iAUNTAMITYSiS 
 : -SILVER- - 
 
 WEDDING - 
 
AUNT AMITY S 
 SILVER WEDDING 
 
An dey offer me fifty dollars cash down 
 
AUNT AMITY S 
 SILVER WEDDING 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 RUTH McENERY STUART 
 
 AUTHOR OF SONNY, " * * NAPOLEON JACKSON, THE 
 
 GENTLEMAN OF THE PLUSH ROCKER," "A 
 
 GOLDEN WEDDING," " MORIAH s 
 
 MOURNING," ETC. 
 
 Illustrate*) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright, 1903, 1909, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1899, by The Curtis Publishing Co. 
 Copyright, 1909, by The Butterick Publishing Co. 
 
 Published October, 1909 
 
 THE DE VINNE PRESS 
 
TO 
 MY BROTHER 
 
 JAMES A. McENERY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAUE 
 
 AUNT AMITY S SILVER WEDDING .... 1 
 
 PETTY LARCENY " 51 
 
 THE HAIR OF THE DOG 113 
 
 THANKSGIVING ON CRAWFISH BAYOU , 155 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 An dey offer me fifty dollars cash down Frontispiece 
 
 "Butnotdathusban l" 17 
 
 "Th ough de golden gate o sunset!" . ... 27 
 
 " Is you satisfied ?" 4,5 
 
 Sweet soap was one of Phil s failings .... 83 
 
 " Heah s a few little trinkers I picked up heah 
 
 an dar, but I ain t got no locket, jedge" . 97 
 
 He was three whole days on the way . . . .107 
 
 The butler 117 
 
 Light fingers 125 
 
 Filling the cook s chip-basket 131 
 
 "De ghos ! Aun Charity, de ghos !" .... 143 
 
 Fishing for the day s needs 187 
 
 It ended by her sending them all 201 
 
 * Bless Gord fer freedom anyhow/" .... 215 
 
AUNT AMITY S 
 SILVER WEDDING 
 
AUNT AMITY S 
 SILVER WEDDING 
 
 OF course Aunt Amity would never 
 have thought of such a thing her 
 self. It was the great silver wedding up 
 at Judge Stanley s that put it into her head. 
 
 The Stanleys were the richest people 
 along the coast, and they lived in the finest 
 house, at the top of the highest hill, not 
 much of a hill, it is true; but no matter, 
 and when all the lights were lit in this man 
 sion of many windows, it was a sight good to 
 behold for miles around on a dark night. 
 
 And the Stanleys had no end of relations 
 and friends, all more or less rich, and 
 they had always entertained extensively, so 
 that everybody was delighted to come and 
 
4 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 to make a generous showing at the silver 
 wedding. 
 
 For a week before the time, express pack 
 ages had been coming in, and a few belated 
 even for the fortnight following; for there 
 were family connections across-seas, and 
 silver cannot be flashed along with con 
 gratulations with or without wires, at least 
 not yet. 
 
 Of course there was a great banquet at 
 the judge s silver wedding. 
 
 There were always banquets at impor 
 tant social functions in the old South. None 
 of your "butter thins," your "peanut sand 
 wiches," "cheese-straws," and "woman s ex 
 change kisses," the most over-feminized, 
 inane refreshment imaginable and tea 
 and tea and tea! 
 
 No, no. None of this sort of thing, but 
 groaning mahoganies and popping corks 
 and the whir of ice-cream freezers in action ; 
 important darkies in white linen, bearing 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 5 
 
 great trays : razor-backed hams boiled in 
 champagne; turkeys, boned and truffled; 
 pates of native game ; and fruits ; and con 
 fectionery; and and all the rest of it 
 great spirals of smoke out of the kitchen 
 chimneys all day and half the night before ; 
 and sweet-smelly breezes down the road for 
 half a mile on a windy day. 
 
 The Stanley silver wedding was the talk 
 of three parishes for months afterward, 
 and the reports that went abroad, of the 
 costumes of the guests, who came all the 
 way from New Orleans, and of the presents, 
 and presents, and presents, well, some of 
 them were hard to believe. 
 
 Amity was not one of the Stanley s for 
 mer slaves. Indeed, she had come into the 
 coast community only a few years before 
 the wedding. She lived with her little 
 husband, Frank the fiddler, on a place 
 some miles farther up the river, and as 
 the affiliations of the two places were with 
 
6 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 small towns in opposite directions, there 
 was little or no intercourse between them. 
 And so when, several months after the big 
 wedding, Amity announced that she and 
 Frank were going to "give one," it was not 
 at all as if she were imitating a home 
 function. 
 
 Any couple may have a silver wedding, 
 any, that is, that is qualified, and when 
 Amity proclaimed their eligibility, she and 
 Frank immediately came into a new pres 
 tige. 
 
 She was young for her age, was Amity 
 young for any age which might seize sil 
 ver-wedding honors. She lookeJ thirty- 
 three, and could not have been much over 
 forty, and while she proudly announced the 
 telltale approaching anniversary, one could 
 not help reflecting how few of our own skins 
 would be willing to celebrate silver weddings 
 at forty, if they could. 
 
 Although it was the glow of mid-life 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 7 
 
 which polished her brown cheek, Amity 
 moved with the alacrity of youth, and her 
 ringing laughter was as care-free and fresh 
 as a child s. She was so brown, so truly 
 chocolate in hue, that when she smiled, dis 
 playing a streak of white, it seemed that she 
 might really be chocolate, and all cream in 
 side. If she was forty years old and over, 
 she had lived every year of the forty, and 
 she was glad of it. 
 
 She had always been a woman of initia 
 tive, of faculty, and of strong social 
 following. Her cabin at Three Forks, 
 surrounded on all sides by a broad, floorless 
 veranda, otherwise "a shed," which invited 
 friendly weather protection for chance 
 guests without number or stint, always 
 seemed in a sense typical of her own gen 
 erous personality. And it had been so 
 before she furnished it with rows of little 
 pine tables upon which she served cakes 
 and ginger-pop for a price during week- 
 
8 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 day summer afternoons, with a fish-fry 
 every Saturday night for grand finale. 
 
 She was a famous cook, and her fish-fries 
 were popular on their own account, so that 
 a good many of the dollars paid out to the 
 hands on Saturdays floated into the capa 
 cious pockets of her broad checked aprons, 
 and thence to her luxury-loving mate, Frank 
 the fiddler. 
 
 Still, prices were absurdly low, and it was 
 a trifling business financially, so that she 
 had no more saved at the year s end than 
 had her neighbors, who handled so much less 
 than she, and who regarded her as a mon 
 eyed lady of affairs. When she said, in 
 answer to question, "Oh, yas, certVy de 
 business pays," she meant what she said. 
 Any enterprise which runs along without 
 debt pays. It pays its own expenses. 
 
 When she announced the proposed silver 
 wedding, and began sending out invitations 
 right and left, the entire levee-front for the 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 9 
 
 space of ten miles was in a broad grin. Of 
 course everybody wanted to come. 
 
 Amity rather intelligently made good her 
 claim as to the date, explaining that, al 
 though the judge s lady would never remem 
 ber her, she did distinctly recollect when, as 
 Miss Bettie Peabody of St. James Parish, 
 she had married the young lieutenant Stan 
 ley, just back wounded from the war, all 
 this was history, and that a few months 
 later she was herself married. The date of 
 her own wedding she might have forgotten 
 except that it was April Fool s day, and 
 everybody had joked her and the groom, 
 wondering which might fool the other by 
 failing to "show up" in church. One can 
 understand how she would never forget this. 
 
 Yes, the date seemed fairly well estab 
 lished; but if it had n t been, what would 
 have been the difference? 
 
 When she trudged all the way up the 
 road to confer with the mistress of Sugar- 
 
10 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 sweet Plantation about it; to enlist inter 
 est, get pointers and the support of enlight 
 ened approval she was free now, and need 
 not ask permission, she trod the levee sum 
 mit with an air of fresh importance, and her 
 waddle was that of a gleeful duck with a 
 pond in sight, for Amity seemed never so 
 truly in her element as when she was the cen 
 ter of social activity. Indeed, it was its so 
 cial aspect more than the lure of the pennies 
 which had inspired her business enterprise, 
 although she herself probably did not rea 
 lize this. 
 
 The winds of March were sharp and in 
 spiriting, and when they flapped the ends of 
 her bandana over her ears as she walked, 
 she chuckled with very exhilaration of life. 
 Indeed, she even laughed, seeing the breadth 
 of her own shadow : 
 
 "Nobody, to see dat wide shadder, would 
 take me for de light dancer I is." 
 
 She had taken her big palmetto fan along 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 11 
 
 with her, the "chu ch s ciety fan," bound 
 with purple ribbon, not that she needed a 
 fan in the March wind, but it helped her 
 along, temperamentally. Indeed, it did 
 really serve occasionally to ward off a too- 
 sharp gust which threatened her ears. 
 
 If her friend and counselor, the mistress, 
 was surprised at her announcement, or 
 amused or pleased or displeased, she le 
 niently gave no sign. She had often de 
 clared herself "used to all the surprises 
 there were in plantation life and ways," so 
 that nothing, no matter how novel, had 
 power more than to throw one of her eye 
 brows somewhat askew, thus imparting a 
 quizzical expression to her otherwise or 
 derly face while she lent herself to any 
 unusual recital. 
 
 She let Amity tell her all about it how 
 she was going to invite "any and all who 
 would come wid a good will, and a good 
 present befittin* de occasion." 
 
12 A unt A mity s Silver Wedding 
 
 For a second only she lost control of her 
 eyebrow, as, in reply to this, she asked : 
 
 "And do you really expect everybody to 
 bring you a silver present, Amity? You 
 know, silver things are expensive." 
 
 "Yas m, I knows dey is ; an so is fine 
 suppers expensive an I ain gwine give no 
 scrub ban-quet. Dey ain t nobody but can 
 offo d to fetch some little silver piece " 
 
 "Such as what?" 
 
 "Well, mostly dimes an two-bitses 
 [quarters] an maybe fifty-centses ; an it 
 mought be dat a few would drap us a dol 
 lar. I done give out dat I ain gwine stint 
 de supper. I 11 have every kind o cake dey 
 is an fried chicken an chicken-pie an 
 chicken fricassee an chicken-salad an 
 chick I mean to say, an swimp gumbo 
 an beat biscuit, an swimps is comin in 
 thick in the river now." 
 
 "Oh, I see ; certainly. I had n t thought 
 of money. I was thinking of " 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 13 
 
 "You was studyin about white weddin s, 
 Missy. Dat s a white horse of another 
 color. Eh, Lord! How many th ough an 
 th ough silver soup-ladles an tea-sets you 
 reckon I d git, ef I expected em? No, 
 honey; dis here s gwine be jes a done-over 
 ole breakdown weddin , wid a overdone 
 brokedown bride an groom. But we can t 
 be no younger n we is, an hit s now or 
 never, or " 
 
 Her own laughter broke the sentence here, 
 but in a minute she had veered, and her 
 voice was entirely serious when she asked : 
 
 "An so is you got air ole bride s veil 
 left over f om past times or wreath or 
 anything flimsy an white, please, ma am 
 to set off dis ole secon -han bride? An 
 maybe one o Marse Honore s white waist 
 coats for Frank anything, so it s white, 
 for bofe of us so s we won t shame de 
 ban-quet. I don t crave to disgrace de feast 
 wid onproper weddin -gyarmints. 
 
14 Aunt A mity s Silver Wedding 
 
 "An maybe somebody mought affo d a 
 silver weddin -ring for me, I am nuver 
 had no ring, or no silver thimble, nuther. 
 I sho does hope dey 11 fetch in a few showy 
 plush-box deviltries, even ef de silver on 
 em 11 melt whilst you looks at it. 
 
 "I had a silver-plated soup-dipper, once-t. 
 I got it for a tea-prize. I nuver drinks no 
 tea. I buys it jes for de prize cowpons 
 an trades it back in de sto e for tobacco. 
 
 "But dat prize dipper sho did look 
 dazzlin when it come, reposin in dat plush- 
 tufted box. I cert in y was tickled! But 
 one day I dipped out some lye-hominy wid 
 it, an it must a slid down in de pot an 
 b iled all day. I tell yer, Missy, hit went 
 in white but it come out a good mulatter- 
 color. 
 
 "Frank say de silver all subsided into 
 de hominy an we-all e t it up, so we s silver- 
 coated inside ef we is copper-plated on de 
 outside. 
 
Aunt A mity s Silver Wedding 1 5 
 
 "But I sho does wusht I had it now, in 
 all its plush glory for de weddin . 
 
 "It d be a fine side-boa d piece ef I had 
 a side-boa d. 
 
 "You can t have but one silver weddin in 
 a lifetime, an I wants to have it racklass, 
 whilst I m a-havin ! Even ef you stays 
 heah long enough to have two, dey say de 
 silver turns to gold, an Gord knows what a 
 po ole nigger resurrected bride would do 
 for gold presents less n luck changes ! 
 
 "But maybe, seem it s silver, somebody 
 mought ricomember to buy me a thimble 
 or a breastpin. Ole Hannah, de William 
 son s cook, she got a lovely brooch, a silver 
 fryin -pan. It makes you hongry to look 
 at it. Ef somebody only thought enough 
 o me" 
 
 "And how about Frank?" the mistress 
 interrupted. "This is his wedding, too, you 
 know. I should think he might like a silver- 
 headed walking-cane, or a match-box " 
 
16 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 Amity warded off this suggestion with 
 her hand. 
 
 "No, no ! Frank ain t got no title to 
 none o dese silver presents. Not Frank !" 
 
 "Not Frank? I don t understand. Is n t 
 Frank your husband?" 
 
 "Oh, yas m; of co se he s my chu ch 
 husban all right, but not dat husbarf!" 
 
 The mistress s wayward eyebrow de 
 scribed several eccentric curves before it 
 found itself again, and she could ask evenly : 
 
 "And do you mean to say " 
 
 "Yas m, I means to say what I say. I 
 ain t been married to Frank Stillwater on y 
 jes about five yeahs. An I been studyin 
 about dat, too, an dat s one o de p ints I 
 come to insult you about. Sence Frank is 
 been married five yeahs, I don t see why he 
 can t draw for a wood weddin . Dey tell me 
 five yeahs o marri ge is de wooden univer- 
 sary, an dat s de easiest weddin dey could 
 give on a plantation, a wooden one is." 
 
But not dat husban ! " 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 19 
 
 "Why, yes. There are so many little 
 wooden things which are useful and cheap." 
 
 "Yas m; an jes plain wood. What s 
 de matter wid a load o fire wood or fat pine 
 for kindlin ? Frank would be glad to git 
 anything, f om a box o matches to a hen 
 coop ; an he gwine fiddle for em free, any 
 how." 
 
 "A new fiddle would be a suitable wooden 
 present for Frank, would n t it?" 
 
 "Yas m, or a ole one. But, law, chile, 
 dey won t be no sech as dat! A pair o 
 butter-paddles or a rollin -pin 11 be about 
 de top o dat list. 
 
 "But heah I m gwine on an forgittin all 
 about de bridal veil! Is you got any ole 
 lace left-overs, Missy, dat I mought wear 
 for a veil ? I 11 do it up keerf ul an fetch it 
 back." 
 
 The mistress hesitated for just a moment. 
 Then she said: 
 
 "Before I promise, Amity, tell me a little 
 2 
 
20 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 more. What became of your first husband? 
 Where is he?" 
 
 "Dat s a easy one," the woman laughed ; 
 "leastways, half of it s easy. What become 
 of Solon? A triflin yaller gal stole im 
 f om me. Dat s what become of im ; an I 
 don t begrudge im to her. But as to whar 
 he is, Gord knows, honey. Livin or dead, 
 he s all one to me now. Last time I heerd 
 tell of im, he was waitin on Frank s sister, 
 down in Freetown. He mought be my 
 brother-in-law by now, for all I know. But 
 you 11 gi e me de bridal veil, won t you, 
 Mistus?" 
 
 There was something so infantile in the 
 face which looked into hers something so 
 naive in the whole affair maybe it was the 
 mistress s duty to read this woman of primal 
 instincts a sermon on morals morals as 
 taught in the churches and "followed afar 
 off" by the more enlightened. Maybe she 
 was very wrong to do it, but she promised 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 21 
 
 without demur, and the bride who appeared 
 at the silver wedding, a fortnight later, was 
 resplendent in veil and wreath, and the 
 ceremony was performed with the coveted 
 ring of pure silver, sent down from the great 
 house with best wishes and congratulations. 
 
 The silver wedding of the quarters was 
 evidently modeled after that of the judge s 
 mansion, as several of its salient features 
 were repeated. It may have been that the 
 Chinese lanterns which hung in rows from 
 the porch rafters, within its inclosure of 
 young pines cut from the wood, were the 
 identical ones which had so recently done 
 similar duty at the more important function, 
 and, as the lesser house, with its surround 
 ing balconies, was a humble copy of the 
 other, albeit there were no Corinthian col 
 umns or cornice under its eaves, the general 
 effect when the lights were lit and the func 
 tion "in full blast." was much the same. 
 
 It happened that the Methodist bishop 
 
22 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 of the African circuit, a stranger of high 
 repute, was in the neighborhood, that is, 
 he was within a day s drive, and it was no 
 trouble to get him to come and officiate. 
 
 Needless to say, the place was crowded. 
 Indeed, it was jammed uncomfortably, so 
 that the two resetted ushers were kept busy 
 thinning out the galleries and opening a 
 passage for bride and groom, who were to 
 slip out the back door separately, and, mak 
 ing a tour of the house on the outside, meet 
 and join hands at the front door, and enter 
 the inclosure together. 
 
 This parade was Amity s idea, and it was 
 a good one in that it would afford every 
 body a view of bride and groom, with the 
 charm of ceremony. 
 
 The bishop, a slender, slope-shouldered 
 man of negative coloring, would have failed 
 of impressiveness but for his unusual height. 
 He must have been six feet four, certainly ; 
 and here again was his dignity jeopardized 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 23 
 
 by a grotesque incongruity between the 
 length of his person and the exceeding 
 brevity of the ministerial robe, which struck 
 him about the knees. 
 
 But a deep sonorous voice of authority is 
 all-compelling and at his first words no one 
 knew or cared anything about the length of 
 the bishop s gown or his legs. 
 
 It was easy to understand before he had 
 spoken three minutes why he had been made 
 bishop. Resonant, musical, forceful, his 
 voice seemed to select his words as if they 
 were jewels which he prodigally threw out 
 among his hearers, even the commonest peb 
 ble among them taking a sparkle as it left 
 his eloquent lips. One cannot help wonder 
 ing what such a one might achieve as an 
 orator if his language were shorn of dialect 
 and freed from the limitations of illiteracy. 
 And yet there are compensations in all 
 things. 
 
 To him who listens sympathetically, is 
 
24 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 there not sometimes a pathos in ignorance, 
 and does not broken speech hold an appeal 
 which is essentially its own? 
 
 It was a new ceremony, this new to 
 everybody, priest and people. The common 
 expectation was that the bridal couple would 
 step forward, that the bishop would lift his 
 arms and bless them, and then the social 
 evening would begin. 
 
 But not so. This was an opportunity for 
 the orator, a chance not to be thrown away. 
 When the pair had paraded the outer rim 
 of the pine inclosure, met at the front door, 
 and, joining hands, walked demurely in over 
 the strip of carpet laid for the purpose, and 
 taken their stand upon the rug before the 
 small table behind which waited the bishop, 
 all as prearranged, he lifted his arms for a 
 moment only, and with an almost impercep 
 tible "Sh-h-h-h-h !" commanded silence. 
 And then, as nearly as the writer can recall, 
 he began in this wise : 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 25 
 
 "In de mornin of life, when de sun is in 
 de eastern sky, de shadders is long todes de 
 west. 
 
 "When dis yo ng couple, no mo n boy 
 an gal, jedgin by dey looks to-day when 
 dey stood togedder in the sunrise, ef dey had 
 looked behind em, dey d a seen de long 
 shadders of spe ence, an maybe lost cour 
 age. But dey did n t look back. Dey faced 
 de sunlight wid shinin faces. 
 
