The negro question in Cousin Patty's mind is that of the Southerner of
the better class. It isn't these descendants of old families who hate
the negro. Such gentlefolk do not, of course, want equality, but they
want fair treatment for the weaker race. Find me a white man who raves
with rabid prejudice against the black, and I will show you one whose
grandfather belonged not to the planter but to the cracker class, or a
Northerner grafting on Southern Stock. Even in slave times there was
rancor between the black man and what he called "po' white trash" and
it still continues.
The picture of the little bronze boy with his crown of roses lies on my
desk. I should like much to sit with you on the bench beneath the
hundred-leaved bush. What things I should have to say to you! Things
which I dare not write, lest you never let me write again.
You glean the best from everything. That you should take my little
talk about gardens, and fit it to what Ruskin has said, is a gracious
act. You speak of that night in the garden. Do you remember that you
wore a scarlet wrap of thin silk? I could think of nothing as you came
toward me, but of some glorious flower of almost supernatural bloom.
All about you the garden was dying. But you were Life--Life as it
springs up afresh from a world that is dead.
I know how empty the old house seems to you, without Barry, without
Constance, without the beautiful baby whom I have never seen. To me it
can never seem empty with you in it. Is the saying of such things
forbidden? Please believe that I don't mean to force them on you, but
I write as I think.
By this post Cousin Patty is sending a box of her famous cake, for you
and Aunt Isabelle. There's enough for an army, so I shall think of you
as dispensing tea in the garden, with your friends about you--lucky
friends--and with the little bronze boy looking on and laughing.
To Mary of the Garden, then, this letter goes with all good wishes.
ROGER POOLE.