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Silas Jackson
by
“Ve’y well, suh, ve’y well. You are evidently the p’oper pusson, as I reco’nize this as my own chirography.”
The up-country boy stood in awed silence. He thought he had never heard such fine language before.
“I ca’culate that you have nevah had no experience in hotel work,” pursued Mr. Buckner somewhat more graciously.
“I’s nevah done nuffin’ but wo’k on a farm; but evahbody ‘lows I’s right handy.” The fear that he would be sent back home without employment gave him boldness.
“I see, I see,” said the head waiter. “Well, we’ll endeavor to try an’ see how soon you can learn. Mistah Smith, will you take this young man in charge, an’ show him how to get about things until we are ready to try him in the dinin’-room?”
A rather pleasant-faced yellow boy came over to Silas and showed him where to put his things and what to do.
“I guess it’ll be a little strange at first, if you’ve never been a hotel man, but you’ll ketch on. Just you keep your eye on me.”
All that day as Silas blundered about slowly and awkwardly, he looked with wonder and admiration at the ease and facility with which his teacher and the other men did their work. They were so calm, so precise, and so self-sufficient. He wondered if he would ever be like them, and felt very hopeless as the question presented itself to him.
They were a little prone to laugh at him, but he was so humble and so sensible that he thought he must be laughable; so he laughed a little shamefacedly at himself, and only tried the harder to imitate his companions. Once when he dropped a dish upon the floor, he held his breath in consternation, but when he found that no one paid any attention to it, he picked it up and went his way.
He was tired that night, more tired than ploughing had ever made him, and was thankful when Smith proposed to show him at once to the rooms apportioned to the servants. Here he sank down and fell into a doze as soon as his companion left him with the remark that he had some studying to do. He found afterward that Smith was only a temporary employee at the Springs, coming there during the vacations of the school which he attended, in order to eke out the amount which it cost him for his education. Silas thought this a very wonderful thing at first, but when he grew wiser, as he did finally, he took the point of view of most of his fellows and thought that Smith was wasting both time and opportunities.
It took a very short time for Silas’s unfamiliarity with his surroundings to wear off, and for him to become acquainted with the duties of his position. He grew at ease with his work, and became a favorite both in dining-room and kitchen. Then began his acquaintance with other things, and there were many other things at the Springs which an unsophisticated young man might learn.
Silas’s social attainments were lamentably sparse, but being an apt youngster, he began to acquire them, quite as he acquired his new duties, and different forms of speech. He learned to dance–almost a natural gift of the negro–and he was introduced into the subtleties of flirtation. At first he was a bit timid with the nurse-girls and maids whom the wealthy travelers brought with them, but after a few lessons from very able teachers, he learned the manly art of ogling to his own satisfaction, and soon became as proficient as any of the other black coxcombs.
If he ever thought of Dely Manly any more, it was with a smile that he had been able at one time to consider her seriously. The people at home, be it said to his credit, he did not forget. A part of his wages went back every month to help better the condition of the cabin. But Silas himself had no desire to return, and at the end of a year he shuddered at the thought of it. He was quite willing to help his father, whom he had now learned to call the “old man,” but he was not willing to go back to him.