All pilgrims to Tallahassee visit the Murat place. It is one of the most conveniently accessible of those “points of interest” with which guide-books so anxiously, and with so much propriety, concern themselves. What a tourist prays for is something to see. If I had ever been a tourist in Boston, no doubt I should before now have surveyed the world from the top of the Bunker Hill monument. In Tallahassee, at all events, I went to the Murat estate. In fact, I went more than once; but I remember especially my first visit, which had a livelier sentimental interest than the others because I was then under the agreeable delusion that the Prince himself had lived there. The guide-book told me so, vouchsafing also the information that after building the house he “interested himself actively in local affairs, became a naturalized citizen, and served successively as postmaster, alderman, and mayor”—a model immigrant, surely, though it is rather the way of immigrants, perhaps, not to refuse political responsibilities.
Naturally, I remembered these things as I stood in front of “the big house”—a story-and-a-half cottage—amid the flowering shrubs. Here lived once the son of the King of Naples; himself a Prince, and—worthy son of a worthy sire—alderman and then mayor of the city of Tallahassee. Thus did an uncompromising democrat pay court to the shades of Royalty, while a mocking-bird sang from a fringe-bush by the gate, and an oriole flew madly from tree to tree in pursuit of a fair creature of the reluctant sex.
The inconsistency, if such it was, was quickly punished. For, alas! When I spoke of my morning’s pilgrimage to an old resident of the town, he told me that Murat never lived in the house, nor anywhere else in Tallahassee, and of course was never its postmaster, alderman, or mayor. The Princess, he said, built the house after her husband’s death, and lived there, a widow. I appealed to the guide-book. My informant sneered,—politely,—and brought me a still older Tallahassean, Judge ——, whose venerable name I am sorry to have forgotten, and that indisputable citizen confirmed all that his neighbor had said. For once, the guide-book compiler must have been misinformed.
The question, happily, was one of no great consequence. If the Prince had never lived in the house, the Princess had; and she, by all accounts (and I make certain her husband would have said the same), was the worthier person of the two. And even if neither of them had lived there, if my sentiment had been all wasted (but there was no question of tears), the place itself was sightly, the house was old, and the way thither a pleasant one—first down the hill in a zigzag course to the vicinity of the railway station, then by a winding country road through the valley past a few negro cabins, and up the slope on the farther side. Prince Murat, or no Prince Murat, I should love to travel that road to-day, instead of sitting before a Massachusetts fire, with the ground deep under snow, and the air full of thirty or forty degrees of frost.
In the front yard of one of the cabins opposite the car-wheel foundry, and near the station, as I now remember, a middle-aged negress was cutting up an oak log. She swung the axe with vigor and precision, and the chips flew; but I could not help saying, “You ought to make the man do that.”
She answered on the instant. “I would,” she said, “if I had a man to make.”
“I’m sure you would,” I thought. Her tongue was as sharp as her axe.
Ought I to have ventured a word in her behalf, I wonder, when a man of her own color, and a pretty near neighbor, told me with admirable naivete the story of his bereavement and his hopes? His wife had died a year before, he said, and so far, though he had not let the grass grow under his feet, he had found no one to take her place. He still meant to do so, if he could. He was only seventy-four years old, and it was not good for a man to be alone. He seemed a gentle spirit, and I withheld all mention of the stalwart and manless wood-cutter. I hope he went farther, and fared better. So youthful as he was, surely there was no occasion for haste.
When I had skirted a cotton-field—the crop just out of the ground—and a bit of wood on the right, and a swamp with a splendid display of white water-lilies on the left, and had begun to ascend the gentle slope, I met a man of considerably more than seventy-four years.
“Can you tell me just where the Murat place is?” I inquired.
He grinned broadly, and thought he could. He was one of the old Murat servants, as his father had been before him. “I was borned on to him,” he said, speaking of the Prince. Murat was “a gentleman, sah.” That was a statement which it seemed impossible for him to repeat often enough. He spoke from a slave’s point of view. Murat was a good master. The old man had heard him say that he kept servants “for the like of the thing.” He didn’t abuse them. He “never was for barbarizing a poor colored person at all.” Whipping? Oh, yes. “He didn’t miss your fault. No, sah, he didn’t miss your fault.” But his servants never were “ironed.” He “didn’t believe in barbarousment.”
