This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it.  As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones: 

“Step right in, suh; ain’t a speck of dust in it—­jus’ got back from a funeral, suh.”

I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning.  I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb.  I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.

“I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street,” I said, and was about to step into the hack.  But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of the old Negro barred me.  On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment.  Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly:  “What are you gwine there for, boss?”

“What is it to you?” I asked, a little sharply.

“Nothin’, suh, jus’ nothin’.  Only it’s a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there.  Step right in.  The seats is clean—­jes’ got back from a funeral, suh.”

A mile and a half it must have been to our journey’s end.  I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms.  All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses.

  The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets,
  of which 137 miles are paved; a system of water-works that cost
  $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.

Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion.  Thirty yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery.  A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate.  But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence.  But in the story, I have not yet got inside.

When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so.  He refused it.

“It’s two dollars, suh,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked.  “I plainly heard you call out at the hotel:  ‘Fifty cents to any part of the town.’”

“It’s two dollars, suh,” he repeated obstinately.  “It’s a long ways from the hotel.”

“It is within the city limits and well within them.”  I argued.  “Don’t think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee.  Do you see those hills over there?” I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); “well, I was born and raised on their other side.  You old fool nigger, can’t you tell people from other people when you see ’em?”