“Miss Betsy, if unna (you-all) kyant behave unna self, I’ll tek yu straight home! Dis ain’t no conduk fu de Gubner karridge!”
My feelings are better imagined than described. However, it was most successful. The rest of the drive was perfectly proper; and after a while when we got up the road one of the boys brought out a box of sugar-plums, which we ate most noiselessly and discreetly, and we had a delightful drive and mamma never heard of our undue hilarity. These seem very trivial things to record, but young girls are interested in trivial things; and the surge of events toward the great Civil War, which was approaching, was not felt by me at all. I realized more and more the beauty and comfort of my home and surroundings.
I must describe our servants. Nelson was the butler and house-servant. (He was a mulatto, the son of a Mr. Thompson who had been overseer at Chicora before Mr. Belflowers. He was a Northern man, very smart and capable; but after this papa sent him away. Nelson adopted his father’s surname, Thompson.) He was the best, most faithful, intelligent man possible, and we were all devoted to him. Then came William Baron, who was very black and very heavily built, but an excellent servant, with very courteous manners. He took the greatest delight in arranging all the flowers in the house, which I also loved to do; and there was always a race between William and myself as to who should do it. I remember specially one yellow flat bowl on a stand with Greek figures in black chasing round it, a perfectly lovely thing for flowers; and it nearly broke my heart when I found William had changed the flowers in it and arranged them to his mind. William was my brother’s (Colonel Ben Allston’s) body-servant during the whole war.
After the war William Baron became well known in Charleston as a caterer, cook, and provider of elegant entertainments. He took charge of the suppers for the St. Cecilia, which were always very handsome and elaborate and quite a feature. Indeed, William was quite a personage, with grand manners, and perfectly honest. He had but one fault, to look upon the wine when it was red; he habitually took more than was good for him and lived too high, so that his health gave out before he was at all an old man. He always showed enthusiastic pleasure when he met any of the family, but especially my eldest brother to whom he had belonged. Mas’ Ben continued to fill his ideas as to what constituted a gentleman. Whenever my brother came to the city and he knew it, he would send round a dish of delicious chicken salad or a shrimp pie, for which he was famous, or a Charlotte Russe, or some dish that he knew Mas’ Ben specially liked. It was always a pleasure to meet William; his very black, round face shone with delight and every one of his very white teeth showed, as he assured you that “it did his heart good to look upon you and you were looking so fine and so well.”