Kennedy Square | Page 2

morning duties--did not trouble him in the least.
Marse George might come any minute, and he wanted to be the first to
welcome him.
For the past few weeks Todd had had the house to himself. Coal-black
Aunt Jemima, with her knotted pig-tails, capacious bosom, and
unconfined waist, forty years his senior and ten shades darker in color,
it is true, looked after the pots and pans, to say nothing of a particular
spit on which her master's joints and game were roasted; but the upper
part of the house, which covered the drawing-room, dining-room,
bedroom, and dressing-room in the rear, as well as the outside of the
dwelling, including even the green-painted front door and the slant of
white marble steps that dropped to the brick sidewalk, were the especial
property of the chocolate-colored darky.
To these duties was added the exclusive care of the master himself--a
care which gave the boy the keenest delight, and which embraced every
service from the drawing off of St. George Wilmot Temple's boots to
the shortening of that gentleman's slightly gray hair; the supervision of
his linen, clothes, and table, with such side issues as the custody of his
well-stocked cellar, to say nothing of the compounding of various
combinations, sweet, sour, and strong, the betrayal of whose secrets
would have cost the darky his place.
"Place" is the word, for Todd was not St. George's slave, but the
property of a well-born, if slightly impoverished, gentleman who lived

on the Eastern Shore, and whose chief source of income was the hiring
out to his friends and acquaintances of just such likely young darkies as
Todd--a custom common to the impecunious of those days.
As Mr. Temple, however, did not come under either one of the
above-mentioned classes--the "slightly impoverished gentleman" never
having laid eyes on him in his life--the negotiations had to be
conducted with a certain formality. Todd had therefore, on his arrival,
unpinned from the inside of his jacket a portentous document signed
with his owner's name and sealed with a red wafer, which after such
felicitous phrases as--"I have the distinguished honor," etc.--gave the
boy's age (21), weight (140 pounds), and height (5 feet 10 inches)--all
valuable data for identification in case the chattel conceived a notion of
moving further north (an unnecessary precaution in Todd's case). To
this was added the further information that the boy had been raised
under his master's heels, that he therefore knew his pedigree, and that
his sole and only reason for sparing him from his own immediate
service was his own poverty and the fact that while under St. George's
care the boy could learn how "to wait on quality."
As to the house itself--the "Temple Mansion," as it was called--that was
as much a part of Kennedy Square as the giant magnolias gracing the
park, or the Noah's Ark church, with its quaint belfry and cracked bell,
which faced its shady walks. Nobody, of course, remembered how long
it had been built--that is, nobody then alive--I mean the very date. Such
authorities as Major Clayton were positive that the bricks had been
brought from Holland; while Richard Horn, the rising young scientist,
was sure that all the iron and brass work outside were the product of
Sheffield; but in what year they had all been put together had always
been a disputed question.
That, however, which was certain and beyond doubt, was that St.
George's father, old General Dorsey Temple, had purchased the
property near the close of the preceding century; that he had, with his
characteristic vehemence, pushed up the roof, thrust in two dormer
windows, and smashed out the rear wall, thus enlarging the
dining-room and giving increased space for a glass-covered porch

ending in a broad flight of wooden steps descending to a rose-garden
surrounded by a high brick wall; that thus encouraged he had widened
the fireplaces, wainscoted the hall, built a new mahogany spider-web
staircase leading to his library on the second floor, and had otherwise
disported himself after the manner of a man who, having suddenly
fallen heir to a big pot of money, had ever after continued oblivious to
the fact that the more holes he punched in its bottom the less water
would spill over its top. The alterations complete, balls, routs, and
dinners followed to such distinguished people as Count Rochambeau,
the Marquis de Castellux, Marquis de Lafayette, and other high
dignitaries, coming-of-age parties for the young bloods--quite English
in his tastes was the old gentleman--not to mention many other
extravagances which were still discussed by the gossips of the day.
With the general's death--it had occurred some twenty years before--the
expected had happened. Not only was the pot nearly empty, but the
various drains which it had sustained had so undermined the