Silverfoot

When I was a little girl I heard many stories of the War-between-the-States, which were more fascinating to me than fairy tales or legends. Nor was their charm lessened by the fact that some of them were about people and places that I knew:

A drop-kneed negro man, whom I saw daily going humbly and quietly to his work, had once carried a message that had saved the life of a young Southern planter.

A dear acquaintance was one of the heirs to a lost fortune, said to have been buried in the yard of an old Southern home.

A horse – but I must not anticipate my story of Silverfoot, which is woven around a true incident and interwoven with treasured memories and childish impressions still strong and vivid.

It is the “long ago” of which I write, yet my little heroines seem close akin to the children who play now in the streets of our old Southern towns; and to the children everywhere, as for that matter.

And courtesy, kindness, courage, and faithfulness, each of which plays its part in my narrative, belong to no one period nor section nor people; which is a pleasant thing to think about.

It is pleasant, too, to know that whenever a horse and a small negro boy make acquaintance, a friendship between them is a inevitable as it was in the days of Rhody’s Jim and Silverfoot.

Maud Lindsay.