“As each one of my unhappy brothers and sisters was born,” he declared in a voice so husky and tremulous with his passionate resentment that it struck terror to the boy’s heart, “I cursed him—cursed the day that God had given him life! And still they came!” he whispered, eyes ablaze and furious, in a voice that almost faltered to a sob. “Year after year they came with the blind proliferation of his criminal desire—into a house where there was scarcely roof enough to shelter us—in a vile, ramshackle shamble of a place.” he snarled, “where the oldest of us slept three in a bed, and where the youngest, weakest, and most helpless of us all was lucky if he had a pallet of rotten straw that he could call his own! When we awoke at morning our famished guts were aching!—aching!” he howled, “with the damnable gnawing itch of hunger!—My dear child, my dear, dear child!” he exclaimed, in a transition of sudden and terrifying gentleness—“May that, of all life’s miseries, be a pang you never have to suffer!—And we lay down at night always unsatisfied—oh always! always! always!” he cried with an impatient gesture of his hand—“to struggle for repose like restless animals—crammed with distressful bread—swollen with fatback and boiled herbs out of the fields, while your honored grandfather—the Major!…The Major!” he now sneered, and suddenly he contorted his gaunt face in a grotesque grimace and laughed with a sneering, deliberated, forced mirth.
“Now, my boy,” he went on presently in a more tranquil tone of patronizing tolerance, “you have no doubt often heard your good Aunt Maw speak with the irrational and incondite exuberance of her sex,” he continued, smacking his lips together audibly with an air of relish as he pronounced these formidable words—“of that paragon of all the moral virtues—her noble sire, the Major!” Here he paused to laugh sneeringly again. “And perhaps, boylike, you have conceived in your imagination a picture of that distinguished gentleman that is somewhat more romantic than the facts will stand!…Well, my boy,” he went on deliberately, with the birdlike turn of his head as he looked at the boy, “lest your fancy be seduced somewhat by illusions of aristocratic grandeur, I will tell you a few facts about that noble man…. He was the self-appointed Major of a regiment of backwoods volunteers, of whom no more be said than that they were, if possible, less literate than he!…You are descended, it is true,” he went on with his calm precise deliberation, “from a warlike stock—but none of them my dear child, were Brigadiers—no, not even Majors,” he sneered, “for the highest genuine rank I ever heard of them attaining was the rank of corporal—and that proud dignity was the office of the Major’s pious brother—I refer, of course, my boy, to your great-uncle, Rance Joyner!…
“Rance! Rance!”—here he contorted his face again—“Gods! What a name! No wonder he smote fear and trembling to the Yankee heart!…The sight of him was certainly enough to make them stand stock-still at the height of an attack! And the smell of him would surely be enough to strike awe and wonder in the hearts of mortal men—I refer, of course,” he said sardonically, “to the average run of base humanity, since, as you well know, neither your grandfather nor his brother, Holy Rance, nor any other Joyner that I know,” he jeered, “could be compared to mortal men. We admit that much ourselves. For all of us, my boy, were not so much conceived like other men as willed here by an act of God, created by a visitation of the Holy Ghost, trailing clouds of glory as we came,” he sneered, “and surely you must have discovered by this time that it is our unique privilege to act as prophets, messengers, and agents, of the deity here on earth—to demonstrate God’s ways to man—to reveal the inmost workings of His providence and all the mysterious secrets of the universe to other men who have not been so sanctified by destiny as we….
“But be that as it may,” he went on, with one of his sudden and astonishing changes from howling fury to tolerant and tranquil admis-siveness. “I believe there was no question of your holy great-uncle’s valor. Yes, sir!” he continued, “I have heard them say that he could kill at fifty or five hundred yards, and always wing his bullet with a gospel text to make it holy!…Why, my dear child,” the boy’s uncle cried, “there was as virtuous a ruffian as ever split a skull! He blew their brains out with a smile of saintly charity, and sang hosannas over them as they expired! He sanctified the act of murder, and assured them as they weltered in their blood that he had come to them as an angel of mercy bearing to them the gifts of immortal life and everlasting happiness in exchange for the vile brevity of their earthly lives, which he had taken from them with such sweet philanthropy. He shot them through the heart and promised them all the blessings of the Day of Armageddon with so soft a tongue that they fairly wept for joy and kissed the hand of their redeemer as they died!…
“Yes,” he went on tranquilly, “there is no question of your great-uncle’s valor—or his piety—but still, my boy, his station was a lowly one—he never reached a higher rank than corporal! And there were others, too, who fought well and bravely in that war—but they, too, were obscure men! Your great-uncle John, a boy of twenty-two, was killed in battle on the bloody field of Shiloh…. And there are many others of your kinsmen, who fought, died, bled, were wounded, perished, or survived in that great war—but none of them, my dear child, was a Major!…There was only one Major!” he bitterly remarked. “Only your noble grandsire was a Major!”