The old man was thankful to be free; but to his mind emancipation had not made everything heavenly. The younger set of negroes (“my people” was his word) were on the wrong road. They had “sold their birthright,” though exactly what he meant by that remark I did not gather. “They ain‘t got no sense,” he declared, “and what sense they has got don’t do ’em no good.”
I told him finally that I was from the North. “Oh, I knows it,” he exclaimed, “I knows it;” and he beamed with delight. How did he know, I inquired. “Oh, I knows it. I can see it in you. Anybody would know it that had any jedgment at all. You’s a perfect gentleman, sah.” He was too old to be quarreled with, and I swallowed the compliment.
I tore myself away, or he might have run on till night—about his old master and mistress, the division of the estate, an abusive overseer (“he was a perfect dog, sah!”), and sundry other things. He had lived a long time, and had nothing to do now but to recall the past and tell it over. So it will be with us, if we live so long. May we find once in a while a patient listener.
This patriarch’s unfavorable opinion as to the prospects of the colored people was shared by my hopeful young widower before mentioned, who expressed himself quite as emphatically. He was brought up among white people (“I’s been taughted a heap,” he said), and believed that the salvation of the blacks lay in their recognition of white supremacy. But he was less perspicacious than the older man. He was one of the very few persons whom I met at the South who did not recognize me at sight as a Yankee. “Are you a legislator-man?” he asked, at the end of our talk. The legislature was in session on the hill. But perhaps, after all, he only meant to flatter me.
If I am long on the way, it is because, as I love always to have it, the going and coming were the better part of the pilgrimage. The estate itself is beautifully situated, with far-away horizons; but it has fallen into great neglect, while the house, almost in ruins, and occupied by colored people, is to Northern eyes hardly more than a larger cabin. It put me in mind of the question of a Western gentleman whom I met at St. Augustine. He had come to Florida against his will, the weather and the doctor having combined against him, and was looking at everything through very blue spectacles. “Have you seen any of those fine old country mansions,” he asked, “about which we read so often in descriptions of Southern, life?” He had been on the lookout for them, he averred, ever since he left home, and had yet to find the first one; and from his tone it was evident that he thought the Southern idea of a “fine old mansion” must be different from his.
The Murat house, certainly, was never a palace, except as love may have made it so. But it was old; people had lived in it, and died in it; those who once owned it, whose name and memory still clung to it, were now in narrower houses; and it was easy for the visitor—for one visitor, at least—to fall into pensive meditation. I strolled about the grounds; stood between the last year’s cotton-rows, while a Carolina wren poured out his soul from an oleander bush near by; admired the confidence of a pair of shrikes, who had made a nest in a honeysuckle vine in the front yard; listened to the sweet music of mocking-birds, cardinals, and orchard orioles; watched the martins circling above the trees; thought of the Princess, and smiled at the black children who thrust their heads out of the windows of her “big house;” and then, with a sprig of honeysuckle for a keepsake, I started slowly homeward.
The sun by this time was straight overhead, but my umbrella saved me from absolute discomfort, while birds furnished here and there an agreeable diversion. I recall in particular some white-crowned sparrows, the first ones I had seen in Florida. At a bend in the road opposite the water-lily swamp, while I was cooling myself in the shade of a friendly pine-tree,—enjoying at the same time a fence overrun with Cherokee roses,—a man and his little boy came along in a wagon. The man seemed really disappointed when I told him that I was going into town, instead of coming from it. It was pretty warm weather for walking, and he had meant to offer me a lift. He was a Scandinavian, who had been for some years in Florida. He owned a good farm not far from the Murat estate, which latter he had been urged to buy; but he thought a man wasn’t any better off for owning too much land. He talked of his crops, his children, the climate, and so on, all in a cheerful strain, pleasant to hear. If the pessimists are right,—which may I be kept from believing,—the optimists are certainly more comfortable to live with, though it be only for ten minutes under a roadside shade-tree.
When I reached the street-car track at the foot of the hill, the one car which plies back and forth through the city was in its place, with the driver beside it, but no mules.
“Are you going to start directly?” I asked.
“Yes, sah,” he answered; and then, looking toward the stable, he shouted in a peremptory voice, “Do about, there! Do about!”
“What does that mean?” said I. “Hurry up?”
“Yes, sah, that’s it. ‘Tain’t everybody that wants to be hurried up; so we tells ‘em, ‘Do about!’”
