Every day I
saw people, old and young, black and white, looking at it with
undisguised curiosity. Often they passed audible comments upon it among
themselves. "How far can you see through the spyglass?" a bolder spirit
would now and then venture to ask; and once, on the railway track out in
the pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced urchin made a guess that was
really admirable for its ingenuity. "Looks like you're goin' over
inspectin' the wire," he remarked. On rare occasions, as an act of
special grace, I offered such an inquirer a peep through the magic
lenses,--an experiment that never failed to elicit exclamations of
wonder. Things were so near! And the observer looked comically
incredulous, on putting down the glass, to find how suddenly the
landscape had slipped away again. More than one colored man wanted to
know its price, and expressed a fervent desire to possess one like it;
and probably, if I had ever been assaulted and robbed in all my solitary
wanderings through the flat-woods and other lonesome places, my
"spyglass" rather than my purse--the "lust of the eye" rather than the
"pride of life"--would have been to thank.
[Footnote 1: He did not say "upon" any more than Northern white boys
do.]
Here, however, there could be no thought of such a contingency. Here
were no vagabonds (one inoffensive Yankee specimen excepted), but
hard-working people going into the city or out again, each on his own
lawful business.
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