 "An now, at life s midday, standin out 
 in de clair light of noon, so to speak, dey s 
 free to look bofe ways for dey ain t no 
 shadders in sight. Ef de pink promises of 
 youth is faded, so is also de long shadders 
 gone out. De oniest shadders dey is is 
 under dey feet. Now is de day o fulfilment 
 and, by de grace o Gord, dey stands in it, 
 once mo\ togedder! 
 
 "An as it draps into de evenin , ef dey 11 
 still keep dey eyes faithfully turned todes de 
 sun, de shadders 11 be bound to stay behind 
 
26 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 em ag in ; an dey II pass out at last in 
 glory, through de golden gate o* sunset!" 
 
 The bishop had evidently not been 
 coached. At each reference to the young 
 couple of the early marriage, the sensitive 
 spectator might have realized a slight atmo 
 spheric disturbance ; but it was not serious. 
 Manners are manners, even on a sugar plan 
 tation in the Louisiana bottom-lands, and a 
 function of high form could not be broken 
 by failure of etiquette. 
 
 The bishop had the floor and all the com 
 pany were invited guests of those whom he 
 so unconsciously lifted into the light of 
 question. 
 
 Certainly the wedding couple could not 
 have been accused of deception, as the size 
 of many of the parcels which towered over 
 the shoulders of the impatient guests pro 
 claimed their contents to be of wood rather 
 than silver. 
 
 It did not really make much difference 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 29 
 
 what the bishop said, so long as he spoke in 
 figures, and while the aroma of the feast 
 was permeating the place, so that brevity 
 seemed the only thing to be desired. 
 
 And he was too clever to wax prolix even 
 if he would. After the address, things 
 moved rapidly enough. In a moment, bride 
 and groom had knelt and received the bless 
 ing of the church; the ceremony was done 
 and over, and all trivialities forgotten in the 
 stir of novelty and of expectation. 
 
 Amity proved her faculty in the complete 
 ness with which everything had been ar 
 ranged. In a few moments one of the ush 
 ers had announced the route of the proces 
 sion, which was to pass by in single file, 
 bestowing the gifts in order. Accommoda 
 tions were even provided for extra bulky 
 parcels in the open fireplace, with a youth 
 waiting to convey them thither. 
 
 For the convenience of contributors 
 of coins, a glass preserve-jar, in the metal 
 
30 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 top of which a slot had been cut, stood on 
 the table at the side of the bride. She had 
 tried to arrange a bell within the jar, so 
 that every contribution should ring into 
 place, but this was a failure, and she had 
 been obliged to put up with the ordinary 
 clink of the silver as it fell. The jar, or 
 other securely covered receptacle, was really 
 necessary in a crowd like this, in a commu 
 nity where passing the hat in church had had 
 to be abolished because of the occasional 
 peculations from it by such as professed to 
 be "making change" during its passage. It 
 had proved a little too easy to drop in a 
 quarter and take out, say, thirty-five cents. 
 When contributions began to come in to 
 night, the groom, who suggested nothing so 
 much as an animated grin, announced that 
 he was provided with change for any who 
 might desire it. Also, into each hand as it 
 dropped a coin into the jar he was pleased 
 to place a "supper ticket," for presenta- 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 31 
 
 tion at the table later. So did Amity s 
 astute management forestall any schemes of 
 the over-greedy to eat more than one sup 
 per, although, if the truth must be told, it 
 was freely said afterward that there were 
 several who did actually press themselves 
 again into the procession and by dropping 
 a paltry "picayune," draw a second seat at 
 the banquet. But this may not have been 
 true, and even if it were, perhaps, it has its 
 counterpart for chicanery in frenzied 
 finance in circles of higher rating. 
 
 Amity made a great picture as she stood 
 in the place of honor. She had thrown 
 back her veil, as it was in the way, and her 
 happy face was good to behold while she 
 frankly welcomed each guest with both 
 hands extended shaking with one and tak 
 ing with the other. 
 
 While most gifts of silver were in the 
 shape of coins, a few resplendent boxes 
 arrived, with showy furnishings, "mag- 
 
32 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 nificently washed" with the required metal. 
 The mistress had seen to it that the bride 
 should not be put to shame through neglect. 
 
 The collection of wooden things was 
 really surprising, and a few of them mirth- 
 provoking in their suggestions. 
 
 The occasion was a brilliant success, ex 
 ceeding the most ambitious hopes of its 
 ambitious hostess, from first to last or at 
 least from first until nearly the last, when 
 something happened. 
 
 The supper had been served in relays, the 
 back porch being reserved for this purpose, 
 one set of guests, as it was filled, giving 
 place to another, and the last tables were 
 nearly done when there was a sound, or 
 was it a sound? footsteps coming in out of 
 the night, footsteps strange and alien, which 
 seemed to be felt rather than heard. The 
 stranger, out of sympathy with the indoor 
 spirit, although he moved noiselessly, had 
 no need of announcement, for the people 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 33 
 
 moved back, giving him right of way by a 
 sort of intuitional avoidance. 
 
 An oldish man dark, stocky, alert, low 
 ering, he wore a slouch hat pulled down 
 over his eyes, so that when he looked before 
 him he seemed to stare. In the middle of 
 the room he stopped, and after looking 
 about him for a moment, he said: 
 
 "Whar de bride?" 
 
 The voice was low, but incisive, and al 
 though he moved silently, there was that 
 in his bearing which was unpleasant a 
 sort of surety of himself, as if he were quite 
 conscious of power a disagreeable thing 
 when it is undefined. 
 
 Amity was standing with a group of her 
 friends when they called her. Seeing her 
 coming, the visitor advanced to meet her, 
 his hat still low over his eyes. He did not 
 extend his hand. He simply said, when 
 she had come quite up to him : 
 
 "Well, Amity?" 
 
34 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 It may seem like straining a point to say 
 that a chocolate cheek flushes, and yet who 
 that has witnessed the swift change from 
 brown to blackish gray in such a face in 
 the crisis of sudden panic can deny that it 
 changes color? It is as definite and as 
 effective to convey embarrassment as the 
 most florid stain which rushes to a lady s 
 discomfiture, painting her face with shame. 
 
 So was the smiling countenance of Amity 
 Stillwater, the bride, suddenly suffused with 
 trouble when she met and recognized her 
 guest, and the voice which answered was me 
 tallic and feelingless. 
 
 "What does you want heah?" This was 
 all it said. 
 
 "I got a little business," was the reply, 
 "a little business wid de business manager of 
 dis show, whoever he is de bishop, I 
 reckon." 
 
 By this time Amity had recovered herself. 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 35 
 
 She was even able to feign a smile when she 
 replied : 
 
 "I s my own business man an ef you 
 wants to see me, come dis way." And as 
 she turned from her friends, she said play 
 fully, over her shoulder: "Wrop up a little 
 piece o de weddin -cake by de time we comes 
 back, please. Dis gentleman 11 take a piece 
 to dream on." 
 
 And with this she led the way out the f 
 door to a seat in the yard her wash-bench, 
 really under the mulberries near the well. 
 
 She did not speak as she crossed the 
 yard; neither did her strange guest. But 
 when they were quite away, and she had mo 
 tioned him to a seat, she said : 
 
 "Well, Solon, what is it?" 
 
 "What you reckon?" the man answered. 
 "You don t reckon I s jest on a pleasure- 
 trip, does you? No, I come on business. I 
 did n t git no invite an I did n t need 
 
86 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 none. A man don t have to git invited to 
 his own silver weddin ." There was a note 
 of malice in the chuckle with which he threw 
 this at her; but she took no heed of half- 
 shades. 
 
 "Please to state yo business, Solon 
 an state it quick. What you want?" 
 
 "What you reckon I want?" He had 
 removed his slouch hat now and was blandly 
 fanning himself with it. As she did not 
 hurry to answer* again, he added : 
 
 "I want what s comin to me, dat s all." 
 
 "What s comin to you?" The woman 
 really did not understand. 
 
 "Dat s what I said. I come for what s 
 comin to me. Dey tol me you an Frank 
 Stillwater was givin a silver weddin down 
 heah, an from what I see, peepin in whilst 
 de procession was movin , I jedge it s true. 
 An ef it is, I reckon I m yo pardner in de 
 silver-weddin business. I come for my 
 half o dat till, Mis Stillwater." 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 37 
 
 "Oh!" This was not much to say, just 
 "Oh !" It was little more than a gasp, but 
 in it were intimidation a futile flare of re 
 sentment spent even in the utterance and 
 surrender. 
 
 The man saw his advantage, and was 
 quick to follow it up. 
 
 "Well, be quick, please!" he said; "I 
 come a long ways. I don t want to make 
 no scandalizemint. I only come for what s 
 comin to me like I said. Ef Frank Still- 
 water is calculatin to claim a sheer in my 
 silver weddin 9 " 
 
 The woman waved him silent with her 
 arm, topping his voice with hers : 
 
 "Frank ain t claimin nothin but his 
 own. Hit s only his wooden weddin wid 
 me. De silver is mine " 
 
 "Ours!" interrupted the man of the 
 slouch hat, and then he laughed mockingly. 
 "An so Frank is takin out his five years in 
 wood, is he? I fotched him a little wood 
 
38 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 present myself to give him in case he 
 gimme trouble." He laid his hand upon his 
 heavy walking-stick, almost a club, it was, 
 and dropped it, chuckling again. "An 
 so you was keepin my sheer o de silver for 
 me, Amity? Thank you kindly. An now 
 ef you 11 come wid me an git it " 
 
 Amity was an amiable creature, but 
 Solon had gone just a little too far. As 
 she rose, still obedient to his demand, she 
 turned and glared at him. 
 
 "I see you ain t changed none," she said 
 slowly; "hogs don t change." 
 
 And then motioning to him to walk be 
 fore, she followed him across the moonlit 
 yard back to the house. 
 
 "Wait," she began to say, but it was use 
 less, as the man did not intend to let her get 
 out of his sight. He followed her in. 
 
 Frank happened to be passing just as 
 they entered, and Amity whispered to him, 
 something which sounded like: 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 39 
 
 "Git de money-jar," and this was prob 
 ably what it was, as it was precisely what 
 he did, the habit of his life being to comply 
 with his wife s demands without question. 
 
 When he had brought the jar of silver, 
 Amity said* something in his ear again, and 
 the two men went together to the retirement 
 of the wash-bench in the mulberry shade. 
 A round moon sent white search-lights flit 
 ting between moving clouds across the 
 yard, so that one could almost discern the 
 colors of the marigolds and zinnias which 
 bloomed along the way, bordering the front 
 line of Amity s vegetable garden. 
 
 The woman stopped only a moment for 
 a word with her guests and slipped away 
 again to the mulberries. She had probably 
 expected to find the men amiably dividing 
 the silver, as Solon had had time enough to 
 explain his demand; but they sat quietly 
 apart, awaiting her coming. It had not 
 even occurred to Frank who his strange 
 
40 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 guest might be. If he had been forced to 
 an opinion, he might have guessed from the 
 call for the money-jar that it was some 
 body taking up a missionary collection, 
 although the hour for such was late. 
 
 It was only when Amity said, "Well, 
 Solon ?" that Frank knew whom he had been 
 entertaining. 
 
 There was power in the name, and it 
 lifted him to his feet, seeing which, the 
 larger man rose also and faced him. 
 
 "He claims half o dat money, Frank, 
 caze he stood wid me at dat April-fool wed- 
 din twenty-five years ago," Amity said, 
 evenly, and then she added, "an* ef he s 
 needin small change so much as to ride fifty 
 miles for it, I reckon " 
 
 But she did not finish. Frank did not 
 give her a chance. He had placed the jar 
 in her hands, pulled off his coat and rolled 
 up his sleeves, before she realized what he 
 meant. 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 41 
 
 "You hold dese stakes, Amity," he said, 
 "tell we see who s de bes man. Hit won t 
 be divided, but de bes man takes de pot." 
 And stepping stiffly, like a little game 
 rooster bristling for the fray, he began 
 backing until he stood in the middle of the 
 open behind the wash-bench on Amity s 
 bleaching-grass plot an ideal clearing for 
 a fight. Every motion had been a chal 
 lenge, and of course there was nothing else 
 for Solon to do but to follow. The mag 
 nificence of the man s insolence as he lan 
 guidly did so was like fuel to the fire of 
 Frank s wrath. 
 
 He even had the audacity to remark while 
 he took his stand and threw off his coat: 
 
 "Of co se, ef you wants me to kill yer " 
 
 The man was taller than Frank, twice 
 his heft, and no doubt he expected to give 
 him a good beating, take the jar, and go 
 his way. But Frank felt differently about 
 it. He was pretty sure, too. 
 
42 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 If Solon was strong, his opponent was 
 lithe and wiry. Felled by a blow which 
 threatened to send him to Kingdom-come, 
 he was back in a flash, fairly walking all 
 over the person of the larger man, tangling 
 himself in his arms and legs, tripping him 
 so that he fell, and then, before he could 
 regain footing, tripping him again, and yet 
 again. 
 
 Over and over they went across the grass- 
 plot, and beyond into the dusty yard where 
 the hens cooled themselves the strong man 
 wasting himself in missent blows, rising and 
 falling, and rising again Frank astride 
 his neck, pommeling his face with his heels, 
 until he succeeded in slipping down behind 
 him, bracing back his arms with both his 
 little legs while he caught the standing man 
 by one foot from behind and pulled him 
 over to the ground again. 
 
 Here he made him eat the dust, literally, 
 for while he held him face downward, there 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 43 
 
 was nothing for him to breathe but the fine 
 poultry-flavored grit of the barn-yard. 
 
 They kept veering as they fought, ever 
 in one direction, until they were almost up 
 to the fig-tree where the chickens roosted, 
 and a low scolding sound from the branches 
 showed that things were rather ticklish 
 there, since its recent devastation for the 
 feast only a few of the older and tougher 
 citizens remaining. 
 
 There were moments in this test of prow 
 ess and of skill when there seemed to be little 
 doing in the dust-cloud, so close was the 
 contest between agility and brute strength, 
 and these were moments of anxiety for 
 Amity, who had kept close all the time, even 
 urging and coaxing the smaller man to 
 "give it to im !" at intervals as she saw the 
 need. She had agreed to "keep her hands 
 off" before they began to fight, and only 
 once did she break the spirit of her prom 
 ise, even while she kept its letter. 
 
44 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 Solon was a powerful fellow, no mistak 
 ing that, and once, after a long-drawn 
 tussel in which Frank had worried him 
 almost to the point of exhaustion, the man 
 gave a sudden lurch and would have risen, 
 turning Frank under, but for Amity. With 
 a quick plunge, she planted herself upon 
 Solon, and sat there; and Amity weighed 
 two hundred and fifty, if she weighed a 
 pound. Seeing that she had him, so that 
 he could not help himself, flat, face down 
 ward, chest in the dust, arms and legs 
 spread hopelessly, she said to Frank, with 
 a nod toward the well-bucket: 
 
 "Tekadrink;Igot im!" 
 
 And while the little man was away, she 
 leaned over and hissed into the ear of the 
 other: "You hog!" 
 
 But Solon could not answer. He could 
 not even spit out the dust. And when Frank 
 came back, running, and bade the woman 
 get up, while he took her place, standing 
 
Is vou satisfied ?" 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 47 
 
 where she had sat and ready to be lifted for 
 a fresh encounter, he suddenly realized how 
 things were, and he said quickly in some 
 alarm : "Better go fetch some water for 
 him." When it was brought, together they 
 lifted the man and made him drink, and it 
 was the partner of his early wedding who 
 wiped his face for him and helped him to a 
 sitting posture, but the thing which she 
 kept saying into his ear, albeit the tone was 
 soft enough, was, "Hog! Hog!" 
 
 And when the man was revived, Frank 
 said, "Is you satisfied?" 
 
 "Don t hurry me." The voice was that 
 of the vanquished. "Go lead my horse in 
 heah an lemme go. Ef I m once-t in de 
 saddle" 
 
 And so it was that when in a little while 
 Amity went back to her friends, she made 
 an excuse for Frank, who, she said, had 
 "gone to drive a hog out o de lot." Then 
 she slipped in, and got her man a clean shirt 
 
48 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 and a fresh pair of trousers, and went out 
 and helped him bathe his face and hands at 
 the well, in the screenery of the mulberries, 
 where no one could see, and if the wakeful 
 fowls had listened while she mopped his 
 face, they might have heard endearing 
 terms, quite different from that other word 
 which she had kept repeating in their hear 
 ing to some one who, for all they could see 
 from their perch, might have been the same 
 man. 
 
 WHEN they returned to the crowd, Amity 
 briskly to the fore and Frank tripping 
 along behind, a bit flurried, as is often the 
 master cock after a barn-yard victory, the 
 woman was in high glee and, springing for 
 ward, she seized the fiddle and put it into 
 her man s hands while she caught up her 
 flounces and danced down the center of the 
 room, declaring that she "had n t had so 
 much fun since she was a baby !" 
 
Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 49 
 
 It seemed a simple childish impulse of 
 triumphant glee, but there was something 
 so fine in it, so above the common in its 
 reckless abandon, that the people moved 
 back involuntarily, giving her the floor. 
 
 When she had taken a few turns, she 
 threw her head over her shoulder and called 
 to Frank, who had begun to tune up: 
 "Hurry, man ! Mek de fiddle talk !" 
 
 And, catching her fire, so he did. Elo 
 quent beyond all previous record, the rustic 
 strings fairly pitched forth dancing pat 
 terns into which the ponderous dancer fell 
 and rose, swaying or tilting, as the magic 
 of the fiddle compelled, as weightless, upon 
 toes inspired, as the feathery fluffs of thistle 
 which dance upon the breeze. Staccato 
 high steps, slurring curves for languorous 
 poses, sudden lapses when half-frenzied 
 crowding of high notes threw her into haz 
 ardous poising in which she tipped to the 
 danger-edge, when a peremptory scrape of 
 
50 Aunt Amity s Silver Wedding 
 
 the rosined bow brought her up with a sud 
 den turn, at which the crowd, breathless till 
 now, burst into a storm of wild applause, 
 and Frank, seeing the moment come, lifted 
 his bow and called out: 
 
 "Tek yo pardners for de.weddin march! 
 Once-t roun de outside o de pines, twice-t 
 roun de gallery on de inside, den brek up 
 in a Ferginia reel! Tek yo pardners!" 
 
PETTY LARCENY 
 
PETTY LARCENY 
 
 PERHAPS it is rather startling- 
 Petty Larceny as a name for a 
 girl. And yet, taken as we usually take 
 names, with no idea of any special meaning, 
 it is not half bad. Indeed, it is even good, 
 which is to say, primarily, it has pho 
 netic quality, is euphonious to a pleasing 
 degree, and its first part, Petty, makes an 
 attractive diminutive, rather suggestive of 
 affection. On the plantation, where alone 
 the name was known, Petty stood wholly as 
 a term of endearment. 
 
 Petty was a fascinating maid of twenty 
 or thereabouts, "sort o molasses-candy 
 color an sweeter yit," so one of her numer- 
 
 53 
 
54 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 ous admirers once described her, and it 
 would n t have mattered much if her name 
 had been Dolores Vobiscum, like that of 
 one of her friends who lost her mind: she 
 would instantly have become Dolly the 
 adorable, and been just as captivating as 
 now. 
 
 Her father, a stolid old negro known as 
 King David, had served as janitor at the 
 court-house in a remote county for several 
 years in his early manhood; and during 
 that time, as he went about his duties with 
 no thought beyond the manual responsi 
 bilities of his office, certain bits of court ver 
 nacular fell from time to time unheeded into 
 his ignoring mind, and simply lay there, 
 like leaves in a dovecote, which either lie 
 and rot or perchance sometime serve in the 
 forming of a nest, for simple availability 
 and fitness. 
 
 Old King David had always been a man 
 of few words, and the unusualness of his 
 
"Petty Larceny" 55 
 
 slender vocabulary, enriched in so excep 
 tional a way, gave, him an enviable reputa 
 tion for wisdom in a community the highest 
 tribute of which was paid to the- incom 
 prehensible. 
 
