" For at Antioch
they act a play the night before Commencement. A land of
Pullman's palace-cars. And lo! they secured sections 5
and 6, 7 and 8, in the "Mayflower." Just time to kiss
the baby of one friend, and to give a basket of guavas to
another, and then whir for Cincinnati and Xenia and
Yellow Springs!
How beautiful were the live-oaks and the magnolias!
How fresh the green of the cotton! How black the faces
of the little negroes, and how beyond dispute the perfume
of the baked peanuts at the stations where sometimes they
had to stop for wood and water! Even the heavy pile of
smoke above Cincinnati was golden with the hopes of a
new-born day as they rushed up to the Ohio River, and as
they crossed it. And then, the land of happy homes! It
was Kapnist who said to me that the most favored places
in the world were the larger villages in Ohio. He had
gone everywhere, too. Xenia, and a perfect breakfast at
the station, then the towers of Antioch, then the
twenty-nine children waving their handkerchiefs as
the train rushes in!
How much there was to tell, to show, to ask for, and
to see! How much pleasure they gave with their
cochineal, their mangoes, their bananas, their hat-bands
for the boys, and their fans for the girls! Yes; and how
much more they took from nutbrown faces, from smiles
beaming from ear to ear, from the boy so tall that he
looked down upon his father, from the girl so womanly
that you asked if her mother were not masquerading.
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