THE
Bishop of Cottontown
A STORY OF THE SOUTHERN
COTTON MILLS
BY
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
AUTHOR OF
"A Summer Hymnal," "Ole Mistis," "Songs and Stories
from Tennessee," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE KINNEYS
"And each in his separate star,
Shall paint the thing as he sees it
For the God of Things As They Are."
Kipling
PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, 1906
_All Rights Reserved_
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
EMILY BILLINGSLEA MOORE,
WHO DIED
DECEMBER 14TH, 1903,
THE FAITH OF THIS BOOK BEING HERS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PART FIRST--THE BLOOM.
PROLOGUE--THE COTTON BLOSSOM 7
PART SECOND--THE BOLL.
I. COTTON 13
II. RICHARD TRAVIS 18
III. JUD CARPENTER 27
IV. FOOD FOR THE FACTORY 39
V. THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT 50
VI. THE FLINT AND THE COAL 64
VII. HILLARD WATTS 84
VIII. WESTMORELAND 92
IX. A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING 103
X. A STAR AND A SATELLITE 108
XI. A MIDNIGHT BURIAL 117
XII. JACK BRACKEN 127
PART THIRD--THE GIN.
I. ALICE WESTMORE 143
II. THE REAL HEROES 151
III. FRANKLIN 154
PART FOURTH--THE LINT.
I. COTTONTOWN 179
II. BEN BUTLER 187
III. AN ANSWER TO PRAYER 199
IV. HOW THE BISHOP FROZE 205
V. THE FLOCK 209
VI. A BISHOP MILITANT 213
VII. MARGARET ADAMS 219
VIII. HARD-SHELL SUNDAY 226
IX. THE RETURN 232
X. THE SWAN SONG OF THE CREPE MYRTLE 239
XI. THE CASKET AND THE GHOST 248
XII. A MIDNIGHT GUARD 254
XIII. THE THEFT OF A CHILDHOOD 258
XIV. UNCLE DAVE'S WILL 275
XV. EDWARD CONWAY 287
XVI. HELEN'S DESPAIR 296
XVII. THE WHIPPER-IN 305
XVIII. SAMANTHA CAREWE 312
XIX. A QUICK CONVERSION 317
XX. A LIVE FUNERAL 326
XXI. JACK AND THE LITTLE ONES 336
XXII. THE BROKEN THREAD 344
XXIII. GOD WILL PROVIDE 350
XXIV. BONAPARTE'S WATERLOO 355
XXV. A BORN NATURALIST 366
XXVI. BEN BUTLER'S LAST RACE 380
XXVII. YOU'LL COME BACK A MAN 414
PART FIFTH--THE LOOM.
I. A NEW MILL GIRL 419
II. IN THE DEPTHS 431
III. WORK IN A NEW LIGHT 438
IV. MAGGIE 443
V. PAY-DAY 447
VI. THE PLOT 456
VII. MRS. WESTMORE TAKES A HAND 464
VIII. A QUESTION BROUGHT HOME 473
IX. THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT 487
X. MARRIED IN GOD'S SIGHT 493
XI. THE QUEEN IS DEAD 499
XII. IN THYSELF THERE IS WEAKNESS 508
XIII. HIMSELF AGAIN 512
XIV. THE JOY OF THE MORNING 519
XV. THE TOUCH OF GOD 526
XVI. MAMMY MARIA 533
XVII. THE DOUBLE THAT DIED 545
XVIII. THE DYING LION 552
XIX. FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH 564
XX. THE ANGEL WITH THE FLAMING SWORD 572
XXI. THE GREAT FIRE 581
XXII. A CONWAY AGAIN 588
XXIII. DIED FOR THE LAW 596
XXIV. THE ATONEMENT 611
XXV. THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS 624
XXVI. THE MODEL MILL 633
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, have been silently
corrected. For clarity, have added new paragraphs with respect to
dialogue within paragraphs. The name Hillard and Hilliard have
been uniformly changed to Hillard. Corrected incorrect usages of
'its' and 'it's.' All other inconsistencies (i.e. The inconsistent
spellings--sombre/somber, gray/grey, hyphen/no hyphen) have been
left as they were in the original.]
PART FIRST--THE BLOOM
THE COTTON BLOSSOM
The cotton blossom is the only flower that is born in the shuttle of
a sunbeam and dies in a loom.
It is the most beautiful flower that grows, and needs only to become
rare to be priceless--only to die to be idealized.
For the world worships that which it hopes to attain, and our ideals
are those things just out of our reach.
Satiety has ten points and possession is nine of them.
If, in early August, the delicately green leaves of this most
aristocratic of all plants, instead of covering acres of Southland
shimmering under a throbbing sun, peeped daintily out, from among the
well-kept beds of some noble garden, men would flock to see that
plant, which, of all plants, looks most like a miniature tree.
A stout-hearted plant,--a tree, dwarfed, but losing not its dignity.
Then, one morning, with the earliest sunrise, and born of it, there
emerges from the scalloped sea-shell of the bough an exquisite,
pendulous, cream-white blossom, clasping in its center a golden
yellow star, pinked with dawn points of light, and, setting high up
under its sky of milk-white petals flanked with yellow stars, it
seems to the little nestling field-wrens born beneath it to be the
miniature arch of daybreak, ere the great eye of the morning star
closes.