 For instance, when once in a quarrel 
 with a neighbor whom he had accused of 
 some offense, no matter what, he clenched 
 his argument and won the lasting respect of 
 a number of witnesses by exclaiming: 
 
 "What s dat you say, nigger? Ef you 
 talk like dat, I 11 prove a alibi on you in 
 de face o Constitutional Jewish prudence. "" 
 
 No one knows certainly by what associa 
 tion the old man had connected the term 
 "petit larceny" with his child, or that there 
 was any special connection. It may have 
 been only like the leaf blown into the dove 
 cote, taken to serve. However, the writer 
 is inclined to believe from slight circum 
 stantial evidence, which is often worse than 
 no evidence at all that in some mystical 
 
56 "Petty Larceny 3 
 
 way he had associated the name with the 
 divinity whose statue, done in plaster, stood 
 over the court-house door her whom we 
 all know, who stands ever blindfolded and 
 bearing a pair of scales in her hand. 
 
 This may be an idle fancy, and yet, what 
 else could he have meant when, one day, 
 seeing Petty playing blindman s-buff with 
 the other children when she was about 
 twelve, he exclaimed, laughing: 
 
 "Now, ef somebody d loan d Petty a 
 pair o weighin -scales, she d look perzac ly 
 like her own statute." 
 
 Be this as it may, he was more than 
 satisfied with the name, as was every one 
 else on the place. The mother, born and 
 reared in the shadows of even sub-suburban 
 life, on a plantation remote from the world 
 of thought or suggestion, took it with art 
 less delight not unmixed with pride, recog 
 nizing it as one of a noble family, the 
 
"Petty Larceny" 57 
 
 acquaintance of which her lord had made 
 in a broader life than hers. 
 
 Stealing was stealing on Sugar Bend 
 plantation, and vigilance committees did n t 
 trouble themselves much with terms. Of 
 course, there had been occasional cases 
 where culprits, taken in some offense,, had 
 been carried for trial to court, thirty miles 
 away ; but these were rare, and were gener 
 ally for simple "American crimes," such as 
 horse-stealing or fighting. 
 
 As she had merged into handsome woman 
 hood, Petty s father made an effort to have 
 her called Larceny, and for a time it seemed 
 as if the more dignified name, shortened to 
 Larcene, would carry the day ; and so it 
 might have done but for the girl s unfailing 
 winsomeness, which made Petty or even "Pet 
 for short" peculiarly fitting. 
 
 Petty wore gowns of yellow and red and 
 pink, and she sewed ruffles of one color upon 
 
58 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 another with long and careless stitches 
 wherever about her flounce-loving person 
 there seemed a place, and she was as pretty 
 and straight as a yellow flag. 
 
 Going to the field, she always had a man 
 with her, with gangs of malcontents within 
 easy range, keeping her in sight; and until 
 her twentieth year, when she finally made 
 her choice, scarcely twice in succession was 
 she seen with the same man. 
 
 She would have been surrounded, of 
 course, but for plantation etiquette, which 
 requires that one at a time shall have his 
 chance with a maid, and while this oppor 
 tunity lasts the rest must stand off. 
 
 Everybody knew that little yellow Phil, 
 the fiddler, had loved her to despair all his 
 life, and yet perhaps because he had loved 
 her humbly without hope for so long, and, 
 too, partly because every able-bodied buck 
 on the place was his confident rival every 
 one was surprised at her choice. Still, 
 
"Petty Larceny" 59 
 
 m-any were glad, just out of kindly sym 
 pathy with the lesser man. For love of 
 Petty, Phil had worn black-and-blue eyes at 
 frequent intervals for years ; had even car 
 ried his arm in a sling for her sake, a seri 
 ous matter for a fiddler. 
 
 Phil always got whipped in every en 
 counter in love s cause, and yet he never 
 seemed to have any sense of fear, at least 
 where Petty was concerned. At the ghost 
 of an insinuation reflecting upon her, he 
 would light into a six-footer with the fire 
 and recklessness of a bantam rooster chal 
 lenged by a cock of the walk. 
 
 It is probable that the little man was as 
 much surprised as any one else when Petty 
 finally accepted him. Certainly he acted 
 quite as a man out of his mind, and when 
 he was fiddling at a dance a few days after 
 his engagement, he actually grew so nervous 
 while he watched her take the "Cincinnati * 
 step and then "mosey" down the center of the 
 
60 "Petty Larceny 3 
 
 room that he lost his time, and finally "broke 
 down in a regular giggle," and had to begin 
 all over again, to the hilarious delight of 
 the older men and the mocking derision of 
 his recent rivals. 
 
 "De princip lest trouble wid a ingaged 
 fiddler," Phil chuckled as he played, "is dat 
 he don t nuver git a chance sca cely to dance 
 wid is gal hisself; but he can worry her 
 pardner an make him come to any time he 
 chooses." Saying which, he one time played 
 so fast that Petty s fat partner "tumbled all 
 over himself" and fell sprawling. 
 
 Phil had as little money as any young 
 man in the county, and as slight financial 
 prospects. A fiddler need never starve on 
 a Southern plantation, that is, if he fid 
 dles well enough, but neither may he grow 
 rich. 
 
 True, he easily earns his three dollars a 
 night, with an occasional five, while the 
 laborer iri the field is glad to get his dollar 
 
"Petty Larceny" .61 
 
 a day; but the fiddler, as a rule, is in re 
 quisition only on Saturday nights at best, 
 and so, unless he has some sub-trade, living 
 comes hard. 
 
 Phil had no sub-trade. He was, as he 
 was fond of boasting, "jes a nachel fiddlin 
 fiddler, f om de ground up." Indeed, he so 
 loved his art there are arts the practice of 
 which in certain conditions reduces them 
 to trades that he often said: 
 
 "Ef de Lord 11 on y gimme a stiddy job 
 at fiddlin when I git to heaven, stid o 
 tacklin a clumsy ole harp, I know I 11 soon 
 be able to play for de angels to fly by." In 
 deed, with this thought in mind, he had even 
 evolved out of his imaginative genius sev 
 eral racy compositions which, with onoma- 
 topoetic instinct, he called "flipflap wing- 
 pieces," which were so suggestive that one, 
 listening, might close his eyes and fancy 
 himself floating away as in a dream of 
 flying. 
 
62 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 It is hard on a fellow to be engaged to be 
 married and to have no money. It is hard 
 even on a Southern plantation, where money 
 counts for so little and most available things 
 are virtually free most, but not all. 
 
 Even while he enters this vestibule of 
 Hymen s temple, no matter how remote and 
 primitive the edifice, a man finds himself 
 feeling for his pocket-book. 
 
 Engagement periods at the Bend were 
 trinket-times and tr eating-times, and while 
 the last was simply a matter of ginger-pop 
 and persimmon beer, with a merry-go- 
 round on a holiday, the trinket business was 
 more serious. As to the ring, Phil was for 
 tunate enough to have one on hand, an heir 
 loom in which he took no little pride. First, 
 a fact which greatly distinguished it, 
 it was of pure gold, and it had been given 
 by his father to his mother as a pledge of 
 good faith and affection in lieu of the cere 
 mony which a strained situation forbade. 
 
"Petty Larceny 63 
 
 Phil had often told the story as he showed 
 the ring. It seems that, in their courting 
 days, his parents had quarreled, and dur 
 ing a brief estrangement a clever rival had 
 "married his daddy offhand," as Phil ex 
 pressed it; whereupon she who was after 
 ward his mother, instantly, and for all time, 
 relented. It was too late then for a wed 
 ding, of course ; but the mother was appa 
 rently not one to worry over trifles, as she 
 is quoted as boasting that all her rival got 
 was a "paper citi/zcate," and that so long 
 as she had the man and the ring, she was 
 satisfied. 
 
 As to the marriage certificate, she, after 
 a while, remarked: 
 
 "She s welcome to de paper one. Hit s 
 dead stock. I got mine, an it s live 
 prop ty de spittin image of its daddy; 
 an dat s all de citi/zcate I wants." 
 
 This bit of character discovers to us a 
 somewhat romantic vein in both parents 
 
64 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 which it is well for us to remember if we 
 would follow Phil s life with leniency and 
 affection. 
 
 His father died while he was still a little 
 chap, and his mother, after a few months of 
 rank weeds and of wailing in the wilds of 
 widowhood a prerogative freely accorded 
 her by popular sympathy, which declared 
 her to be "de on iest widder dat had a 
 right to tote a weed" suddenly darted 
 into another romance with an ardor worthy 
 of love s first kindling. The new "step 
 father-man" was decided in his antipathy 
 to reminiscent children, and so, after a 
 brief conflict between conjugal duty and 
 parental love, the woman decided not to 
 hazard her boy s welfare by taking him 
 among strangers. She preferred to "loan 
 him out" to friends who had known his 
 people. So she did, and the boy had stayed 
 "loaned out" all his days. She had proba 
 bly foreseen that this would be the case, 
 
"Petty Larceny" 65 
 
 as, in going, she had given him his father s 
 ring, and hers, with the parting injunc 
 tion to keep it all his life "to show dat he 
 was honest-born." 
 
 Petty, of course, knew about the ring 
 and that she would now become its proud 
 owner by inheritance and, indeed, this was 
 the one thing in her marriage in which she 
 felt confessed pride; and when at last she 
 was able to pass her shapely hand around 
 to let her friends see it, put on with a 
 wish, it could not be removed, she would 
 smilingly declare: 
 
 "Oh, yas, it s de reel thing." 
 
 The design was the old favorite, two 
 hands clasped, and Phil honestly re 
 garded it as a mascot. He told Petty so, 
 and that its motto was, "Whom I jine to 
 gether let not man or woman put asunder." 
 He knew that the one woman who had tried 
 it once had gotten only "paper satisfaction." 
 
 So Phil had lived about in various homes 
 
66 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 as he grew up, and once, for a brief period, 
 even in the cabin where hung a certain 
 hated document, deep in cotton plush and 
 cheap gilding. 
 
 On his mother s departure, "the other 
 woman" had made what he called "step- 
 mammy motions" toward him, and would 
 have taken him for good. He refused 
 to go near her for a long time; but 
 finally realizing that, after all, there was a 
 sort of relationship which might, perhaps, 
 as well be happily interpreted, or, possibly, 
 only because he liked her picnic pies, he 
 tried it for less than a week. 
 
 It was said that he was actually sitting 
 at her board and with his mouth so full of 
 apple-pie that he got more coppery in the 
 face than the provocation would have war 
 ranted when she unwittingly referred to 
 his father as her beloved husband, where 
 upon Phil retorted hotly: 
 
 "Husban i Don t you say husban to 
 me! Ef you do, I 11 smash up dat ole 
 
"Petty Larceny" 67 
 
 paper citi/zcate, an turn you back into a 
 ole maid, whar you b longs." 
 
 Of course he could not remain after 
 this. When he had related the incident to 
 his friends, there were many who thought 
 him very forbearing not to have destroyed 
 the paper then and there, and he declared 
 that he would have done so "ef she had n t 
 a been a lady and he in her house." And 
 then he added: "Anyhow, I could n t a 
 had de heart to do it, bein as it s all she s 
 got." 
 
 Phil s peculiar orphanage and his ex 
 ceptional aloneness had placed him on the 
 welcome list in almost any home on the 
 plantation. He was a fair kindling-splitter, 
 a milker, and, in a dilettante way, a gar 
 dener, so that he could make good his 
 "keep" without having often to draw upon 
 an inadequate purse. Of course, too, the 
 family with whom he stayed always had 
 free music, morn, noon, and night. 
 
 Once or twice he had had to change his 
 
68 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 quarters because of the conversion to 
 religion of his host or hostess, who could 
 not, of course, harbor the devil s instrument 
 after having forsworn his majesty himself. 
 
 So he had changed his last home before 
 going to live with old Aunt Cynthy Crow, 
 with whom he was staying at the time of 
 his engagement. Aunt Cynthy was a hope 
 less cripple from rheumatism, being unable 
 so much as to rise from her chair ; and when 
 she heard that her friend Betty Bent, re 
 cently reclaimed from sin, had said that 
 she had hated to send Phil away, but she 
 could not seek God with her heart in the 
 cabin while the devil kept tantalizing her 
 feet, she chuckled in reply: 
 
 "I d be so tickled to git my ole daid 
 foots into trouble, wid fiddle or devil or 
 whatever, dat ef Phil 11 come an wake em 
 up for me, I 11 find im for his pains." 
 
 To "find him" was to board him, of 
 course, and although Phil did not take this 
 
"Petty Larceny" 69 
 
 generous offer more literally than it was 
 meant, he made a very economical arrange 
 ment with the old woman, who was a pen 
 sioner on the bounty of her former master 
 and was only too glad of the chance service 
 of Phil s willing hands, as well as of the 
 diversion of his music. 
 
 Never was happier combination than 
 that of the lonely old cripple and the light 
 weight fiddler, Phil Phillips. Mirth and 
 melody ever follow the rosined bow, and 
 merriment, if it does not mock, is, the world 
 over, a grateful antidote for pain. 
 
 The cabin, which for years had been a 
 favorite resort for condoling decrepitude, 
 became, through the cheerful invitation of 
 the strings, love s trysting-place and a con 
 stant scene of gaiety and fun. Most of the 
 mothers on the place were pleased to have 
 it so, too, knowing the value, through its 
 antithesis, of the resident chaperon. It 
 was the anxious mother of several daugh- 
 
70 "Petty Larceny 
 
 ters who was heard to remark to God one 
 night, as she knelt in prayer beside her bed : 
 
 "Yas, Lord, Sis Cynthy is fiddle-proof 
 herself, an she 11 keep a stiddy watch on 
 de chillen, an stribute Scripcher to em 
 twix de fiddle-strings in po tions." 
 
 Perhaps old Cynthy was the only person 
 on the place who was grieved that Phil 
 was to be married, and for natural, if self 
 ish, reasons. It saddened her inexpressibly 
 to contemplate a return to the somber, 
 pain-filled days, with only the questionable 
 solace of her contemporaries. 
 
 Phil and Petty, having loved these many 
 years, Petty, it seems, suddenly discov 
 ered this to have been true of herself as 
 well as of Phil, were of one mind as to 
 an early marriage, though the maid was a 
 trifle coy on the subject, as will appear 
 from her answer to her romantic lover when 
 he begged that she promise to walk to 
 church with him at the first robin s call. 
 
"Petty Larceny" 71 
 
 "No, I ain t gwine do it, Phil. I ain t 
 gwine to walk up de aisle till I kin wear 
 a bunch o sweet-pea blossoms." 
 
 Whereupon Phil, doubling with laughter, 
 howled that it was "allus a close race twix 
 de robins an de peas," and they held hands 
 in the narrow path, refusing Indian file 
 while they made the Indian tracks, one after 
 another, and life was all a dream of bird- 
 song and flower for them. 
 
 They agreed, however, that either bird 
 call or blossom might sound the wedding- 
 bell : and that very night Phil set a trap for 
 robins and put it, baited with crumbs, up 
 on Aunt Cynthy s roof ; and the girl thought 
 it would n t hurt to sow peas in a box, 
 even if they did n t sprout until the ground 
 thawed out in the garden. 
 
 This was while the fields seemed as hard 
 as flint in the black lands ; and although 
 there was a good while to wait, Phil began 
 to feel as care-impressed as a real family 
 
72 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 man when he realized the many demands 
 for money that would come even in the 
 fast-shortening interval. Yet, although he 
 had scarce silver dimes enough to jingle 
 in his pocket, he would have danced with 
 joy any morning to discover a premature 
 robin in his trap, and he always climbed 
 and peeped, quite prepared for the lesser 
 miracle in his realization of life s greatest. 
 
 And, too, if God noticed a sparrow, even 
 for its own sake, why not make a robin to 
 order for love s cause, if need be? As he 
 thought of all the trials of the waiting 
 season, he often longed for a hurried wed 
 ding, which would save a lot of trouble; 
 and, once over well, they could manage 
 some way, money or no money, as others 
 were doing daily. 
 
 But no pea sprouted and bloomed in a 
 night, and the robin s song awaited its sea 
 son, and, as the weather grew milder, dances 
 were more sparse; and the little fiddler 
 
"Petty Larceny" 73 
 
 began to wish, for the first time in his life, 
 for "some sort o workin trade," and he 
 looked askance at his beloved fiddle and 
 said disputatious and disloyal things that 
 a darky s fiddle could never answer in its 
 legitimate vocabulary, which is made only 
 of words of mirth and jollity. 
 
 So, pressed by present circumstances 
 and a sense of future need, Phil bethought 
 him of a few simple, odd ways of earning 
 odd sums, and was able to put trifling 
 amounts by, against the demands of the 
 wedding. 
 
 For one thing, and an eccentric thing 
 it seemed on the surface, he began to sell 
 his chickens. He had always raised chick 
 ens on shares with the family with whom 
 he stayed. It would seem that the chick 
 ens would have been more useful to him 
 in his housekeeping than the small sums 
 they might bring, but "things are not what 
 they seem." A great line, that ! 
 
74 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 It was said that when Phil started to 
 sell his chickens he never got done selling, 
 and that the same was true of his potato- 
 patch. It may not have been a fact that 
 he robbed the potato-hills of the fields 
 through which he passed on his peddling 
 rounds, but there was no one who doubted 
 that he sold chickens of breeds unknown 
 to his own yard and Cynthy s. 
 
 This is a hard thing to say of a young 
 man, and would even now be withheld by his 
 partial chronicler but for the light of sub 
 sequent events. Circumstantial evidence, 
 which is often of the devil and utterly mis 
 leading in itself, had yet some value in cor- 
 roboration. Held in abeyance, it does occa 
 sionally help the cause of truth. 
 
 PHIL was greatly excited when, one night, 
 as he was on his way to see Petty, he met 
 a man who had come all the way across 
 Cockleburr Bayou to tell him that there 
 
"Petty Larceny" 75 
 
 was a letter in the post-office for him. He 
 was so nervous over it, having never before 
 received a letter in his life, that he thought 
 it best not to tell Petty, lest she, too, might 
 share his dread of impending news. 
 
 Of course, he thought first of his mother, 
 and from that a number of contingen 
 cies emerged. There had been ample time 
 for the growth of "a whole step-family" 
 since his parent s departure under condi 
 tions most favorable. He even had a fear 
 that his mother might be coming back, and 
 somehow he wondered if possibly she would 
 wish to recover the ring, the only thing 
 she had ever given him. 
 
 It was noon next day when the little fel 
 low got back and, with the letter in his 
 pocket, hurried to his lady-love. 
 
 He was grinning so when they met that 
 he could not for the life of him get his lips 
 together to call her name, and after several 
 abortive efforts to say "Petty," which insis- 
 
76 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 tently became "Fetty," he was obliged to 
 compromise. 
 
 "H-h-honey," he gasped, from away 
 down his throat, "what you reckon I got?" 
 
 "A robin?" laughed Petty. 
 
 This, for some reason, helped his articu 
 lation, so that he was able quite clearly to 
 reply : 
 
 "Better n dat, Petty; better n dat!" 
 
 And when she frowned and coquettishly 
 turned away, he added, while he seized both 
 her hands : 
 
 "Listen at dis: I got a fifty-dollar job! 
 Dat what I got ! I got a letter here it is 
 a letter Pom de president o Pompton 
 College down heah at Yaller Briar Wells, 
 an dey wants me to come an fiddle for em 
 at dey anniversal hops, every night o de 
 beginnin de commencement, I mean to 
 say. What you got to say to dat? An dey 
 offer me fifty dollars cash down, in hand 
 good specious payment !" 
 
"Petty Larceny 33 77 
 
 The annual college commencement at 
 the close of the spring term was the social 
 event of several counties, and to play at one 
 of the Pompton hops would be great honor 
 for a resident of Sugar Bend. It was no 
 wonder the little fiddler was fairly beside 
 himself. 
 
 The only trying feature in it was his 
 having to leave Petty for a short time; but 
 this was easily borne, in vieAv of their com 
 mon advantage. It was bad to go, but the 
 going was a great affair. Twenty-odd 
 miles by road in his own little wagon, in 
 which he carried his trunk and fiddle, and 
 which he hoped to bring back loaded with 
 housekeeping goods, was a journey need 
 ing considerable preparation ; and so inti 
 mately was it associated with his romance 
 that it was commonly spoken of on the 
 place as "Phil s weddin trip." To this, 
 however, he laughingly objected: "Hit 
 ain t to say a weddin trip. Hit s on y jes 
 
78 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 a little journey in search o my marri ge 
 po tion." 
 
