself for a moment to Memory,
hearing the tramp of armed hosts, and the thunder of cannon, and seeing
flames leap again in the wake of battle. It was a glorious day, and the
green of late May lay like a soft scarf upon the city. The sky held the
wistful blue of spring. Griswold bared his head to the faint breeze, or
perhaps unconsciously he saluted the bronze figure of Hampton, who rides
forever there at the head of his stubborn legion. He turned into the
capitol with a little sigh, for he was a son of Virginia, and here, in
this unfamiliar scene, the Past was revivified, and he felt the spell of
things that were already old when he was born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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