For years the choicest fruits
of all the earth had been served daily upon his table. Yet as he
looked back to-day no shining trout that had ever risen to his fly had
stirred his emotions like the diaphanous minnows, caught, with a
crooked pin, in the crooked creek; no luscious fruit had ever matched
in sweetness the sour grapes and bitter nuts gathered from the native
woods--by him and Peter in their far-off youth.
"Yas, suh, yas, suh," Peter went on, "an' 'member dat time you an'
young Mars Jim Wilson went huntin' and fishin' up de country
tergether, an' got ti'ed er waitin' on yo'se'ves an' writ back fer me
ter come up ter wait on yer and cook fer yer, an' ole Marster say he
did n' dare ter let me go 'way off yander wid two keerliss boys lak
you-all, wid guns an' boats fer fear I mought git shot, er drownded?"
"It looked, Peter, as though he valued you more than me! more than his
own son!"
"Yas, suh, yas, suh! sho' he did, sho' he did! old Marse Philip wuz a
monstus keerful man, an' _I_ wuz winth somethin', suh, dem times; I
wuz wuth five hundred dollahs any day in de yeah. But nobody would n'
give five hundred cents fer me now, suh. Dey'd want pay fer takin' me,
mos' lakly. Dey ain' none too much room fer a young nigger no mo', let
'lone a' ol' one."
"And what have you been doing all these years, Peter?" asked the
colonel.
Peter's story was not a thrilling one; it was no tale of inordinate
ambition, no Odyssey of a perilous search for the prizes of life, but
the bald recital of a mere struggle for existence.
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