 Under the influence of her emotional 
 appeal, Petty was easily induced to stay 
 with old Cynthy during Phil s absence, and 
 it was even arranged that they should make 
 their home with her, or that she should 
 stay with them, turning her pension into 
 the general housekeeping fund, when they 
 should be married, Phil and the fiddle and 
 young company, she declared, having "clair 
 sp iled her for lonesome livin ." 
 
 THE poor little college town to which Phil 
 went to make his fortune was to his rural 
 vision a great metropolis. From the time 
 his delighted eyes had rested upon the great 
 globes of color in the apothecary s window, 
 and had taken in the papier-mache grotto 
 which appeared to supply the soda-foun 
 tain, he never experienced the least loss 
 
"Petty Larceny" 79 
 
 of ardor in his admiration of city ways and 
 magnificence. 
 
 Petty s special request as they parted 
 had been for "a bureau wid a swingin 
 lookin -glass in it, dat 11 gimme my hat one 
 minute an tip over an scoop up my foots 
 de next. Dat, an a little hand-glass to 
 glimpse my back hair, 11 make me b lieve 
 I m all but white." So she had said at the 
 house and repeated at the stile to which 
 she rode beside her lover as he went away. 
 
 He bought the bureau out of his first 
 earnings, and had it moved to his room in 
 the servants quarters, and the little key, 
 which fitted all the drawers alike, was soon 
 swinging to his silver watch-chain, where 
 it daily grew in importance, as gewgaws 
 for the absent girl were constantly added 
 to its charge. 
 
 Besides his regular fee, Phil made a few 
 odd dollars for extra service. He was a 
 
80 "Petty Larceny 3 
 
 real genius with his fiddle, and was con 
 stantly in requisition. 
 
 With such, inspiration always at hand, 
 a dance was never out of place, if only 
 there were dancers and available space. In 
 the mornings on the broad verandas, under 
 the trees at afternoon tea any time when 
 there were a half-dozen young people to 
 gether the fiddler would be invited to 
 earn the price of some bit of tinsel or a 
 gay ribbon for his lady. 
 
 His fiddling had made a great hit. 
 Everybody was talking about it, even the 
 old professors. "Why why, that little 
 nig nigger!" said one of the portliest 
 of these one evening as he mopped his 
 purple face after a desperate race with 
 death through the mazes of a Virginia 
 reel. "Have n t d-d-done such a thing in 
 f-f-f-forty years. Why, he d m-m-make a 
 chair dance if it was n t dead wood." 
 
 It was inevitable that the familiar inter- 
 
"Petty Larceny" 81 
 
 course involved in such an engagement as 
 Phil s should lead him into temptation ; that 
 is, assuming that temptation and opportun 
 ity are, for some, virtually synonymous, as 
 seems pitifully true. 
 
 Sweet soap was one of Phil s failings, 
 and he liked to think of it in connection 
 with Petty. It was easy to slip a cake into 
 his pocket now and then as he passed the 
 wash-stands, and to deposit it in the 
 bureau; it was easy to do this many times, 
 and to add a pretty silk handkerchief or a 
 bottle of smelling-stuff, and, after a time, 
 occasionally, even a trifling bit of jewelry. 
 He always left the handsome articles un 
 disturbed watch-chains, which sometimes 
 seemed fairly to tug at his sleeves, and 
 jeweled rings, though he did once get off 
 with a fine coat belonging to a fellow of 
 about his own size. 
 
 These peculations were comparatively 
 slight, and always effected in the face of 
 
82 "Petty Larceny 
 
 great opportunities, with both valuables 
 and money in sight. There were always 
 rolls of bills lying about with the pipes 
 and tobacco not great bills, in a little 
 Southern college, but good green dollars, 
 with an occasional V for affluent expression. 
 
 Phil selected the times when these were 
 most in evidence, for refutation, to take the 
 little things he dared; and consequently, 
 although articles were often missed, it was 
 a long time before he was even suspected* 
 At last, however, one of the fellows set a 
 trap a fellow who had himself a fad for 
 fine soap, and had lost several cakes, as 
 well as a locket. 
 
 The trap was successful, and the result 
 was really sad. It spoiled a whole evening 
 for the boys, who had all grown fond of the 
 little fiddler and had heard somewhat of his 
 story. They knew he was to be married, 
 and had even proposed to chip in to buy 
 a little present for his wedding. 
 
Sweet soap was one of Phil s failings 
 
"Petty Larceny" 85 
 
 They did n t say anything to him that 
 night, although every fellow counted his 
 small belongings and put his money out of 
 sight. Indeed, they did not speak of it at 
 all, beyond the circle, though they expressed 
 an intention of doing so the next day. Un 
 fortunately, however, the thing got out, and 
 one of the boys one who had lost a shoe- 
 buttoner or something had him arrested. 
 
 There was probably never in any sore 
 strait a more surprised and frightened 
 young culprit than was poor Phil the day 
 he was seized and taken to the court-house. 
 He had never been in such a place before, 
 and it was an awful experience. 
 
 There were several cases ahead of his 
 when he got in, and he had time to sit and 
 think. 
 
 The very imposing elevation of the judge s 
 seat was disconcerting, and the impressive 
 "your honor" with which he was addressed 
 struck new terror through Phil s already 
 
86 "Petty Larceny 3 
 
 cringing soul. It was a judgment-day ex 
 perience. 
 
 When, at last, his case was called and he 
 stepped forward, his knees knocked together 
 so that he came near falling. He had been 
 guilty of things long ago at home, and had 
 had dim but frightful visions of exposure 
 and arrest, all somewhat like the present, 
 but falling short of the real thing, which 
 was, indeed, aggravated by contrast with his 
 recent notable experiences. He had had a 
 good time and had been well treated, and 
 he was not a bad fellow at heart. 
 
 The black giant, the sheriff s deputy who 
 had arrested him, and who even now towered 
 beside him, had told him frankly that he had 
 been "ketched stealin ," and so he realized 
 dimly, or thought he did, what was before 
 him. He knew precisely where each stolen 
 article lay hidden, and he realized that the 
 little key hanging plainly on his fob, and 
 which had been so satisfactory an accom- 
 
"Petty Larceny" 87 
 
 plice, would easily "turn State s evidence" 
 and go far to convict him if it were brought 
 into the case ; but he was glad to remember 
 that none of what he called the "joolry 
 pieces" were in the bureau. Fearing that it 
 might be opened during his frequent 
 absences, he had kept the small incrimin 
 ating things taken especially for Petty, pru 
 dently, or imprudently, about his person. 
 
 So, while he awaited his turn, he had 
 thought fast, and it had soon seemed best to 
 deny everything and then to offer his key, 
 trusting to explain away such trifles as 
 would be found. 
 
 A man had a right to suppose that gen 
 tlemen would n t take account of trifles such 
 as these, but if they really wanted them he 
 would insist upon returning them. It is 
 true, there was the coat; but it was not in 
 the bureau. It hung behind a door in a 
 closet, and, unless it had been missed, would 
 not be found. Or, if it came to the worst, 
 
88 "Petty Larceny 3 
 
 even the coat might be disposed of by a 
 judicious game of bluff. How easy to 
 gather up two coats instead of one in a 
 hurry, and how possible unconsciously to 
 take both home on one s arm, on a warm 
 night when the overcoat was superfluous ! 
 
 The situation had its weak points, cer 
 tainly, but it might have been worse. 
 
 Indeed, there were many features in it 
 which appeared providential, and the little 
 man in his extremity even had the effrontery 
 to thank God, as he stood there, that he had 
 been given foresight to keep the jewelry out 
 of the bureau. 
 
 He thought that he had the case fairly 
 well in hand while he waited, and that in 
 assuming the lofty height of injured inno 
 cence he might yet walk out a free man. 
 
 But there was something in the atmo 
 sphere of the place which sickened him and 
 made his head swim, and the longer he 
 stood and waited, the sicker he felt, so that 
 
"Petty Larceny" 89 
 
 when, out of the stillness following the per 
 emptory gavel, he heard his own name 
 called, "Phil Phillips!" in a tone which 
 sounded sepulchral and far away, he turned 
 gray and then even green where the blue 
 fright showed through the yellow of his 
 skin, around his mouth and nostrils, and 
 about the edges of his hair. 
 
 Still, he had life enough to know that he 
 must answer, and inexperience enough to 
 reply, in a vibrant metallic voice: 
 
 "Yas, sir, yo oner ble onor, dat s me." 
 
 The judge, a benignant old man, turned 
 a smiling face upon the little fellow as, 
 with a twinkle in his eye, he replied: 
 
 "Yes, I see you are there." 
 
 Then, turning to the officer beside the 
 prisoner, he asked: 
 
 "Who has been getting this young man 
 into trouble? He got me into trouble last 
 night. So stiff this morning I can hardly 
 walk. What is the charge?" 
 
90 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 "Petit larceny." The reply, prompt and 
 clear at Phil s side, rang through the 
 court-room. 
 
 A bombshell exploding in his soul could 
 hardly have transformed Phil as did this 
 artless reply. 
 
 He was no longer a poor prisoner beg 
 ging for mercy. Judge nor bench nor cere 
 monial had place in his consciousness now. 
 He was instantly himself again Petty s 
 lover provoked to wrath, the fighting ban 
 tam of Sugar Bend. 
 
 He did not hesitate. For a second 
 the great six-footer beside him did not 
 know what had hit him. So sudden was 
 the plunge that it seemed as if the entire 
 little man, all in a tense tangle, had landed 
 in his face; and then, tooth and nail, as a 
 catamount grasps and tears, so he tore 
 right and left. Before any one had time 
 to realize what was doing, or to interfere, 
 the two were rolling on the floor together, 
 
"Petty Larceny 91 
 
 and there was blood in sight and fur flying. 
 
 When, after several minutes of this fierce 
 tussle, the greater man was at last able to 
 hold his antagonist at arm s-length and 
 several others helped to get him away, it 
 was necessary for the officer to carry his 
 bruised and bleeding visage out for repairs. 
 
 All this took several minutes, and when 
 the small man was next observed he was 
 wiping the puffy mass which ought to have 
 been a face and trying to button the frag 
 ment of a coat so that it would cover his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Seeing that the big man had gone, and 
 that the court was coming again into some 
 thing like order, he turned up to the judge 
 the single eye that seemed to remain, the 
 other being quite lost to sight in a fine 
 protective swelling, and, bowing respect 
 fully, he said: 
 
 " Scuse me, please, sir, yo oner ble 
 onor, but I was bleeged to whup him." 
 
92 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 This brought down the house, of course. 
 Even the judge shook with laughter at the 
 pluck of him. 
 
 "Dey s some things no gen leman won t 
 stand," he went on. "An, now, ef deze 
 gen lemen 11 leggo my arms, dey 11 see I kin 
 practise manners an behavior when I 
 ain t insulted." 
 
 "What do you mean by insult, you you 
 little game-cock, you?" The judge spoke 
 with an effort at severity, but with a weak 
 ening of his voice. Still, the dignity of the 
 court was at stake. "I wish you to know 
 that the officer was only doing his duty, 
 and you shall pay for this, sir." 
 
 "I 11 pay whatever you say, yo oner - 
 ble onor, ef I kin. I know de man done his 
 juty when he fetched me heah, an I walked 
 beside him peaceable. But ef you don t know 
 what he done to insult me, sir, / knows it, an 
 he knows it an I don t think he s likely 
 to do it ag in. I m heah to stan for my 
 
"Pet ty Larceny" 93 
 
 own actions, an I don t want nobody else 
 tangled up wid it. Dey ain t no ladies mixed 
 up in dis case, an ef anybody fetches em 
 in, dey s boun to be blood! Dis is been 
 a fair man-to-man fight, an ef you 11 
 please, sir, pass it over an tek up de case 
 de way it stood befo my trouble, I 11 an 
 swer fair an square. De man dat s jes 
 stepped out a minute, he tol me dat I was 
 accused o pickin up some little odds an 
 ends, I b lieve; an ef dat s so, I m heah 
 to answer." 
 
 At this, amid the cheers of the crowd, 
 always ready to espouse the cause of the 
 plucky under dog, the judge cleared his 
 throat and, calling for order, resumed the 
 case in due form. 
 
 "I 11 be jiggered if I won t do it for 
 you," he said, looking down at the prisoner 
 while he called for the plaintiff. 
 
 In answer, a young man came forward 
 smiling, and as he looked down into the 
 
94 "Petty Larceny* 
 
 one tiny peep-hole that answered for an 
 eye, but which held all that was needed of 
 inquiry and intelligence, and then at the 
 benign visage of the judge, he said, with 
 unfeigned apology: 
 
 "The fact is, your honor, a number of 
 the fellows have been missing little things, 
 all trifles, and finally some one took a 
 shoe-buttoner off my bureau, and well, 
 a day or so ago I missed a locket with my 
 girl s picture in it. I thought I would n t 
 mention this, but, really, now that the 
 thing s out, I d like to say that if he 11 
 give me the picture, he can have the but- 
 toner, and any old thing he has besides; 
 that is, of course, if he has it and there 
 seems to be no one else, and we found 
 out he was taking things. He bit on a 
 bait, you see, and so we ve caught him." 
 Turning now to Phil, he added: 
 "You hear what I say? If you just give 
 me back the locket with the picture in it, 
 
"Petty Larceny" 95 
 
 I 11 let you go so far as I am concerned." 
 
 This was informal, but the law gangs an 
 easy gait at such centers of justice as Yel 
 low Briar Wells. Just exactly this innova 
 tion had not occurred before, probably, yet 
 that there was nothing unusual in the spirit 
 of it was evinced by the quiet way in which 
 it was received. 
 
 When the young man had done, the judge 
 regarded the prisoner with kindly inquiry 
 over his gold-rimmed spectacles. 
 
 "Well, you have heard the charge," he 
 said evenly. "What do you say, prisoner?" 
 
 Phil hesitated. The truth was, he was in 
 momentary terror lest the man who had 
 gone out should return. He felt that he 
 evidently knew something about Petty, but 
 how much Phil could not even surmise. 
 
 The locket, with Phil s own tintype re 
 placing the girl s picture (which had gone 
 up in smoke and been forgotten), was by 
 this time probably in Petty s possession, 
 
96 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 for it had been sent to her by mail on the 
 same day it was missed. The man could 
 scarcely know of this ; and yet, what is 
 more dangerous than the witness who 
 "knows something"? In the interrogation 
 point lies an endless tragedy of doubt. 
 
 After about a half -minute s silence it 
 seemed much more Phil turned his face 
 up to the judge. He had made several 
 peculiar motions with his arms, as if vainly 
 struggling to gesticulate, or he was perhaps 
 threatened with a fit. And now he gasped: 
 
 "Would you please, sir, yo oner ble 
 onor, let one o de co t gyards come an 
 pull off my coat? I d tek it off myse f, but 
 I got a sort o crick down de spine o my 
 back. I allus hates to whup a big man." 
 
 When two grinning black fellows had 
 gotten the fragmentary garment off, with 
 many an ejaculate ry protest of pain from 
 the wearer, Phil ran his finger along the 
 armhole lining and presently brought out a 
 
Heah s a few little trinkers I picked up heah an dar, 
 but I ain t got no locket, jedge" 
 
"Petty Larceny" 99 
 
 small scarf-pin ; then, from farther along, a 
 collar-button and a pocket-comb. 
 
 As he held them up toward the judge, 
 his shirt-sleeve, riddled to the elbow, fell 
 away, leaving his thin arm bare. 
 
 "Heah s a few little tr inkers I picked up 
 heah an dar, but I ain t got no locket, 
 jedge. I wush to Gord I did have it. Of 
 co se I don t reckon I ought to took deze, 
 but ef you 11 look at em you 11 see dey 
 ain t gold or diamonds. I did pick up a 
 watch dat I seen layin roun loose beggin 
 to be stole one night, but I took it home, 
 an foun out it was pyore gol ," a lie, 
 this, "an so I brung it back de nex 
 mornin . I don t want nobody s riches. 
 I s jes a plain man. But de fact is, I was 
 riz up right in de midst o sech gran gen- 
 lemen, j edges an lawyers an juries an 
 j edges, you know, jedge, an I been used 
 to jes helpin myse f to any little left-overs; 
 an ef I would n t pick em up, dey d give 
 
1 00 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 em to me. I knowed deze heah quality- 
 college yo ng men did n t keer nothin 
 about such little trinkers as deze, an I 
 was feard dey mought forgit to give em 
 to me, dey all so took up wid dey vale- 
 dictrums an an de yo ng ladies, an 
 so I jes gethered em up an hid em whar 
 nobody could n t find em, tell I could git 
 a chance to ax for em. But, of co se, ef 
 dey wants em, heah dey is." 
 
 He turned and bravely looked around the 
 court-room and up along the galleries. 
 
 "That s my scarf-pin. Pass it along," 
 came from a voice in the back row. 
 
 "Yes, and my cuff -buttons," said another. 
 And now, first a single voice and then two 
 and three together cried : 
 
 "Where s my soap?" 
 
 "My soap?" 
 
 "And mine?" 
 
 "And my soap?" 
 
 "And my shaving-brush?" 
 
"Petty Larceny" 10j|L 
 
 "And my soap?" 
 
 At this the bruised mass which did duty 
 as a face took on a pitiful grin while its 
 owner giggled : 
 
 "Lord have mussy! Soap! Who d a 
 thought it? An* quality gen lemen at dat!" 
 Then to the judge: "Maybe I is gethered 
 a few cakes o soap, yo oner ble onor, 
 f om night to night an I 11 splain out 
 how I come to do it, an ef dey wants em 
 back, all right. You see, hit s purty hot, 
 fiddlin in de rooms, an my hand hit 
 sweats, an dat s bad medicine for bofe 
 bow an strings, an so I d slip out once-t 
 in a while an wash my hands ; an , of co se, 
 arter I uses a gen leman s soap, I got too 
 much respec for im to leave it for im to 
 sile his hands wid. But, as I say, hit s all 
 whar dey kin git it. Is dey anything else 
 de gen lemen done missed?" He had turned 
 and was facing the gallery again. It was 
 a great bluff. Indeed, his knees were hardly 
 
102 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 strong enough for it, for they quaked piti 
 fully while he bravely faced the audience. 
 He was thinking of the coat and trusting to 
 luck, which seemed to be with him, that it 
 had not been missed. 
 
 "How about that locket?" The judge 
 leaned over the railing and eyed him with 
 telling scrutiny as he put the question. 
 
 "Dis heah s a confession, jedge, yo 
 oner ble onor. Hit ain t no denial. No 
 body did n t ax me about dem little things 
 I jes passed in. I say I ain t got no locket 
 or no lady s picture. I nuver gits mixed 
 up wid de ladies, nohow, an ef I was to 
 see a lady s po trait settin on a pianner, 
 for ninstance, I would n t dast to no mo n 
 s lute it as I passed by. But ef dat s all, 
 won t you please, sir, pass my sentence, 
 please, sir, yo oner ble onor, an for 
 Gord s sake, mek it light, or tu n me loose, 
 one. S posin you take de vote, jedge, 
 mongst deze gen lemen, an ef dey wants 
 
"Petty Larceny" 103 
 
 me seized an sol for debt or whatever 
 let em sesso." 
 
 The judge assumed a look of mock so 
 lemnity as he glanced about the court. 
 
 "Let im go," laughed a voice in the 
 gallery. 
 
 "Turn im loose, judge," said another. 
 
 "Keep my soap to wash your conscience 
 with." 
 
 "And mine, too." 
 
 "No, you can bring back mine. It s 
 green, and smells like violets," cried a 
 changing voice in the front row, at which 
 there was laughter. 
 
 "Oh, but let im off, judge; he s sick," 
 the boy continued. 
 
 "I keep thinking about that locket," 
 pursued the judge, this time addressing the 
 owner of the missing article. 
 
 "Well," he replied, "if he has n t got it, 
 he has n t, that s all; and I don t believe 
 he has. It s possible that a fellow I know 
 
104 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 has it. Let him go, judge. I withdraw 
 the complaint." 
 
 "Well," the old justice straightened him 
 self until he seemed to Phil, standing below 
 him, a mile high "well, that s all very 
 well, so far as the charge is concerned, 
 but I have a little business with the pris 
 oner on my own account. My court is 
 not exactly a place for free fights, and so 
 I fine you, sir, twenty-five dollars, or im 
 prisonment for ten days, whichever you 
 say." 
 