Half a minute afterwards two very neatly dressed little colored boys stepped upon the rear platform.
“Where you goin’?” said the driver. “Uptown?”
They said they were.
“Well, come inside. Stay out there, and you’ll git hurt and cost this dried-up company more money than you’s wuth.”
They dropped into seats by the rear door. He motioned them to the front corner. “Sit down there,” he said, “right there.” They obeyed, and as he turned away he added, what I found more and more to be true, as I saw more of him, “I ain’t de boss, but I’s got right smart to say.”
Then, he whistled to the mules, flourished his whip, and to a persistent accompaniment of whacks and whistles we went crawling up the hill.
背景介紹與作者介紹
這篇敘述是一篇反思性的遊記，描述了對佛羅里達州塔拉哈西的穆拉特莊園的訪問。故事捕捉了作者在旅途中的印象和遭遇，融合了歷史事實和個人觀察。穆拉特莊園與穆拉特王子有關，據說是那不勒斯國王的兒子，據說他曾在那裡居住並活躍於當地政治。然而，作者發現這更多的是傳說而非事實，揭示了歷史和記憶的複雜性。
作者以北方遊客的視角寫作，提供了對內戰後南方的一些見解，包括社會動態、種族關係和不斷變化的景觀。語氣是沉思的，有時帶有諷刺意味，邀請讀者批判性地思考歷史、身份和我們講述的故事。
詳細闡釋和意義
從根本上說，這個故事探討了歷史與神話、時間的流逝以及地方和地標背後的人類故事等主題。穆拉特莊園象征著褪色的宏偉以及美國南方的文化和歷史的融合。作者最初對穆拉特王子居住在那裡的浪漫化看法與現實形成了對比，突出了故事如何隨著時間和視角的變化而重塑。
與當地居民，尤其是非裔美國人的相遇，提供了對奴隸制和解放遺產的深刻見解。老僕人對穆拉特王子作為“好主人”的尊敬回憶與年輕一代的懷疑和掙扎形成了對比。喪偶者的陪伴希望和斯堪的納維亞農民的樂觀態度增加了人類體驗的層次，展示了在不斷變化的時代的韌性和適應能力。
給學生的教訓和見解
-
批判性地思考歷史： 這個故事教導學生質疑和調查歷史敘事，而不是照單全收。它展示了神話如何圍繞歷史人物和地方滋生，以及尋求多種視角的重要性。
-
同情心和理解： 通過作者與當地人的對話，學生們了解了同情心以及傾聽他人故事的價值，尤其是那些來自不同背景或世代的人。
-
對變化和連續性的反思： 這個故事鼓勵人們反思地方和社會如何隨著時間的推移而變化，以及人們如何在保持記憶和傳統的同時適應新的現實。
-
對自然和地方的欣賞： 對景觀、鳥類和植物的生動描述邀請學生欣賞自然世界及其在塑造人類體驗中的作用。
將這些教訓應用於生活
-
在學習中： 學生可以練習從各種來源研究歷史事實，比較敘述，並發展自己的知情觀點。這有助於培養批判性思維和分析能力。
-
在社交互動中： 通過重視他人的經歷和故事，學生可以培養同情心和開放的心態，這是尊重溝通和友誼的重要品質。
-
在個人成長中： 反思變化和韌性可以激勵學生以希望和適應能力面對挑戰，認識到成長往往來自於克服困難。
-
在環境意識中： 注意到周圍的美麗自然可以培養對環境的責任感和關懷。
從故事中培養積極的價值觀
-
尊重歷史和人民： 即使故事不完美或不完整，尊重過去和那些生活在過去的人也很重要。
-
好奇心和開放的心態： 對真相保持好奇心並樂於從不同的角度學習可以豐富理解。
-
善良和同情心： 作者對他所遇到的人的溫和態度，為學生們樹立了善良和尊重的榜樣，這些都是他們可以效仿的品質。
-
耐心和反思： 穆拉特莊園的緩慢、深思熟慮的旅程提醒我們，花時間觀察、思考和欣賞生活的細節的價值。
通過深入參與這個故事，學生不僅提高了他們的閱讀和理解能力，而且培養了對歷史、文化和人性的更豐富的理解——這些教訓將在他們生活的各個方面為他們提供幫助。
