. . . a lean dark face, keen, steady eyes, and dignified walk. He wore a black soft felt hat and a red silk sash which just peeped from beneath his waistcoat—in all, striking, yet not bizarre, and notably of gentlemanlike manner. What arrested attention most, however, was his voice. People who heard it invariably turned to look or listened from sheer pleasure. It was of such penetrating clearness that if he spoke in an ordinary tone it carried far. Among the Indians of the Hudson Bay company, where he had been for six years or more, he had been known as Man of the Gold Throat, and that long before he was called by the negroes on his father's plantation in the southern states Little Marse Gabriel, because Gabriel's horn, they thought, must be like his voice—"only mo' so, an dat chile was bawn to ride on de golden mule."

You would not, from his manner or voice or dress have called him an American. You might have said he was a gentleman planter from Cuba or Ja. . . Read More