 "Well, of co se, I 11 take de twenty-five 
 dollars, ef you please, sir." 
 
 "You don t take it you pay it, you 
 idiot!" 
 
 "Pay what, for Gord s sake? Pay 
 twenty-five dollars? Why, jedge, I ain t 
 got but three comin to me, an I got to go 
 home. I can t pay what I ain t got. But 
 but " a light came into his manner his 
 face was a closed book "I tell yer what 
 
"Petty Larceny" 105 
 
 I 11 do : I 11 play it out for yer. I 11 fiddle 
 for yer tell I draps, howsomever, when- 
 somever, wharsomever you say, sir." 
 
 This brought down the house. 
 
 In the midst of the laughter, the judge 
 took out his watch. 
 
 "It s dinner-time, boys, and I m hun 
 gry," he said, rising. "I m going over to 
 the hotel, and you fetch him along and give 
 him his fiddle-" 
 
 He turned to Phil. 
 
 "And when I ve got enough music I 11 
 say go, and when I say go, you git! Do you 
 hear? Light out o this town by the first 
 train. D you hear, I say?" 
 
 "Yas, sir; oh, thanky, sir, yo oner ble 
 onor, thanky." 
 
 IT was long past midnight when the little 
 fiddler mounted the seat of his wagon and 
 started on his homeward drive, the bureau, 
 with its treasures untouched, lying face 
 
106 "Petty Larceny 
 
 downward in the wagon-bed behind him, its 
 glass resting upon a pile of hay. 
 
 He started in his rags, and drove pretty 
 fast until he reached a barn a few miles 
 out, where he found entertainment for him 
 self and beast, and where he slept the sleep 
 of the vanquished and the weary. 
 
 Taking the journey by easy stages, doing 
 a little cautious peddling in the twilights 
 en route, robbing Peter to pay poor Paul, 
 he was three whole days on the way, and 
 they were days of needed healing and re 
 cuperation, too. 
 
 His face had not been quite normal 
 when he left home, so its battered state 
 would prove less startling than it might 
 have been. It would be accepted as a mat 
 ter of course. His friends were used to it. 
 
 Indeed, the days of hiding in which he 
 slept whenever his way led across a clear 
 ing, and the nights of easy travel, inter 
 spersed with snatches of rest, all supple- 
 

"Petty Larceny" 109 
 
 meriting a fortnight of ease and high living, 
 brought him out so wonderfully that when 
 he drove into the plantation gate, late the 
 third night, the jubilant song with which 
 he announced his return was but a spon 
 taneous expression of his own exuberance. 
 
 Petty met him at the stile where he had 
 left her where, indeed, she had waited for 
 two nights. 
 
 "Well, heah I is, Sugar-pie, bureau an 
 all," he chuckled as, leaning down, he drew 
 her up beside him. 
 
 "An you sho looks fine an feels slick. 
 Sto clo es shows out, even in de moon 
 light." She was passing her hand along 
 his sleeve, her left hand over his left sleeve 
 on her left, his position making this come 
 natural. 
 
 "Yas," he replied; "dis coat purty nigh 
 broke me, dat s a fac . Hit takes fine 
 feathers to mate wid a fine bird. But wait 
 tell you see what I got for my sweetness in 
 
110 "Petty Larceny" 
 
 de bureau back in de wagon. I tell yer I 
 got yo trousseau, so dat when you turns 
 out you 11 wake up de plantation." 
 
 "I bet you spent all you made. How 
 much money is you brung home, anyhow?" 
 
 "Not much, to be sho ; but you know 
 hit takes money to live like a gen leman, 
 an I knowed you would n t want me to " 
 
 "Of co se not. I wants you to stand 
 wid de best. So you got de bureau, is you 
 wid a tip-over merror?" 
 
 "Yas, an dat ain t all. What s de 
 matter wid me, forgittin de princip lest 
 thing I brung you! Look heah, gal." 
 
 As he spoke, he leaned forward, lifted a 
 small basket from under the seat, and laid 
 it upon her lap. 
 
 "Heah s you robin-bird, Sugar. Found 
 im waitin in de woods, huntin for me. 
 What you say to dat?" 
 
 In leaning over, his face had brushed a 
 bunch of flowers upon her shoulder. 
 
"Petty Larceny" 111 
 
 "Bless goodness! Sweet peas! Well, 
 I 11 be doggoned !" he chuckled. "How 
 long 11 it take to make de weddin cakes ?" 
 
 "Aunt Cynthy ain t done nothin but 
 whup up cake-batter on er lap ever sence 
 de peas begin to bud, a week ago Sunday. 
 Dey all ready. But you better turn dis 
 robin loose. He s all but smothered." 
 
 "Yas, I reckon he is an I spec he s 
 got his pardner back yonder in de woods, 
 too, an I knows how he feels. But he 11 
 know de way back." 
 
 As she lifted the lid, the bird rose and, 
 with a great cry, darted backward into the 
 night. 
 
THE HAIR OF THE DOG 
 
THE HAIR OF THE DOG 
 
 EVIATHAN, commonly known on the 
 plantation as Levi, was nine years 
 old, yellow as to color, wide-eyed and wise 
 yes, wise, although he had to spell the 
 hard words in his First Reader lesson 
 for Levi "saw things" denied to the vision 
 of ordinary mortals. 
 
 This seems like cramming description a 
 little, perhaps, and, after all, it is scarcely 
 adequate in presenting the boy s picture. 
 
 There was something weird about the lad 
 an "other world" look, one would almost 
 say, such as that which distinguishes the 
 blue-white face of the babe who is yet on 
 the danger side of his two-year-old teeth, 
 
 115 
 
116 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 from him who has passed over. His head 
 was a little too heavy for his slim neck; his 
 wistful eyes too big for his wizened face. 
 His yellow skin bore a perennial crop of 
 irregular freckles which matched his foxy 
 hair in hue, adding a touch of comedy to 
 an otherwise tragically serious visage 
 tragically serious, that is, when it was in 
 repose. 
 
 Levi tended the fires and assisted in wait 
 ing at the table of the great-house, which 
 is to say he straggled in laden with kindling- 
 wood behind Pluto, the portly dignitary 
 who was responsible for the fires and at 
 meal-times he wielded the fly-fan in season 
 or fetched in relays of hot waffles from the 
 kitchen, taking for this service the whispered 
 orders of Marigold, the fat waitress upon 
 whose stalwart shoulders the dignity of the 
 dining-room safely rested. 
 
 And, just because he was so slim and in 
 adequate "so peaked and puny" his kins- 
 
The butler 
 
The Hair of the Dog 119 
 
 woman, the cook, had it and because, of 
 all the piccaninnies on the place, he had 
 least of that elusive quality called "pres 
 ence," the mirthful mistress of the manse 
 generally referred to him as "the butler," 
 thus, with one swift stroke, converting the 
 ultra-serious lad into a cheerful grotesque. 
 
 *As a fact, Levi was nothing if not both 
 serious and gleeful nothing if not pictur 
 esque, as he sidled about the dining-room, 
 his serio-comic expression always bearing a 
 palpable relation to a grin. And yet, al 
 though he seemed ever trying not to laugh 
 or getting over a giggling spell, the rever 
 sion in repose was always to the weird look 
 of one who "sees things." 
 
 The boy s toilets may have conduced 
 somewhat to grotesqueness of effect, too, as 
 the one thing distinguishing about them was 
 that they were always misfits, eclectic in 
 character, and never by any chance new. 
 
 From long to short trousers and back 
 
120 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 again, in and out of suspenders by way of 
 twine or buttons, or even an occasional 
 safety-pin, he passed with the same engag 
 ing naivete that distinguished his promis 
 cuous use or disuse of shoes, or the mating 
 of pairs apparently predestined to estrange 
 ment, as a lax congress gaiter with the re 
 mains of a red-topped boot, or even, as on 
 one occasion, one of his mistress s dis 
 carded boudoir slippers of blue suede mated 
 with a rubber overshoe, the latter doing 
 double duty in supplementing the deficiency 
 of a footless sock and the connection made 
 good by the service of an old necktie of plaid 
 fastened in an impressive bow-knot over the 
 depression which marked the instep. 
 
 After becoming accustomed to Levi in his 
 motley livery, one soon came to feel it to 
 be an essential feature of his personality 
 and would scarcely have liked to see him in 
 conventional store clothes. 
 
 As he was, a variegated wizened little 
 
The Hair of the Dog 121 
 
 composite, it was easy to accord him any 
 occult sense to which he might lay claim, 
 and so, when he stood apart from the other 
 children and boasted of his "speritual 
 visiom," it seemed that he might be telling 
 the truth. 
 
 " Co se I sees sperits," he would declare, 
 looking far afield as he spoke. "I sees em 
 an I hears em. Dey calls me, caze I 
 was borned wid a call!" If he took his caul 
 easily, phonetically, to suit himself, what 
 was the difference? Some of the early 
 prophets could not write their names, and 
 Joshua knew no better than to "command 
 the sun to stand still." 
 
 Levi s favorite and personal ghost seems 
 to have been a tall, headless apparition 
 whom he frequently met in lonely places 
 after nightfall at the wood-pile beyond 
 the cherokee hedge ; in the cow-lot, when 
 milking was done; or anywhere along the 
 winding length of "pecan lane" which led 
 
122 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 by devious ways to the quarters so that, 
 when duty required him to go out alone 
 after sundown, he had more than once been 
 known to shirk. 
 
 His particular spook he always consist 
 ently described as a "tall, no-haid man" who 
 suddenly confronted him, always nodding 
 or bowing low with his headless shoulders 
 not a cheerful figure for any of us to 
 meet along life s shadowy byways, to be 
 sure. 
 
 It is accounted unfortunate for the very 
 young and inexperienced to find themselves 
 too often heard, and so it proved in the case 
 of Levi, the butler. A man who sees one 
 ghost may be accredited with seeing a dozen, 
 and it was a matter of easy fluency for the 
 imaginative boy to add pictorial features to 
 stories which might so obviously grow with 
 out limit excepting that which credence al 
 lows. And so, sometimes, when the lad 
 seemed to be gaining too much headway 
 
The Hair of the Dog 123 
 
 in extravagant recital, Charity, the cook, 
 would call out from her kitchen window : 
 
 "Quit yo lyin , Levi!" To which the 
 boy always opposed a ready denial: 
 
 "I ain t lyin , Aun Charity ! I on y wusht 
 I was lyin . I d be sleepin better! I 
 knows what I sees, an I d be lyin ef I d 
 deny it!" 
 
 Rather a clever defense for a nine-year-old 
 piccaninny, and it had its effect, too, even 
 upon the mind of his ever alert kinswoman, 
 who scarcely knew sometimes whether the 
 deep-set eyes of her young nephew might 
 not really be "seeing things," after all. 
 
 And so the habit grew and Levi was 
 threatened with unsavory distinction in more 
 ways than one. Light speech is said to 
 lead to light fingers, and the boy who saw 
 large objects suddenly appear was soon 
 gaining a reputation for making small 
 ones as mysteriously disappear, as if by a 
 sort of magic. 
 
124 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 He had only to pass through a room 
 without stopping and the cake of pink mar- 
 belized sweet soap which had lain plainly 
 in sight would be there no more, and 
 the same happened to alluring sweets care 
 lessly left to the dangers of his swift pass 
 ages through the house and, even more par 
 ticularly, to trifling coins. And, as has 
 been known before, the boy who would 
 never fail to fetch in to his mistress the 
 pocket-book which she had let fall or the bit 
 of jewelry or even a dollar bill could 
 outrank the professional prestidigitator in 
 causing to disappear such attractive trink 
 ets as it never seemed worth while to pursue 
 beyond a first inquiry. 
 
 Strange to say, the boy was never detected 
 in theft, never exactly taken red-handed 
 and, indeed, it must be said that nobody really 
 wished to convict him and the family habit 
 was rather to hope that he had n t been 
 guilty of the obvious thing, after all. But 
 
Light fingers 
 
The Hair of the Dog 127 
 
 the mistress was watching. She did care 
 for her servants and she was keenly sensi 
 tive to unusual dangers to the boy through 
 his temperament; and so she began to set 
 her mind to the treatment of a weakness 
 before it should crystallize into character. 
 Naturally, her first essays were through 
 moral suasion. By every art she knew, she 
 tried to induce him to confess his fault. It 
 is not so culpable a thing to see ghosts as it 
 is to steal soap, and, as confession of the 
 lesser failing would involve the smaller 
 sacrifice of pride, she applied her zeal to 
 this, but accusation or even suspicion served 
 only to emphasize the boy s denials. 
 
 Looking straight into her face, he would 
 exclaim : 
 
 "Cert n y I sees sperits, Missy! I 
 would n t dast to brag about ghos es I 
 did n t see. If I did, dey d ha nt me, sho !" 
 And throwing his gaze afar, he one time 
 added : 
 
128 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 "Yas m, I sees em an 9 I smells 9 em y 
 too!" 
 
 This was carrying the thing a little too 
 far and the mistress laughed outright. 
 
 "Hush, Levi!" she cried, "don t be 
 ridiculous ! The idea of smelling spirits ! 
 Whoever put such an idea into your head?" 
 
 At this, the boy came a step nearer to 
 her and lowered his voice, and there was 
 that in his earnestness which almost carried 
 conviction of his sincerity, at least as he 
 said : 
 
 "Ever sense I kilt my twin, Missy, I been 
 smellin sperits. Yas m. We was bofe 
 babies, layin on mammy s patchwork on 
 de grass, asleep beside mammy s wash-tubs, 
 an she say I must o been ridin some sort 
 o nightmare in my dream, an lowed I had 
 my foots in de stirrup, an I kicked my twin 
 in de belly an kilt im, daid an dat s 
 huccome I smells sperits, special when I 
 walks barefeeted in wet grass in clover-time 
 
The Hair of the Dog 129 
 
 in de dark o de moon. Yas m, I sees sperits, 
 an I sho smells em, too. I wusht to Gord 
 I did n t." 
 
 On inquiry, it proved to be only too 
 true that Levi s twin brother had come 
 to an untimely end in precisely this acci 
 dent, and moreover, shame to tell, their 
 half-savage mother had brutally taunted 
 the survivor with it. Indeed, it had been her 
 daily habit, in the free use of the rod in his 
 strenuous upbringing, to add a few blows in 
 memory of this far-away crime. 
 
 "An take dis an dis an dis!" she 
 would shriek, "you yo ng monster, for killin 
 yo little angel twin an dis AN 9 DIS!" 
 So, beating a sort of crescendic measure, 
 would she finally cool her ire. 
 
 But the mother had, several years before 
 this telling, gone to her reward, and Levia 
 than, the small, the uncanny, the persecuted, 
 had come into a life of greater freedom and 
 opportunity at the great-house. 
 
130 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 His aunt, Charity the cook, a broad, 
 humane, tub-shaped woman of maternal 
 quality and practical mind, had accepted 
 the charge resignedly upon the death of her 
 sister and, providentially, by the same 
 bereavement through which she lamented 
 that Levi had "fallen to her to raise," the 
 mistress felt that he had also "fallen to her" 
 to train. 
 
 Thus it was that in her desire to establish 
 personal relations with the child, she began 
 early to make a small allowance to him for 
 services even so nominal as filling the cook s 
 chip-basket and keeping the dogs out of the 
 kitchen or, rather, constantly driving them 
 out. 
 
 That her care did not extend to regula 
 tion of his toilet was partly an expression 
 of the laxity of the time and place in such 
 matters, and partly through a fine sense 
 of the pictorial in life. There was scarcely 
 a week when her kodak did not hold one or 
 
Filling the cook s chip-basket 
 
The Hair of the Dog 133 
 
 two films consecrate to Levi, the butler, in 
 some novel effect of a fresh combination. 
 But beyond a general insistence upon clean 
 liness with a strict rule of three-times-a-day 
 for the roller-towel and the Saturday night 
 tubbing, she preferred not to go. 
 
 She hoped to instill the saving principle 
 that here, as in higher life, the class-line 
 might almost be said to be drawn with soap, 
 and that the small butler took readily to 
 this potent factor in the higher civilization 
 is well attested in his weakness for high- 
 class soap. So is sometimes a lofty aim 
 perverted. 
 
 The little lady of the manse, a dainty 
 creature who appeared to take life easily 
 and not to wrinkle her fair brow with vexed 
 problems of conduct, had yet evolved a few 
 fundamental principles from her fluffy 
 round head which was much steadier than 
 some of its piquant coiffures would have led 
 one to suspect. She had always encouraged 
 
134 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 the boy to save his wages. She made him 
 keep clean and she hoped in time to make 
 him honest. She would have preferred to 
 begin with honesty, but abstractions may 
 not be doled out as rations. 
 
 She had taught him a little catechism, and 
 as he had twice been through the First 
 Reader in the plantation school, she easily 
 helped him to memorize certain brief por 
 tions of scripture, and in this, he proved 
 unusually apt. 
 
 Much of the Sermon on the Mount he 
 could repeat glibly enough, and he was never 
 so happy as when holding forth in copious 
 quotation, to any chance audience, in the 
 stilted preaching voice of the plantation. 
 One rounded period after another would fall 
 from his lips so that many of the other plan 
 tation children soon had much of it, cor 
 rupted somewhat in transmission, at their 
 tongue s ends. 
 
 As illustrating his ready wit, on one occa- 
 
The Hair of the Dog 135 
 
 sion when his mistress had reproved him 
 for lying, the little fellow set his face quiz 
 zically while he replied: 
 
 "No, ma am! I ain t lyin . I does see 
 ghos es an dat ain t all. When I gits 
 good an pyore in heart, I looks to see 
 Gord! An I got scripture for it, too !" 
 
 What could she say she who had taken 
 such delight in drumming into his mind, 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God"? 
 
 Instead of answering in kind, she thought 
 best to look at her watch and to remark 
 that it was time to be splitting kindling for 
 the evening fires, and for a long while after 
 this she found herself avoiding the subject, 
 so that the boy, left more to himself and his 
 imagination, gathered fresh zeal. His won 
 der-tales grew in color and in fire until it 
 seemed important that something should be 
 done, and soon, for the child. He was 
 manifestly in danger of becoming either a 
 
136 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 confirmed liar or a defenseless victim to 
 superstition, it was hard to tell which. 
 
 While she was casting about in her mind 
 for some new plan of treatment, the mis 
 tress happened one day to be sitting be 
 hind the vines at her window when she 
 suddenly discerned Levi s preaching voice 
 below her in the garden. Rising, she 
 peeped cautiously down to discover him 
 mounted upon one of the wrought-iron 
 benches in the honeysuckle arbor and while 
 about a dozen piccaninnies stood wonder- 
 struck and gaping before him, he gesticu 
 lated wildly while he described the mysterious 
 headless man who came and went, never 
 leaving any footprints in his path. 
 
 "Right onder de slim yaller half moon 
 he stood, an whilst I was lookin , Rover 
 run right th ough im an de cat, she run 
 th ough im an dey nuver fazed im! An 
 den he started to git taller an taller an 
 taller tel he was high as dis!" He stood 
 
The Hair of the Dog 137 
 
 on tiptoe, and at this, he threw up his hands, 
 indicating a figure almost as high as the 
 house. "An drekly he seen me, an he " 
 
 "How could he see you, widout eyes?" 
 It was a daring voice which objected. 
 
 "Ghos es don t haf to have eyes or 
 noses or nothin ! Dey jes has de sperityal 
 power! Dey leaves dey heads in de graves 
 so s to know whar to go back an lay down 
 ag in. An den ag in, once-t in a while, 
 jes de heads rises out o de graves an floats 
 aroun in de dark, same as a jack-o -lan 
 tern. But I don t want no mo quizzifyin 
 talk. I like to know who s noratin dis 
 sermon, me or you?" 
 
 "You is, of co se," leniently agreed the 
 objector. "Go ahead an talk. When he 
 bowed, like you say, wid s no-haid shoul 
 ders, what did he say?" 
 
 " What did he say? Who say say ? 
 He nuver said nothin jes bowed back an 
 fo th an vanige into smoke. Ef he d spoke, 
 
138 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 I d look to die, sho. Bless Gord, de no- 
 haid ghos ain t nuver spoke not jit. 
 Time he speaks, I 11 look to pass on an* 
 perpare for jedgmint!" 
 
