Fiction has said so much in regret of the old days when there were
plantations and overseers and masters and slaves, that it was good to
come upon such a household as Berry Hamilton's, if for no other reason
than that it afforded a relief from the monotony of tiresome iteration.

The little cottage in which he lived with his wife, Fannie, who was
housekeeper to the Oakleys, and his son and daughter, Joe and Kit, sat
back in the yard some hundred paces from the mansion of his employer. It
was somewhat in the manner of the old cabin in the quarters, with which
usage as well as tradition had made both master and servant familiar.
But, unlike the cabin of the elder day, it was a neatly furnished,
modern house, the home of a typical, good-living negro. For twenty years
Berry Hamilton had been butler for Maurice Oakley. He was one of the
many slaves who upon their accession to freedom had not left the South,
but had wandered from place to place in their own beloved section,
waiting, working, and struggling to rise with its rehabilitated
fortunes.

The first faint signs of recovery were being seen when he came to
Maurice Oakley as a servant. Through thick and thin he remained with
him, and when the final upward tendency of his employer began his
fortunes had increased in like manner. When, having married, Oakley
bought the great house in which he now lived, he left the little
servant's cottage in the yard, for, as he said laughingly, "There is no
telling when Berry will be following my example and be taking a wife
unto himself."

His joking prophecy came true very soon. Berry had long had a tenderness