Slippy McGee | Page 2

taste out of my mouth an' the red out of my eye after
viewin' Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York, with an angel
that'd lost the grace of God prancin' on ahead of him!" He added
reflectively: "I had my own ideah as to where any angel leadin' him was
most likely headed for!"
"Oh, I meant in Europe!" hastily.
"Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon; likewise
New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to visit the
general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to assure me that
the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round world was right there
before me! What do folks want to rush off to foreign parts for, where
they can't talk plain English an' a man can't get a satisfyin' meal of
home cookin', when we've got the greatest work of art an' the best hams
ever cured, right in Virginia? See America first, I say. Why, suh, I was
so glad to get back to good old Appleboro that I let everybody else wait
until I'd gone around to the monument an' looked up at our man standin'
there on top of it, an' I found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin'
as if I was sayin' my prayers: our names.
"Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!"
They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living or
dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is

buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the back,
and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of his granite
breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to admit that as
a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues cluttering New York
City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical; they see him not with the
eyes of art but with the deeper vision of the heart. He stands for
something that is gone on the wind and the names he guards are our
names.
This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is inherent
in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it explains my
Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.
Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman
as they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give
a backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come into
the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and they depart
hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like Appleboro
take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully drowsing among
immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy moss.
Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich territory
to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the poor
parish of which I, Armand De Rancé, am pastor, and some few wealthy
families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has been in part
granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove far from us all
vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither poverty nor riches, and
we are fed with food convenient for us.
In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat--always

without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted
and unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that
have sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was
not new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats
overran the country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of
old-fashioned shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men
and women grow old serenely and delightfully, and youth flourishes all
the fairer for the rich soil which has brought it forth.
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