 Here was an idea. 
 
 Preparation for judgment means contri 
 tion repentance and if a speaking ghost 
 could bring about this happy issue 
 
 The mistress withdrew from the window 
 and, dropping in an attitude of meditation 
 upon her canape, she drew some pillows up 
 against her body then rose and lit several 
 of the Japanese punk-sticks and stuck them 
 in a vase beside the couch resumed her 
 place among the pillows drew the afghan 
 up over her slippers threw up her arms 
 and folded them beneath her head and 
 then chuckled at her own deliberate prepa 
 ration for thought. 
 
 "Somehow, I can think and plan better 
 when I know the mosquito-sticks are smok 
 ing," she laughed. "I believe there s some- 
 
The Hair of the Dog 139 
 
 thing in the queer smell of the things a 
 sort of inspirational incense odor." 
 
 And while she watched the narrow eccen 
 tric columns of blue as they threw diaph 
 anous bow-knots and calla lilies into the air 
 and conch-shells of diminishing spirals 
 her face grew pensive and then suddenly gay. 
 
 "I ve got it !" she cried, "I ve got it ! If 
 a speaking ghost is the medicine he needs 
 dear me, what fun! Archie will be per 
 fectly delighted !" 
 
 And reaching over, she hastened to touch 
 the silver call-bell upon her dressing-table. 
 
 "Thank you, butler," she said playfully 
 as Levi promptly answered the summons. 
 "Step up-stairs, please, and say to Mr. 
 Archie that I wish to see him," and as the 
 boy disappeared, she called after him, 
 "Right away, please," for she was a person 
 of swift impulse. 
 
 Archie, her nephew, was a young college 
 fellow, home on a vacation for the holidays, 
 
140 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 and, as she anticipated, he was only too 
 pleased to undertake to impersonate Levi s 
 ghost. 
 
 By connivance of a ten-foot "pope s 
 head" dust-brush, a small green lantern 
 fixed within its hair and no end of gauzy 
 windings, there stalked in the garden among 
 the shrubberies that same night, in the dark 
 hour before moonrise, such a spook as few 
 of us would care to meet on a lonely road. 
 
 The mistress had taken the older servants 
 into her confidence. Marigold, being ad 
 judged unsafe, was sent away on an errand. 
 
 The man of the house, a quiet, acquies 
 cent sort of person, who cared more for his 
 old library than for the cane fields which 
 were his ostensible first interest, had been 
 informed of the plot and invited out to wit 
 ness the play. 
 
 Taking the chair set for him in the 
 screenery of the vines, he dropped his cigar 
 and, laying his hand indulgently over his 
 
The Hair of the Dog 141 
 
 wife s arm, as she stood beside him, he said : 
 "A tempting little escapade, this, for 
 a fellow with two years of college life behind 
 him but be careful, Blessy, dear, that you 
 don t let him scare the piccaninny into fits. 
 The hazing spirit can t always be trusted 
 for moderation. First-rate idea, though 
 first-rate. Similia similibus curantur* you 
 know. I always told you you d come over 
 to homeopathy." 
 
 At this moment the slim figure of Levi 
 darted from the back door below, in the 
 direction of the cherokee hedge, and even 
 the servants who had collected on the 
 kitchen porch, seeing him, ceased their 
 whispering. 
 
 The little fellow was not without fear, 
 as his swift steps indicated, and he had just 
 begun to whistle when there loomed before 
 him the great stalking grayness which, with 
 a noiseless shift, placed itself directly in 
 his path. 
 
142 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 The apparition was very close to him 
 when he saw it and fell back. 
 
 "Who dat?" he gasped, and when the 
 words were out, he was full ten feet away 
 and trembling but he did not turn. 
 
 "Who dat?" he repeated, as the thing 
 advanced, moving a dim, opalescent head 
 forward and back, as it came. 
 
 The situation needed relief, so that it 
 was well when Charity scolded, from the 
 gallery : 
 
 "What de matter wid you, Levi? Why 
 don t you run along an shet dat gate?" 
 
 But the boy was fixedly gazing before 
 him. 
 
 "De ghos ! Aun Charity, de ghos !" His 
 faint voice went out in a shriek. 
 
 "Ghos nothin !" exclaimed the woman. 
 Still, when she said it, she had come down 
 and stood near the boy. 
 
 "Whar any ghos ? I don t see no 
 ghos !" she kept saying, and while she spoke 
 she swept her arm forward, actually brush- 
 
De ghos ! Aim Charity, de ghos 
 
The Hair of the Dog 145 
 
 ing aside the folds of the floating draperies 
 with her fingers. 
 
 This was too much for Levi. It was the 
 finishing touch. 
 
 "Don t see no ghos ? an you techin 
 is skin?" The boy dropped to his knees 
 now, for the gruesome thing had suddenly 
 begun to speak. 
 
 "I come after young liars !" The voice 
 was sepulchral and remote as if made by a 
 cold wind driven between bones. 
 
 Levi tumbled completely over backward, 
 but recovered himself, standing consider 
 ably farther back. But his fascinated 
 gaze did not leave the ghost, and as it 
 began to advance again, he maintained his 
 distance, backing blindly. 
 
 "A young liar. A young LIAR, I 
 say !" and, with a low dart forward, "I say, 
 is this a young liar?" 
 
 "Y-y-y-yassir !" stammered the boy. 
 
 "Yas, sir, what?" 
 
146 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 "Y-y-y-y-yassir ! I say y-yassir!" At 
 each word Levi courtesied lower and lower, 
 backing as he could until the spook was 
 so near that he would have taken to his 
 heels had he dared. When at last he had 
 backed up against the hedge and the loom 
 ing illusion towered over him, he seemed 
 unable to speak, and only his constantly 
 bowing head showed him conscious of terror. 
 
 It was time for Charity to come in again, 
 and she did so with fine skill, saving the 
 poor child from ultimate disaster without 
 breaking the spell. 
 
 "You yo ng rascal!" she shrieked, but 
 he felt her near even while she derided him, 
 "you yo ng rascal, what you doin , workin 
 yo head dat-a-way standin out in de 
 night! Better run on an shet dat gate, 
 befo I whup you!" 
 
 The apparition had moved a pace or two 
 away, making a sort of circuit of the boy, 
 so far as possible, as he backed against the 
 
The Hair of the Dog 147 
 
 cherokee hedge, and, as it turned, Levi fol 
 lowed it with pointing finger. 
 
 "De ghos O Lord, de ghos !" 
 
 And now there came a chorus of pro 
 tests from the servant s gallery a pre 
 arranged feature. 
 
 "Whar any ghos ?" 
 
 "Who see any ghos ?" 
 
 "Stop yo lyin , boy !" 
 
 "no ghos !" 
 
 "Better mek dat chile behave hisself, 
 Charity." 
 
 Things move fast in the ghost country, 
 and even while they looked, the scoffers 
 were impressed when there began to emerge 
 from the dim apex of the THING a column 
 of smoke thin at first and thrown out in 
 spirals then more dense, with an occa 
 sional flash and a faint crackle as of flames 
 kindling and then strong but insidious, a 
 smell as of burning sulphur and, last of 
 all, words again lower, deeper than ever: 
 
148 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 "A tender yo ng liar to broil for the 
 devil s supper. The coals are red A 
 flicker of crimson made good this im 
 pression, "AND THE OLD MAN IS 
 HUNGRY ! Do I see a tender yo ng liar 
 before me?" 
 
 "Y-y-y-yassir !" With a deep bow. 
 
 "You confess, do you? You are a young 
 liar?" 
 
 Another bow only. 
 
 "And are you going to QUIT?" 
 
 Levi turned almost inside out at this, so 
 eager was his assent. 
 
 "One more chance!" The voice was 
 low and vibrant and, for the first time, 
 almost human in a note of relenting. 
 
 The THING began to move away, but 
 before it turned into the thicket it turned 
 once more. 
 
 "Going to quit, are you? Then salute 
 your master!" 
 
 Down on the ground went poor Levi, 
 
The Hair of the Dog 149 
 
 his forehead in the dust, and when he raised 
 himself, there was no one there. But a 
 dull thud, like a muffled explosion from the 
 thicket, followed by several flashes of colored 
 light and a burst of smoke, held him spell 
 bound so that Charity called out, from the 
 upper porch, now: 
 
 "Run along, boy an shet dat gate 
 an stop yo foolishness." 
 
 This seemed for the moment to bring him 
 to himself. Without hesitation he ran to 
 the end of the lane, closed the gate as 
 originally directed, and in a moment was 
 back again, but, instead of joining his com 
 panions in the kitchen, he hurried to the 
 mistress, and without ado made a clean 
 breast of his fault. 
 
 "I done quit lyin , Missy!" he said 
 bravely, short of breath as he was from the 
 ordeal and the run ; "I come to tell you." 
 
 "Then you confess you have lied and 
 you have never seen the ghost?" 
 
150 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 "Not no no-haid ghos , no, ma am! 
 Yas m, I is lied about him an I ain t 
 nuver gwine do it no mo Missy, befo Gord ! 
 Nuver is !" He came a little nearer now, 
 and dropped his voice quite down to the 
 mystery pitch. 
 
 "But I sho is got de sperityal sight, 
 Missy," he whispered, "an I is seen one 
 reel reel ghos 9 to-night! Befo Gord, I 
 is! Don t keer ef Aur. Charity do whup 
 me for it I sho is witnessed de visiom 
 to-night a speakin sperit! He come for 
 me an he on y let me off, caze I promised 
 I would n t nuver tell no mo lies " He 
 even came nearer as he added below his 
 breath : 
 
 "An 9 1 ain t, Missy! So he 9 p me! 99 
 
 And, so far as any one knows, he never 
 broke that earnest, breathless promise. 
 
 When the excitement was well over and 
 the negroes had dispersed, the man of the 
 house remarked, as he lit another cigarj 
 
The Hair of the Dog 151 
 
 "Has it occurred to you, Blessy, that 
 in all this particularly crucial experience 
 the Liar is literally the only person who has 
 spoken the truth? A rather interesting 
 feature, don t you think?" 
 
 The little woman laughed. 
 
 "Yes, you d better believe, I thought of 
 that! And I wondered if you would no 
 tice it. You are a discerning man, dear. 
 That s why I married you. I mean, that s 
 why you married me. But, jesting aside, 
 as to our not speaking the truth in this 
 instance, remember, we were working in the 
 interest of truth, all the same. And besides, 
 for myself, I suppose it is infantile, but I 
 did save myself, technically, by declaring 
 to myself that I really did n t see any ghost 
 which was literally true. And that was all I 
 ever said while everybody else was denying 
 the whole thing, needlessly but, anyway, 
 dear now, don t laugh at me, but really, 
 you know it was medicine. You said your- 
 
152 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 self, it was a case in homeopathy and all 
 your old homeopathic remedies are poison." 
 
 "Bravely argued for a woman of your 
 heft, Blessy ! I accept your apology and 
 really, I hope you have cured your patient. 
 He is a pathetic little scamp and he was 
 pitifully scared." 
 
 It may have been a fortnight after this 
 when the boy, Levi, was hurrying through 
 the house one evening that the mistress 
 called him to her side. 
 
 "Come here, Leviathan," she said, "I 
 have something to say to you." 
 
 His full name thus pronounced was 
 always sufficient guaranty of a serious situa 
 tion, and yet, so determined was the mis 
 tress to impress the boy that she looked 
 keenly into his shifting eyes as she repeated, 
 very slowly : 
 
 " something very serious. And don t 
 try to answer too quickly. Think well 
 before you speak. 
 
The Hair of the Dog 153 
 
 "Do you know anything about a 
 little cake of sweet chocolate which I 
 left here an hour ago? Sh! Slowly, 
 now! Where is it?" 
 
 For just a single minute the eyes of the 
 boy traversed space. Then they sought 
 hers and his lip trembled. 
 
 With a pathetic movement, so infantile 
 as to invite her tears, almost, he raised his 
 bird-like hands and placed one over the 
 other, upon the loose waistcoat which cov 
 ered his stomach, and from the dry inef 
 fectual motion of his lips, she knew that 
 the word which he vainly summoned was 
 "Here !" 
 
 He was only a little child, and mother 
 less. The playful mistress was all woman 
 and childless. Without a word further, she 
 rose and noiselessly closed the door so that 
 she might talk with him, differently. It was 
 her own dainty cambric handkerchief which 
 wiped his tears away when the break came; 
 
154 The Hair of the Dog 
 
 and when he "showed up" in the kitchen a 
 half hour later he looked as if his face had 
 been freshly washed, and the cook declared 
 that he smelt like an apothecary shop, 
 which in this case meant that the wet place 
 on his checked shirt-front was of real co 
 logne ; and while he was dividing a big cake 
 of sweet chocolate among his companions, he 
 declared that whenever he felt the need of 
 chocolate or cologne or anything after 
 this, all he had to do was to "walk up like a 
 man and ask for it." 
 
 And when they had exclaimed to his 
 satisfaction he added: 
 
 " an maybe not git it. But a man 
 don t mind dat." 
 
THANKSGIVING ON 
 CRAWFISH BAYOU 
 
THANKSGIVING ON 
 CRAWFISH BAYOU 
 
 CACIA BAYOU," "Bayou des 
 Roses," "Mud Bayou," "Crawfish 
 Bayou," "Bayou des Crocodiles," "Ague 
 Bayou" such were some of the pictorial 
 names which distinguished a stream so nar 
 row in some of its many turnings, and so 
 shallow in all but a few remote scare-holes 
 of supposed danger, that Black Jane s little 
 pickaninnies played prisoner s base and last 
 tag on both sides of it at once, stepping 
 without fear or diminished speed from one 
 bank to the other. 
 
 Jane, whose solitary cabin was the only 
 human habitation realizable in its vicinity, 
 
 157 
 
158 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 had herself perhaps as many names as the 
 meager stream beside which she was rearing 
 her numerous progeny. 
 
 She was about equally well known as 
 "Shouting Jane," or "Jane Free," or "Un- 
 believin Jane," or Jane Randolph the 
 last being that of her recent owners 
 not to mention several others which it 
 seems hardly fair to repeat after so long 
 a time when she may not put in her defense. 
 
 Most of these appellations are so freely 
 descriptive as to need no explanation, and 
 if there seems to be some incongruity 
 among them, as, for instance, between "un 
 believing" and "shouting" as applied to the 
 same woman, it is only because of a limited 
 knowledge of the woman and the circum 
 stances. 
 
 Jane was typical of a somewhat excep 
 tional class, being the daughter of a Congo 
 negress, Mano by name, who had been a 
 princess in her own country, and who had 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 159 
 
 brought into her slave life the strong tradi 
 tions of her caste. 
 
 From the infancy of her American-born 
 daughter she had instilled into her a resent 
 ment of slavery, and even before there was 
 any hint of the war, or of possible emanci 
 pation, she had had the unprecedented 
 temerity to name her child Jane Free. 
 
 Although she had acquired her Congo- 
 English in terms of Christianity and hope, 
 Mano remained at her heart an African 
 and a pagan. She called herself in her 
 own tongue by the word that meant a cap 
 tive, never a slave. The Christian s God 
 was the God of the white man. He did 
 not know her, or, if He did, He was not a 
 God of love or even of justice. Or, if this 
 were not so, then He was impotent and no 
 God at all. 
 
 As she was of necessity a woman of rela 
 tions and clung to her kind, it became 
 Mano s life habit to follow the throng to 
 
1 60 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 worship, but she had ever sat among her 
 people as one apart sullen and protest 
 ing. 
 
 Her one concession to the religion of her 
 environment was the baptism of her child, 
 Jane, but those who knew her best said that 
 she had done so merely for the bravado of 
 having the name called out before the con 
 gregation, "Jane Free." Of course, in the 
 circumstance, such an act was almost crim 
 inal in its suggestion, but when arraigned 
 for it, Mano s urbane and clever defense was 
 "I named my chile Jane Free jes caze I 
 tooken a notion to de name. She name Jane 
 Free-Randolph, an ef de Randolphs ain t 
 free, I lak to know who is." 
 
 This was a stroke of genius this quick 
 vocal hyphenation of the name by which 
 she thrust the offensive word forward 
 for this one time only into a connection 
 which transformed it into a compliment to 
 her master s people. 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 161 
 
 In giving her child the name of Randolph 
 she was merely endowing her maternally, 
 for she had herself always been called Mano 
 Randolph, and preferred to perpetuate this 
 connection to damning her offspring with 
 the doubtful surname of an incidental, no- 
 account father-at-large. 
 
 It would seem from this, as well as from 
 several other idiosyncracies, that the proud 
 Congo woman, Mano, had some of the 
 foibles occasionally exhibited by others of 
 royal blood. 
 
 Such had been the mother of shouting, 
 unbelieving Jane Free, of Bayou Crapaud. 
 This, by the way, was another of the 
 bayou s names, one or another of which was 
 always peculiarly fitting, according to the 
 season or the speaker s mood. 
 
 Jane had grown up about her mother s 
 skirts, and she had been taught to think a 
 good deal of her middle name. She believed 
 that it wa& retrospectively far-reaching and 
 
1 62 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 honorable, but that it might have any pros 
 pective suggestion was as far from her mind 
 as it had been from her mother s, until 
 the sudden turn of events which reversed the 
 vista for her, making her in fact a free 
 woman in 1863. 
 
 At that time, Jane was a young mother 
 with three children of as many distinct com 
 plexions, all answering to the proud old 
 name of Randolph, with exactly as little 
 and as much right to the same as their 
 mother. 
 
 With such antecedents, and reared in such 
 a setting, it is not surprising that Jane had 
 grown up charged to the danger point with 
 the spirit of revolt. Her mother, naturally 
 endowed as a woman of faculty, had worked 
 hard chiefly because she did not want any 
 one to bid her work. A princess might 
 please to labor with her hands, but she 
 could not consistently take orders. 
 
 Jane, as is sometimes the case with the 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 1 63 
 
 children of great-spirited women, inherited 
 her mother s fire without her faculty. She, 
 too, wielded the hoe or bent over her tubs- to 
 evade the command, but her thinner wrists 
 worked with lesser skill, and a slighter 
 mentality held the curb of her dangerous 
 spirit. 
 
 She had kept true to her mother s re 
 ligious teachings, or, rather, to her irrelig 
 ious attitude, and although she had grown 
 up in the atmosphere of an emotional Chris 
 tianity which seemed to answer all the tragic 
 needs of her race; although she had been 
 many times prayed over, and exhorted with 
 tears and oratory to come into the fold, 
 and her own wild nature had been more 
 than once on the point of ignition, she had 
 never, up to the time of the Emancipation, 
 made any response. She had not even been 
 enrolled as a "seeker," and when dragged 
 to the mourners bench by those who yearned 
 for her soul s salvation, she had always 
 
1 64 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 risen as she had knelt, a cold, resisting, 
 free-born slave woman rebellious and "sin 
 ful." 
 
 On a certain memorable day, however 
 a day which she would never forget when 
 the gong sounded at eleven in the morning 
 instead of at noon, and all the negroes knew 
 it to be freedom s signal, and many at the 
 first sound fell upon their knees, Jane, sit 
 ting in their midst, suddenly sprang to her 
 feet she had not believed that the bell 
 would ring until she heard it and seizing 
 one after another of her little children, she 
 lifted them as high as she could reach to 
 ward heaven and, with streaming eyes, 
 shouted "Glory !" and "Freedom !" until she 
 was hoarse. 
 
 When she had set the children down, she 
 sprang upon a hencoop, leapt with a bound 
 to the top of an inverted sugar-cask, and 
 for a quarter of an hour held her audience 
 spellbound. God had heard the prayers of 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 165 
 
 her people the prayers of those who had 
 prayed and the dumb heart-throbs of such 
 as had refused to pray. Here, at last, was 
 an answer to the protest of her mother s 
 life, and she, her daughter, had been slow 
 and impatient and had not known how to 
 believe and to wait. So she accused her 
 self. This was surely conversion. 
 
 It was a dramatic performance through 
 out, and many of the old Christians, seeing 
 Jane finally rejoicing, apparently in faith, 
 a saved soul, began to shout with her, and 
 "Freedom Day" on Bois d Arc Plantation 
 was virtually converted into a religious re 
 vival through the inspiring leadership of 
 "Unbelieving Jane." 
 
