John Marvel, Assistant — Thomas Nelson Page

Among my chief intimates as a small boy was a little darkey named J cams. J earns was the grandson of one of our Old servants - Uncle Ralph Woodson. J cams, who was a few years my senior, was a sharp-witted boy, as black as a piece Of Old mahogany, and had a head so hard that he could butt a plank Off a fence. Naturally he and I became cronies, and he picked up information on various subjects so readily that I found him equally agreeable and useful.

My father was admirably adapted to the conditions that had created such a character, but as unsuited to the new conditions that succeeded the collapse of the old life as a shorn lamb would be to the untempered wind of winter. He was a Whig and an aristocrat of the strongest type, and though in practice he was the kindest and most liberal of men, he always maintained that a gentleman was the choicest fruit of civilization; a standard, I may say, in which the personal element counted with him far more than family connection. A king can make a nobleman, sir, he used to say.

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