I hope the Good Lord keep it strate! Father left me 1000 acres of good land, Jeremiah got his freedom & 500, and Chapman got 250. Jacob has never rested since my Father died. He got poor Jeremiah’s, and he paid a little for Chapman’s. Chapman just want money to gamble. He is no good, like his father before him. That one don’t care about what’s rite. Don’t like me, neither. Now, my Father loved my Mother very much, seeing as how he gave the three of us what he did. Jacob near lost his mind when he heard. He do what he like around here. But my birthrite is safe and I don’t care how long it takes, I will have Justice! I will set the story strate without help from nobody, and my children will know the truth about who they are. Now, Jacob says–Got a mitey nice place here, Ivanhoe.–He takes his cane and swings it down my counter. Broke eleven dollars worth of tonics and French colone. Bent my best two dollar German razor. I just about jumped on him, but he looks so pitiful and thin, with that hole in his chest you can hear like boiling gumbo. I think he was drunk, like usual, because they say he spits blood and drinks whiskey all nite and never eats and never sleeps. He wanted a fite, I reckon, cause he has his hand inside his coat just itching to pull out that mean litel gun. Lucky there was some men looking in the window from across the street. Jacob may be crazy, but he ain’t dumb. He says–Lots of folks don’t appreciate you putting on airs, Ivanhoe. Figure you must have stolen that money you got all of a sudden. Lots of powerful people, who can take action when it is necessary. They don’t like you setting yourself up white, they don’t like you calling yourself by my Father’s name, or almost, they don’t like you thretning to go to those traitor tirants in the Yankee Legislachure in New Orleans.–Times have changed–I say–You can’t do like you did before. The War is over, Brother.–He come rite up close to me. His breath put me in mind of those breezes we used to smell coming from the east after Vicksburg, carrying the odor of dead men. He says–Give me that letter nigger because you sure won’t live to benefit from it.–I just stare, don’t move a musel. He wanted to shoot me rite then and there, but something stayed his hand thank the Good Lord. I suspect I’ll be having trouble from the Thanes of the Gardenia soon. They a bunch of white nightriders who look to Jacob for their money. They do their drilling out on Mitzvah, I hear.
December 10th, 1870. Today I bought 30 acres from the old Chirke place. Chirke, he think he was being foxie telling me how good the land is, when I know it is full of rocks and mostly scrub and bog. Five dollars an acre, too much by half, but I have a desire to be a farmer one of these days, and have something my children can feel beneeth their feet. My children’s Portion is safe, but it don’t put food on the table yet. I hear that Mrs. Devlin died, on account of a bad midwife. They say the collera is breaking out again in the south, round New Orleans. Loaned Newman Judd eight dollars for three months at four percent, for him to buy some milk cows. I get as much milk as I need, too. Business is good, and I mite hire another barber. Know of a young colored boy working at the Stable, of good carriage and manners, if I can get him for the rite wage. Guess if he can groom a horse, he can a man, just as easy. They say Jacob getting more crazy every day. He chase the sheriff off the place with a shotgun, who just come to see how he was, like he chase Mr. Roberts off last spring when he come to do the census taking. Jacob think everybody out to cheet him, so he cheet everybody else first.
Nick couldn’t tear himself away, though he was aware he didn’t have time just now to be enjoying Ivanhoe’s account of his family’s bloody drama.
Skimming, he saw that it wasn’t long after this 1870 entry that Ivanhoe married; then, the first child, Erasmus, arrived. Ivanhoe wrote lovingly of