 Many of those who had knelt had burst 
 into tears at the first signal, a few, as she, 
 overcome with a realization of its portentous 
 meaning, and others trembling in fear and 
 dread, like little children deserted in an un 
 known wilderness. 
 
 10 
 
166 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 Many were hopeful, some even jubilant, 
 but Jane alone of all the heart-stirred 
 throng was absolutely sure as to her future 
 her mother, unfortunately, had died be 
 fore the Great Day and when a few weeks 
 later she gathered her little ones together 
 and started out into the world, freely fol 
 lowing her caprice alone, she vaguely felt 
 that it was only a question of time when she 
 should come into her own, which is to say 
 into a prestige befitting her traditional sta 
 tion in the new social order of her freed 
 people. 
 
 She was not entirely certain, but she felt 
 tolerably sure that she and her friends 
 would soon have white servants, not that 
 she cared about this particularly, but if all 
 of her color were to be promoted, others 
 would have to serve, of course. And turn 
 about was only fair play. Many of the 
 negroes believed this at the time of the 
 emancipation. 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 1 67 
 
 If it were true, so far as she was con 
 cerned, Jane s chief regret in leaving home 
 now was the chance of missing the triumph 
 of being waited upon by a certain vexatious 
 old lady, a dependent relative of her mas 
 ter s family, who had been exacting of her 
 in her youth. If she could just live to have 
 this troublesome side-curled lady, Miss 
 Melanie Montgomery, hand her, Jane Free, 
 a cup of tea on a tray, presenting it with 
 the traditional dipping courtesy of the slave 
 well, it would have done her good. She 
 did n t care especially about this, and yet 
 she cared enough to think out the picture 
 and to smile over it. 
 
 Of course, Jane s remote objective point 
 was the city of the White House the 
 Mecca of the gilded dome even though she 
 could aspire to reach it only by slow stages, 
 but there were several well-known and ac 
 cessible sub-stations en route for the dis 
 bursement of favors. 
 
1 68 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 On the day when, holding one babe in her 
 arms and with a toddler clinging to her skirts 
 on either side, she made known her wants 
 at the military headquarters in New Or 
 leans, expecting, she scarcely knew what, 
 as an initial favor, it had never occurred to 
 her to doubt that the paternal decree which 
 had made her free, the heaven-inspired proc 
 lamation of "Father Abraham," would in 
 sure her welcome as a daughter in Israel. 
 She and those of her household would soon 
 be invited to walk in and enjoy one of the 
 many mansions in her Father s house the 
 mansions in contemplation of which she had 
 so often heard her people shout. 
 
 Such was the confusion of her mind 
 such the composite picture made up of frag 
 mentary precepts gathered from religious 
 and political teachers fragments which had 
 fallen upon the sensitive plate of her sus 
 ceptible and irrational mind in its most im 
 pressible period and which had lain dor- 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 1 69 
 
 mant in her subconsciousness until touched 
 into life by the strong currents of an over 
 charged atmosphere. 
 
 Never was happier coincidence than that 
 which gave to the savior of a superstitious 
 and worshipful people the name of Judah s 
 patriarch, Abraham Abraham, who had 
 held an honored place in the salvation 
 scheme of an oppressed and waiting people 
 through all the ages. Imagine Lincoln with 
 a name like Frank or Harold or Mortimer, 
 or Chauncey ! 
 
 One who knows the reverence of the 
 African s mind, his sensitiveness to romance, 
 to poetry, to association and to worship, 
 can realize that in his apotheosis of "Father 
 Abraham" he was not only honoring the re 
 deemer of his race but fulfilling the law 
 and the prophets. 
 
 Of course, there could be nothing but dis 
 appointment and chagrin for such as poor 
 Jane Free, and in the press and the stress 
 
170 Thanksgiving on Craw fish Bayou 
 
 and the rush and the crush of the thousands 
 who had come as she, the only privilege she 
 enjoyed as a "daughter of the kingdom" 
 which is to say, the republic was that of 
 standing in line with the pitiful row of "con 
 traband" negroes who drew their daily 
 rations from a government which for the 
 time was only thus far even thus meagerly 
 and impersonally paternal. 
 
 Jane had always been a law unto her 
 self, free by name and nature, wilful and 
 loving by turns, but through all more con 
 stantly maternal than anything else. Her 
 family grew as it had begun. When there 
 were six, several years after the war, in 
 cidentally two were of the same blood. 
 They were twins. 
 
 But whether her ducklings were ugly or 
 whether they developed into swans, they 
 were her own, flesh of her flesh, and as one- 
 parent children sometimes are to the mothers 
 who dare admit them at all into the citadel 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 171 
 
 of love, they were dearer than life or heaven 
 to Jane s poor infidel heart. 
 
 Of course, she had long since repudi 
 ated her one act of allegiance to the Chris 
 tian God, as soon, as she rather shockingly 
 put it, as she had discovered that He had 
 fooled her fooled her and made her make 
 a show of herself on Freedom Day called 
 her out by a false proclamation away from 
 home and friends and protection, telling her 
 that she was free and then turning Tier loose. 
 
 Yes, God had fooled her. In the old 
 days she had been called a slave, but the 
 gifts of life had come free. Now she was 
 written down free, and the great and grow 
 ing responsibilities of her new condition en 
 slaved her hopelessly. The number of her 
 children or their needs, even their ailments, 
 these had been the master s care in the old 
 free slave days. 
 
 There was suffering, and, sad to say, there 
 was sometimes even want in the poor cabin 
 
1 72 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 on the tattered edge of the raggedest suburb 
 of the swamp-encircled town to which she 
 had been lured by false promises to enjoy 
 her enslaved freedom. Yes, surely God had 
 fooled her. 
 
 Of course there were times when she had 
 had temporary assistance from one or an 
 other during the glamour periods of her 
 several romances, but taking even these in 
 the aggregate, they had been decidedly more 
 of a tax than otherwise. 
 
 But Jane was no more an idler than she 
 had been in the old slave times. She had 
 always been a healthy woman, albeit she was 
 so slender she looked as if a sudden breeze 
 might waft her away. But her affiliations 
 were mainly earthward, and from the absurd 
 little topknot, composed chiefly of calico 
 strings,which decked her proud little head, 
 to the sole of her nimble foot a sole whose 
 hollow literally "made a hole in the ground" 
 Jane was thoroughly alert. Indeed, it was 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 173 
 
 her boast that when she was well, all she 
 asked was "a row o tubs, a good bleachin - 
 plot o grass, a strong clo es-line, an a 
 good-lookin man to stari* Alongside de tubs, 
 and she would n t ax nobody no odds." 
 When the spur of romance failed, she fell 
 back upon her temper as a propelling power. 
 
 Jane had had more than one chance to 
 marry, even in these latter days and in the 
 face of the four, or the five, and even of the 
 six toddling detractors of her eligibility, but 
 her love of freedom was too all-embracing to 
 allow her to consider such a thing. 
 
 It is possible that in a weak moment she 
 might have consented to commit herself to 
 life-companionship with some particular 
 man but for what she was pleased to call 
 "mortgaging" her children, which she had 
 more than once declared she would never do. 
 Indeed, on one memorable occasion, seeing a 
 companion wrangling with an ex-husband 
 over the disputed custody of a child, Jane 
 
1 74 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 was heard to exclaim: "What I tol yer? 
 Ain t I warned yer ag in marryin ? I tell 
 yer, sister, I would n t marry no man alive. 
 No, honey. My chillen is mine! Dey ain t 
 no man dat dast lay a han on one o* em! 
 Yas, Lord, an I gwine stay a ole maid an 
 tek keer o my chillen." And take care of 
 them she did, as well as she knew how. 
 
 For the first few years of her experi 
 mental freedom she made a fair living, tak 
 ing it all around, and allowing for the times 
 when she had to lie by when ration-days 
 were resumed, and not laying too much 
 stress upon the few hungry periods which 
 were really some customer s fault for not 
 paying promptly, or for being altogether 
 too particular and withdrawing his patron 
 age. 
 
 Jane s mother had been a great beauty 
 in her day, black, polished, erect and com 
 manding, but Jane, who seemed an expres 
 sion of a single impulse rather than a repro- 
 
Thanksgiving on Craw fish Bayou 175 
 
 duction of the woman in her integrity, had 
 never been even a pretty woman, exactly. 
 But she was better than pretty in her un 
 failing picturesqueness, and she bore herself 
 with so piquant an air that no man of her class 
 who ever saw her failed to look at her twice, 
 and to such as came at all under the spell of 
 her volatile and magnetic personality she 
 was charming to a dangerous degree. 
 
 No mocking-bird that ever tilted on a 
 bough above her head and sang his freedom- 
 song was more lithe and graceful than little 
 black Jane Free, none more sweet-voiced 
 than she when she essayed to answer him 
 with her own. 
 
 She often sang at her tubs. sang out 
 whatever was in her heart, just letting it 
 come as it would in a sort of lawless vi 
 bratory fashion, crooning or shouting 
 according to her mood, and sometimes 
 scarcely audibly intoning her self-commun- 
 ings in a voice so low that when the wind 
 
176 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 was blowing one would scarcely have known 
 whether it were she or the stirring of the 
 leaves but for the rhythm which marked 
 every movement of her sinewy body. 
 
 Indeed, when she willed it, Jane was a 
 sort of wanton mocking-bird herself, and in 
 her love-making periods, when it was her 
 pleasure to give herself full expression, she 
 often mockingly sang the religious hymns of 
 her people, throwing her slim body with 
 maddening abandon, shamming ecstasy or 
 despair for the delectation of her adorer. 
 One of her most telling performances of this 
 sort was her rendering of the popular 
 washerwoman s hymn of the plantation while 
 she wrung out her clothes or stood atiptoe 
 hanging them on the line. 
 
 " Gord walked in de gyarden in de cool o de day." 
 
 Strongly rhythmic, it lent itself equally to 
 the wash-board s measure or to simple emo 
 tional expression. It was the song with 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 177 
 
 which she frequently began her work about 
 mid-morning of a summer s Monday, the 
 early hours being employed in collecting 
 her bundles and getting ready. 
 
 Somehow, it seemed to have working-force 
 in its measure while the pictorial first line 
 was tranquilizing and pleasant. 
 
 So, with the first rub, she would start in : 
 
 "Gord walked in de gyarden in de cool o de day 
 
 Oh, Lord, whar kin dat gyarden be ? 
 I d turn my weary foots dat way 
 An pray Thee cool de day for me ! " 
 
 And here, if the day were particularly 
 warm, she would stop and mop off her face 
 while she cried : 
 
 " Yas, Lord, cool de day, sho ! " 
 
 when, nothing daunted, she would take up 
 the measure and go along with the refrain : 
 
 "Lord, Lord, walkin in de gyarden 
 
 Open de gate to me ! 
 I d nuver be afeard o de flamin* sword 
 Ef I could walk wi Thee ! 
 
178 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 " Gord walked in de gyarden in de cool o de day 
 
 He sa ntered mongs de shrubbery, 
 He nuver turned aroun to look dat way, 
 I wush t He d watched dat apple-tree ! 
 
 Lord, Lord, walkin in de gyarden 
 
 Ev- ry-body knows 
 Dat sins begins wid needles an pins 
 An de scan lous need o clo es ! 
 
 " Gord walked in de gyarden in de cool o de day 
 
 My bleachin -plot ain t fitt n for Thee, 
 But dat Bible gyarden s so far away, 
 So, Lord, come bless my fiel for me ! 
 
 Lord, Lord, come into my gyarden, 
 
 Ev- ry-body knows 
 
 How Eve s mistake when she listened to de snake 
 Still keeps me washin clo es ! 
 
 ** Gord walked in de gyarden in de cool o de day 
 
 Ef I could stand an see Him pass 
 Wid de eye o faith, as de Scripture saith, 
 I d shout heah on my bleachin -grass ! 
 Lord, Lord, my little gyarden 
 
 Ain t no place for Thee, 
 But come an shine wid a light divine 
 An fix my faith for me ! 
 
 ** Glo-ry, glory, hallelujah ! 
 Peter, James an John ! 
 Behol de light an de raiment white ! 
 Yo visiom s passin on ! " 
 
 As she approached the climax, the note 
 of mockery in her voice would die out, and 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 179 
 
 at the last, the "Glory !" stanza, which gen 
 erally found her out in the clearing, where, 
 with arms upraised, she would lift her face 
 to the sky, her rapt expression, as she 
 shouted, "Behol de light an de raiment 
 white!" would have deceived even the elect 
 themselves. 
 
 And, sometimes, she would even gain a 
 new effect by repetition of this last refrain 
 in a tremulous lower pitch when, falling 
 upon the ground, as if dazed by the hea 
 venly vision, she would feign unconscious 
 ness, lying as one dead. 
 
 Only this last, however, when a devoted 
 admirer happened to be at hand to come and 
 lift her. Once, lying thus upon the grass, 
 she began suddenly to chuckle : 
 
 "Lord, I sho is one devil I sho is! I 
 wonder what I d do, ef I was to view a 
 heavenly visiom, sho nough! Come, pick 
 me up, man an lemme git dem earthly 
 raiments good an white!" And, with va- 
 
180 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 grant arms loosely about her waist, she 
 sauntered back to the tubs. 
 
 And then, there was the telling hymn: 
 "Oh, my soul, you mus be walkin in yo 
 sleep!" which she loved to sing a religious 
 hymn to which she recklessly added pagan 
 lines of her own making. Also, for co 
 quetry, and on occasions when the same 
 would not be wasted, she irresistibly sang 
 the quaint barn-yard j ingle : 
 
 "Oh, Sister Goose is gray 
 
 An Mister Gander s white, 
 Jes so his wife, dey say, 
 Can find ira, day or night, 
 For many a gander 
 Is prone to wander 
 An scarcely one dat don t meander ! " 
 
 And then she would add, with a toss of her 
 little high head : 
 
 "Better come on heah, Brer Gander, an 
 meander wid me whilst I empty dis heavy 
 tub !" And the honored guest, taken in the 
 height of a glamour season, would spring 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 181 
 
 to his feet and lend a hand, even holding his 
 fraction of a hat in his hand, with the easy 
 grace of a knight of old. 
 
 But there were many days when only 
 semi-articulate crooning at the tubs fitted 
 into nature s small noises of mating things, 
 falling in with the droning of bees and the 
 vibrant soughing of the trees above the 
 soughing of stalwart limbs, heavy with 
 sweets of flower which sometimes sent a dam 
 aging shower of yellow pollen over a white 
 garment, lifted for inspection. But even 
 the washer s staccato protests and the swish 
 of the suds as she dipped it again, failed of 
 discord as they fell in with the harsh Locust- 
 notes the jarring notes which do not jar to 
 him whose ears are attuned to nature s whole 
 choir. 
 
 Perhaps it was thus that Jane found her 
 standard of morality her code, if you will. 
 Jane was precisely as moral as the corn 
 stalk which nodded approval to her, over the 
 
 11 
 
1 82 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 rail fence the corn-stalk, planted willy- 
 nilly in God s ground feet in earth 
 blessed by the sun and caressed by the dew 
 the heaven-seeking stalk, fashioned for 
 praise rather than prayer the stalk whose 
 whole creed is beneficent compliance the 
 stalk which, warm with the life-fluid, and 
 true to nature s traditions, lightly invites a 
 golden grain to place of equal honor in its 
 rows of white and knows not the meaning 
 of shame. Or of sin ! 
 
 She was exactly as moral as the cante- 
 loupe vine from which she cut the too- 
 smooth melons for her variously colored 
 children the canteloupe which, she ex 
 plained, was "too yaller becaze it made too 
 free wid de punkin-vines." 
 
 She was as moral, quite, as the roses, 
 perhaps and thought about it as little as 
 they. 
 
 When she finally took her brood out to 
 the old deserted cabin on Crawfish Bayou, 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 183 
 
 Jane must have realized that she was pass 
 ing beyond the boundary of possible success, 
 but there was no alternative. Her rent had 
 long been unpaid where she was, and to have 
 her poor belongings sold by the sheriff 
 would have meant immediate disaster. 
 
 There would have been no use repining 
 over the inevitable, anyway, but it was a 
 singing-time with Jane, and not even threat 
 ened calamity had power to depress her 
 while a certain stalwart yellow Adonis, an 
 swering to the proud name of Henry Clay, 
 was wearing out his elbows on her wash- 
 bench. 
 
 Henry really helped with the moving 
 which is to say, he took Jane s youngest two 
 and held them beside him on the front seat 
 of the wagon heaped with her things it is 
 hardly fair to refer to them as furniture 
 while Jane and the older children followed 
 afoot. 
 
 Henry was a gentle-voiced fellow, some- 
 
1 84 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 what younger than Jane, with no energy to 
 speak of beyond that employed in devotion, 
 and with so slight a sense of humor that 
 when he had stood beside her tubs for 
 scarcely a fortnight he blandly and without 
 a smile began to answer to the endearing 
 and interpretative title of "daddy" to Jane s 
 entire brood, with whom his quickly winning 
 personality had made him an instant fa 
 vorite. 
 
 There would be no rent to pay in this 
 last retreat. Indeed, there was not so much 
 as a landlord in evidence, and the dilapi 
 dated roof which by and by Jane repaired 
 with her own hands had long ago been given 
 over to Nature. Nor had Nature been for 
 getful of her invitation. Upon the soft gray 
 of the time-stained roof she had set beautiful 
 tufts of polypodium, which sparkled like 
 emerald against and through the festoons of 
 Spanish moss which depended from a dying 
 oak whose gaunt arms, first raised as in 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 185 
 
 benediction, had come to typify mortality. 
 
 Upon the shanty s inner walls were rich 
 draperies of brocade in molds of red and 
 yellow and green, and even purple, and be 
 neath its drooping eaves were wrens nests, 
 and the snug adobe buildings of the mud- 
 dauber wasp, and pendent brown paper 
 homes of the yellow hornet. A few craw 
 fish chimneys reared their tops in one corner 
 of the hut where the plank floor had rotted 
 away, but without the door, even crowding 
 to its very threshold, there were clusters of 
 little palms palmettos even more bris 
 tling and alert than those which are seen 
 worshiping in metropolitan cathedrals. 
 
 It was late in August when Jane took pos 
 session, and the south end of the hut was a 
 solid mass of overlapping greenery from 
 which the delighted children immediately be 
 gan to gather drinking-gourds with eccen 
 tric handles, which their "daddy" showed 
 them how to cut and to polish for use. 
 
186 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 It was a picture of luxuriance and 
 bounty, but when Jane first stood within the 
 door and, resting her thin hands upon the 
 sills, looked around her, she saw only bar 
 renness and want. 
 
 The bayou, rank with summer growths, 
 flowed sluggishly before the door. This im 
 mediately became the family market-place, 
 and here any morning a row of little picka 
 ninnies might have beeji seen fishing for 
 crawfish with twine string and scoop-net. 
 At first the bait question seemed a difficulty, 
 but it was soon found that fishing with bits 
 of fresh beef for even so long as half a day, 
 when the weather was not too warm, did not 
 palpably impair their quality for second 
 duty in the stew, which was the family s fa 
 vorite luxury. 
 
 It soon became the rule that whoever lost 
 his bait in the bayou must content himself 
 with gravy for dinner gravy, with, of 
 course, his share of the crawfish. 
 
Fishing for the day s needs 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 189 
 
 Needless to say, matters grew worse. 
 Henry really did show a willingness to work, 
 but his strong and shapely hands were so 
 distinctly decorative that it is easy to believe 
 that they were best fulfilling their design 
 when they were rearranging Jane s topknot 
 or picking a thorn from her foot, this last 
 act being somewhat misleading figuratively, 
 perhaps, although taken from the life. 
 
 Not that Henry really did not help, in 
 his own way. Indeed, the scoop-net with 
 which the children landed their crawfish was 
 the work of his nimble fingers, and when 
 Jane climbed up and mended the roof, did 
 he not sit faithfully within and call to her, 
 indicating the crevices through which he 
 saw the sky, and even suggesting several 
 improvements over her own methods of lap 
 ping the shingles ? Indeed, he told the chil 
 dren that he would have gone up and tacked 
 on the shingles himself but for the fact that 
 his "Junesey" was sech a particular lady 
 
190 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 and so hard to please that he knew he could 
 never suit her. 
 