Later, when the sun rises and the sky above grows pink and purple,
it, too, changes its color from pink to purple, copying the sky from
zone to zone, from blue to deeper blue, until, at late evening the
young nestlings may look up and say, in their bird language: "It is
twilight."
What other flower among them can thus copy Nature, the great master?
Under every sky is a sphere, and under this sky picture, when night
falls and closes it, a sphere is born. And in that sphere is all of
earth.
Its oils and its minerals are there, and one day, becoming too full
of richness, it bursts, and throws open a five-roomed granary, stored
with richer fabric than ever came from the shuttles of Fez and
holding globes of oil such as the olives of Hebron dreamed not of.
And in that fabric is the world clothed.
Oh, little loom of the cotton-plant, poet that can show us the sky,
painter that paints it, artisan that reaches out, and, from the skein
of a sunbeam, the loom of the air and the white of its own soul,
weaves the cloth that clothes the world!
From dawn and darkness building a loom. From sunlight and shadow
weaving threads of such fineness that the spider's were ropes of sand
and the hoar frost's but clumsy icicles.
Weaving--weaving--weaving them. And the delicately patterned tapestry
of ever-changing clouds forming patterns of a fabric, white as the
snow of the centuries, determined that since it has to make the
garments of men, it will make them unsullied.
Oh, little plant, poet, painter, master-artisan!
It is true to Nature to the last. The summer wanes and the winter
comes, and when the cotton sphere bursts, 'tis a ball of snow, but a
dazzling white, spidery snow, which warms and does not chill, brings
comfort and not care, wealth and the rich warm blood, and not the
pinches of poverty.
There are those who cannot hear God's voice unless He speaks to them
in the thunders of Sinai, nor see Him unless He flares before them in
the bonfires of a burning bush. They grumble because His Messenger
came to a tribe in the hill countries of Long Ago. They wish to see
the miracle of the dead arising. They see not the miracle of life
around them. Death from Life is more strange to them than life from
death.
'Tis the silent voice that speaks the loudest. Did Sinai speak louder
than this? Hear it:
"I am a bloom, and yet I reflect the sky from the morning's star to
the midnight's. I am a flower, yet I show you the heaven from the
dawn of its birth to the twilight of its death. I am a boll, and yet
a miniature earth stored with silks and satins, oils of the olives,
minerals of all lands. And when I am ripe I throw open my five-roomed
granary, each fitted to the finger and thumb of the human hand, with
a depth between, equalled only by the palm."
O voice of the cotton-plant, do we need to go to oracles or listen
for a diviner voice than yours when thus you tell us: Pluck?
PART SECOND--THE BOLL
CHAPTER I
COTTON
The frost had touched the gums and maples in the Tennessee Valley,
and the wood, which lined every hill and mountain side, looked like
huge flaming bouquets--large ones, where the thicker wood clustered
high on the side of Sand Mountain and stood out in crimson, gold and
yellow against the sky,--small ones, where they clustered around the
foot hills.
Nature is nothing if not sentimental. She will make bouquets if none
be made for her; or, mayhap, she wishes her children to be, and so
makes them bouquets herself.
There was that crispness in the air which puts one to wondering if,
after all, autumn is not the finest time of the year.
It had been a prosperous year in the Tennessee Valley--that year of
1874. And it had brought a double prosperity, in that, under the
leadership of George S. Houston, the white men of the state, after a
desperate struggle, had thrown off the political yoke of the negro
and the carpetbagger, and once more the Saxon ruled in the land of
his birth.
Then was taken a full, long, wholesome, air-filling Anglo-Saxon
breath, from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf. There was a quickening
of pulses that had faltered, and heart-beats that had fluttered,
dumb and discouraged, now rattled like kettle-drums, to the fight of
life.
It meant change--redemption--prosperity. And more: that the white
blood which had made Alabama, need not now leave her for a home
elsewhere.
It was a year glorious, and to be remembered. One which marks an
epoch. One wherein there is an end of the old and a beginning of the
new.
The cotton--the second picking--still whitened thousands of acres.
There were not hands enough to pick it. The negroes, demoralized for
a half score of years by the brief splendor of elevation, and backed,
at first, by Federal bayonets and afterwards by sheer force of their
own number in elections, had been correspondingly demoralized and
shiftless. True to their instinct then, as now, they worked only so
long as they needed money. If one day's cotton picking fed a negro
for five, he rested the five.
The negro race does not live to lay up for a rainy day.
And so the cotton being neglected, its lengthened and frowseled locks
hung from wide open bolls like the locks of a tawdry woman in early
morning.
No one wanted it--that is, wanted it bad enough to pick it. For
cotton was cheap that fall--very cheap--and picking cotton is a
back-bending business. Therefore it hung its frowsy locks from the
boll.
And nothing makes so much for frowsiness in the cotton plant, and in
woman, as to know they are not wanted.
The gin-houses were yet full, tho' the gin had been running day and