 There were special services that Henry 
 performed, however, without reserve or 
 question. For one thing, he uncomplain 
 ingly carried home the wash for his ladye 
 and collected her money, which he spent 
 quite paternally for the benefit of the entire 
 family. And, indeed, he must have come 
 into the breach as provider, occasionally, 
 for certainly the few chickens that some 
 times roosted in a corner of the sleeping- 
 room, laid an occasional egg on the bed, and 
 picked up a precarious living at large, must 
 have been brought in by his hand, for they 
 generally appeared after one of his absences 
 between setting and rising suns "in the dark 
 o the moon," the time when it is proverbi 
 ally good luck to move poultry. 
 
 But Henry s special talents after his 
 ingratiatory gifts, of course were those of 
 the huntsman and the fisher. The opportu- 
 I 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 191 
 
 nities to indulge the first were enough to 
 tempt him, but unfortunately he had neither 
 gun nor dog, but he did add to the family 
 pot once in a while with his rod and line. 
 The only trouble about his fishing was that 
 the places where perch and saccolet were 
 known to bite were so far from his beloved 
 that he could rarely make up his mind to 
 go: he was a poor pedestrian, and when he 
 did go, she always idealized his self-sacrifice 
 and expressed the same by laying the best 
 of his catch upon his plate. 
 
 Since his connection with her household 
 had not arrested the decline in its fortunes 
 at the critical moment when a strong hand 
 might have saved the situation, it is not 
 likely that it would have stayed the hand of 
 misfortune even had it continued. 
 
 But poor Henry came to a sudden and 
 untimely end in Jane s service. One day he 
 went out with hook and line, carrying the 
 best of the family provisions done up in a 
 
192 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 tin pail for his dinner, and he did not come 
 back. 
 
 The last Jane ever* saw of him was at the 
 turn of the bayou where it led through the 
 wood. Here he had stopped and, looking 
 back, doffed his fragment of a hat to his 
 lady-love and suddenly disappeared in the 
 oak-grove. For a day or two, seeing that 
 he did not return, and having no reason to 
 suspect disaster, Jane was a wee bit distrust 
 ful of her mate, and she crooned a pathetic 
 wavering plaint down in her throat a 
 plaint in which she told her tubs that she 
 had "lost heart," and it was not until poor 
 Henry s body was found, half-sunken in a 
 pool beside a basket of dead fish, that she 
 recovered her heart, only to declare it 
 broken. 
 
 In his eagerness to secure her favorite 
 fish as well as his own he had ventured 
 alone into the marshes where the quicksands 
 were. Of course, if he had been a native of 
 
Thanksgiving on Craw fish Bayou 193 
 
 the place he would have known better, but 
 how could a "Tuckapaw nigger" know the 
 hidden dangers of innocent-faced little 
 Bayou Crapaud? 
 
 Henry s funeral was a great event in col 
 ored circles, even beyond the bayou cabin 
 which it brought into sudden prominence, 
 for Henry had been a chief exhorter in 
 Mount Zion chapel and an officer in its 
 "Society for the Promotion of Widows and 
 Orphans," an organization whose chief and 
 obvious provision was for funerals. 
 
 It was a proud moment for the children 
 when the plumed hearse stood before the 
 cabin door and when they were all helped 
 into the single carriage which followed it 
 the society s accommodation for its "fam 
 ilies of the diseased" and they moved 
 away at the head of a procession of men 
 with badges and women in capes and poke- 
 bonnets, all keeping step to the music of a 
 brass-band. 
 
194 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 Indeed, it was a proud moment for poor 
 Jane also, even in her bereavement for 
 she was really sorely bereft in this sudden 
 clipping of her romance in its full flower. It 
 was the only one of her life that had suf 
 fered no diminution, the others having all 
 gone out by a gradual diminuendo scale. 
 
 How much of life s glamour might be con 
 served if fate always knew just when to 
 bring in the funerals ! Perhaps the overdue 
 death is responsible for more of its hopeless 
 sorrows than the universally lamented "un 
 timely removals"? 
 
 For the rest of her days Jane firmly be 
 lieved that in Henry Clay she had realized 
 the ideal love of her life. 
 
 Even though it was lonely and forlorn 
 enough in the little crowded cabin after the 
 funeral, Jane s life was palpably enriched 
 in the experience. In the first place first 
 to her in the freshness of her sorrow she 
 had found in it the handclasp of sympathy. 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 195 
 
 The funeral oration, delivered at the open 
 grave, had dignified her with a prerogative 
 of grief. Even the children, dressed in 
 scraps of mourning contributed for the oc 
 casion by the society, had gotten their 
 quota of sympathy in copious allusions 
 to their "orphaned" condition. Indeed, 
 through this accentuation of the bond, it 
 happened that, paradoxically, it was the 
 only transient head of the family who had 
 left no representative within it, who was 
 revered as "daddy" to the whole lot through 
 out the rest of their lives. 
 
 Between Clay and the children the early 
 bond had strengthened with daily comrade 
 ship. He had been uniformly genial and 
 kindly, even patient manv times under pres 
 sure, and his adaptable nature had lent it 
 self to their innocent amusements with a 
 playful ardor somewhat rare in adults of 
 normal mind, even in the tender condescen 
 sion of bona-flde parentage. 
 
196 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 Indeed, between him and Jane s youngest a 
 particularly affectionate relationship sprang 
 up in the long hours of the sultry afternoons 
 while they slept side by side on the grassy 
 bank of the bayou under the trees, and many 
 a time, seeing the two restless from the an 
 noyance of gnats or mosquitos, Jane had 
 left her tubs to fetch a bit of mosquito-net 
 ting which she spread over their faces. 
 Sometimes it was necessary to bring the two 
 closer together within the compass of the 
 net, and in this case she would roll Henry 
 over bodily with her foot. The baby was 
 apt to waken and fret if he were disturbed, 
 but Henry s snoring would be interrupted 
 for a moment only, even when she was 
 obliged to waken him. 
 
 Even before the tragedy which jolted her 
 somewhat roughly into a realization of her 
 depleted strength, Jane had been many days 
 far from strong. Sometimes she had even 
 been obliged to leave undone part of tin 
 
Thanksgiving on Craw fish Bayou 197 
 
 allotted task, and now she soon came to 
 realize that she was never quite well. So, 
 with scarce the tempering weight of mid- 
 life upon her, there came a sudden sinking 
 to the lower condition of those who do not 
 rally and must needs accept the adverse will 
 of fate. 
 
 Even before the water of the bayou was 
 finally condemned as unfit for laundry pur 
 poses and that which she caught in a cask 
 from the roof had proven even worse in 
 color, Jane had known that she must soon 
 forsake her tubs and depend for each day s 
 provision upon chance or the offerings of 
 the season. 
 
 There were some very important things 
 which were to be had free for the gathering. 
 There was firewood, for instance, which even 
 the children could bring in, even though they 
 were obliged to fetch it from lengthening 
 distances. Then there were the various vol 
 unteer growths known as "greens," such as 
 
198 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 "lamb s quarter," and "pusley," and even 
 thistle stalks a good dish any one of these 
 or all combined, boiled with a sliver of ba 
 con for seasoning. And there were other 
 volunteer crops which would always com 
 mand a market. The blackberry season was 
 not long, but it was profitable while it lasted, 
 and even more so was the mushroom crop 
 which one of the children discovered in an 
 old pasture beyond the berry-patches. 
 
 Peddling was not quite so easy as it 
 seemed at first, and even while she rejoiced 
 in its cash returns Jane found herself weary 
 and short of breath many days before her 
 basket was empty, and there soon arrived a 
 morning when, even after she was entirely 
 ready to start, she suddenly knew that she 
 would not be able to walk the distance from 
 bayou to town in the mud, and she stood 
 quite still for some moments, looking absently 
 into space. 
 
 Then she slowly lowered her basket, took 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 199 
 
 from her head the roll with which she had 
 held it in place, and sat down in her door. 
 And presently she called her children and 
 bade them stand in line before her. 
 
 It was hard for her to decide which one of 
 the six she might best trust to find his way 
 and to peddle the berries. The children 
 saw that something unusual was on her 
 mind, and they rather expected from her 
 serious face that she was going to talk to 
 them about Henry, and death, and about 
 being good children, and so they stood off 
 from her in mystified silence. 
 
 She had been somewhat different to them 
 since Henry s death, sometimes talking in a 
 way that, while it brought them nearer in 
 affection, set them apart, wondering. 
 
 The question of which one to send was 
 quickly settled by the children themselves, 
 each of whom, excepting the youngest, in 
 sisting that he knew better than all the 
 
 others how to peddle berries. 
 12 
 
200 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 She had not thought of sending them all, 
 but it was a comfortable solution of the dif 
 ficulty. One knew the way, another could 
 count money.. The twins took care of 
 each other. Indeed, for that matter, each 
 one of the six could look after every other 
 one, and certainly the whole lot could not be 
 lost. She tried to avoid sending the young 
 est, but his three-year-old lungs and arms 
 were too much for her resisting power and 
 she was obliged to yield. 
 
 When all the brood had gone the first 
 time in many years that she was left abso 
 lutely alone she felt that the very darkest 
 hour of her life had arrived, but she was 
 very weary, and having no demands upon 
 her, she fell asleep. 
 
 She must have slept all day, for the sun 
 was low when she was roused by the chil 
 dren s voices, and she had no recollection of 
 anything since morning excepting a visit 
 from Henry, who had stood waving to her at 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 203 
 
 the bayou s turn just as he had done on the 
 memorable last day of his life, and seeing 
 that she had not come to answer his signal, 
 he had started back to say good-by over 
 again. 
 
 She was sure that the footsteps she 
 heard approaching were his until she dis 
 cerned the young voices, and in a minute she 
 was wide awake and the six were almost 
 pitching over each other to deliver into her 
 hands the small coins which they carried. 
 Each little brown fist had brought her one 
 or more, and all the six tongues were going 
 at once, recounting the day s adventure. 
 
 Jane never knew just how it happened, 
 but it always seemed afterward that the tide 
 of fortune had turned for her while she 
 slept in the doorway that autumn day. Not 
 that prosperity had floated in on high 
 waves, but while everything had gone out 
 before, from this time on there was an in 
 coming tide. 
 
204 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 This initial step in bread-winning was the 
 dawning of a new day for the children as 
 well as for poor Jane. They had soon re 
 covered from a native diffidence and easily 
 found their tongues in the presence of stran 
 gers. 
 
 Nor were they long in discovering that 
 a very small pickaninny can hold an aston 
 ishingly tall horse or cut a great pile of 
 grass from the sidewalk for a coin that, if 
 it matched in size the boy rather than the 
 task, was still well worth the earning. And 
 they had soon realized the much more im 
 portant abstract truth that they were them 
 selves objects of amiable regard in general, 
 and that there was room and to spare for 
 such as they in the great world where there 
 are always so many little things needing to 
 be done. 
 
 During the days when Jane sat alone in 
 her cabin there were not many of these 
 days, but there were a few while the chil- 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 205 
 
 dren went berrying or peddling without her, 
 she did her first abstract thinking the very 
 first thinking that had no conscious material 
 issue. It was from her doorway as she sat 
 alone that, for the first time in her life, she 
 realized the sky as sky and knew that it was 
 blue. 
 
 Many a time she had studied it before, 
 certainly, but always with a view to its 
 promise as affecting her work or her plea 
 sure. It had been either "clair" or "fixin 
 to rain" fit for drying or bleaching, plant 
 ing or fishing, or not fit. A changing "mack 
 erel sky" or "a rainy moon," explained why 
 her shoulder ached, or why her soap did not 
 "set." Thunder out of a clear sky would 
 make a setting of eggs go wrong and sour 
 the milk. 
 
 She had not much imagination even in 
 these days of physical depletion and spir 
 itual stirring, but she wondered vaguely over 
 the mysteries of life and death, and her 
 
206 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 thoughts, detached from earth, took ques 
 tioning shape on a background of cerulean 
 infinity. 
 
 When first her eyes found the sky that 
 is, when they realized the azure space she 
 saw upon it, whichever way her eyes might 
 turn, the misty outline of her lover her 
 lover who had figuratively been here yester 
 day and was there to-day. 
 
 But after a while this vision faded and she 
 saw only the blue again, and she realized 
 though of course she did not realize it in the 
 stately English of the Elizabethan period 
 that there were more things in heaven and 
 earth than she had hitherto dreamed of in 
 her philosophy. 
 
 She knew dimly, though she would have 
 denied it even to herself, that her weakness 
 was a vital break and that she would not be 
 strong again. She knew, when the "visiting 
 ladies" of one of the "white churches" came 
 to see her, bringing parcels of old clothing 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 207 
 
 and medicine and tracts which Jane told 
 them she could read although she did not 
 know her letters she knew they considered 
 her ill and not likely to get well, but even this 
 she rebelliously concealed from her stubborn 
 self. She appropriated the clothing they 
 brought, lit her pipe with the tracts, and 
 the medicine she generously administered 
 to any of the children who might be ailing, 
 with a fine disregard of its character or 
 the prescribed quantity. 
 
 She was feeling pretty blue on the evening 
 when the children brought in the news of 
 approaching Thanksgiving blue and re 
 bellious and when she heard the word she 
 began to repeat it aloud as if she were try 
 ing to place it. 
 
 "Thanksgivin ! You don say ! Thanks- 
 givin !" It was in the evening after supper, 
 and she sat with them in the doorway. She 
 was rising to go to bed when the word fell 
 upon her ear, but she sat down again. The 
 
208 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 suggestion transported her at a bound into 
 the far past. 
 
 "Come set down in the door, chillen," she 
 said presently. "You say to-morrer s 
 Thanksgivin ! Come set down and lis n at 
 me while I tell yer about Thanksgivin in de 
 ole days in de ole slave days on the planta 
 tion when we- all had to git up an work ef 
 we was well an ef we was sick we stayed in 
 bed when Thanksgivin dinner come to all 
 alike sick or well, workin or no workin ." 
 
 Her tone was bitter when she began, but 
 as she proceeded, describing the affluence 
 and bounty of the old days, she finally lost 
 the sense of contrast and warmed to her sub 
 ject until the story was like a tale from 
 fairy-land to the listening children. 
 
 It was an hour beyond the usual bedtime 
 when she finally brought the reminiscences 
 to an end, and the little cabin would have 
 been quite dark but for the full moon which 
 lit a path quite through it over the heads of 
 Jane and the children in the doorway. She 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 209 
 
 was about rising again when little Jane, 
 her second child, said, "An we-all ain t 
 never gwine have no Thanksgivin , is we, 
 mammy ?" 
 
 "No!" Jane fairly snapped. "Cert nly 
 not ; what we gwine have Thanksgivin fer ?" 
 
 "What did dey have it fer in de long-ago 
 time?" asked another. 
 
 "Dey had it jes to give thanks to Gord 
 A mighty. Dat what dey had it fer. Any 
 body dat s got a flounced frock to dance in, 
 an music to dance by, an somebody to 
 dance wid, an a good supper to eat 
 when they git th ough dancin , kin 
 keep Thanksgivin ! Dat s de onies way 
 we-all kep it. Ef yer wants to keep 
 Thanksgivin you got to have two things 
 someth n to be thankful fer an someth n 
 to be thankful wid. 9 
 
 "An we ain t got nair one, is we, 
 mammy ?" 
 
 "No !" 
 
 " T would n t do to keep Thanksgivin 
 
210 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 on account o dem ole frocks dat white 
 oman fetched sissy an me, would it, 
 mammy? Dey ain t no flounces to em nor 
 nothin ." 
 
 "Dey got a ribbon bow on de neck o 
 mine. I don see nothin agin dat fer 
 Thanksgivin ," said the youngest sister. 
 "An de lady, she say yer don haf to keep 
 Thanksgivin des on account o what yer 
 got, nohow. She says deys jes blessings to 
 be thankful fer blessin s like like " 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 "Like, well, you, mammy an like I 
 dunno what to say like a heap o things." 
 
 "I got a plenty to keep Thanksgivin fer 
 but I ain t got nothin to keep it wid" said 
 the oldest boy, a twelve-year-old chap. 
 
 "I been settin here studyin , an I done 
 studied out five blessin s we got. 
 
 "We got to search back ards to find bless 
 in s, sometimes, an I foun five. We ain t 
 none of us took de smallpox, an it s goin 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 211 
 
 de roun s dat s one blessin an six o 
 Muffly s chickens turned out to be pullets 
 an dey gwine lay eggs fer us dat s two 
 blessin s ef it ain t seven an an Buddy s 
 measles did n t turn out to be blind measles 
 dat s three blessin s. What is blind 
 measles, anyhow, mammy?" 
 
 "Blind measles? Dey jes measles wha 
 don come out, dat s all. Eve y little measle 
 is de same as a eye, an when dey don brek 
 out, dey calls em blind measles an blind 
 measles, dey li ble to kill yer." 
 
 "Dat what I say, so dat s three blessin s 
 an I don forgot what de y ether two 
 was. Oh, yas, I know; one was a beauti- 
 fullest blessin . It was, we found daddy 
 an had de fun al! Ain t dat a blessin ?" 
 
 Ah-h-h! Well, I should sesso!" ex 
 claimed the crowd. "We would n t a got 
 no ride nor had no music, nor nothin ." 
 
 "No an we would n t a had no clo es 
 by dis time, I don t reckon. Dem ladies 
 
212 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 foun we-all out by de fun al an brung us 
 all we got but dey s another blessin yit, 
 I was studyin over, but I clair forgits what 
 it is." 
 
 Jane had been growing restless for some 
 time, and she had risen to her feet and was 
 standing outside the door, the white moon 
 light full upon her. She had not answered 
 the children for some time, but it was not 
 from lack of interest. The truth was, she 
 was fairly stifled with emotion. She had 
 coughed almost constantly all day, and she 
 had not been strong enough to stand the 
 strain of the painful retrospect. All her 
 bitterness had suddenly come back to her, 
 and she saw the utter hopelessness of her 
 condition as she had not seen it before. She 
 knew, as she had not clearly known, that 
 her days were numbered, and her mental 
 agony was almost more than she could bear. 
 
 Seeing that none of the suggested bless 
 ings seemed to make any impression upon 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 213 
 
 her, one of the children finally said tenta 
 tively : 
 
 "An 5 mammy, we got freedom. Ain t dat 
 
 "Yaas, you got freedom," she re 
 peated mechanically. "You got freedom 
 sech as it is." 
 
 Then, suddenly firing, she raised arms 
 and face to heaven, and presently she ex 
 claimed : 
 
 "Yaas, chillen, dat s true. You got free 
 dom freedom FREEDOM! Bless Gord 
 fer freedom ANY HO W! " 
 
 Over and over she repeated the words, 
 striding with arms upraised, up and down 
 before the cabin door. Then presently she 
 stopped, and looking down upon the group, 
 and lowering her tone so that it awed them t 
 
 "Listen, chillen !" she cried, "yer mammy 
 got to talk to yer sometime an she mought 
 as well talk to yer to-night an she wants 
 jou to listen good an don t forgit. 
 
214 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 "You see dat white moon shinin in de firma- 
 mint? Dat s de light f om above, an it 
 comes straight f om heaven, an hit s de 
 same as de eye o Gord lookin down on we- 
 all to-night an ef we looks at it straight, 
 maybe Gord 11 show us how to read our title 
 clair" this was to herself rather than 
 to them. 
 
 "An wid it shinin all over us, I wants 
 to talk to yer. I wants to tell yer dat to- 
 morrer s Thanksgivin Day, an we gwine 
 keep de feast! We gwine keep Thanks 
 givin in de cabin ef we live, so when I m 
 gone, y -all kin recollec dat yo mammy 
 set de table to keep Thanksgivin for free 
 dom! Bless Gord to-night for my free 
 chillen! Bless Gord dat when dey go out 
 an earn a dime dey free to put it in dey 
 mammy s hand ! 
 
 "Bless Gord for all de ole half-wo e-out 
 frocks de s ciety ladies fetches in to he p 
 my free chillen teF dey git a start! Bless 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 217 
 
 Gord for de courage He gi e me to talk to 
 my little chillen in de white moonlight, to 
 night. Yaas, babies, we is got someth n to 
 keep Thanksgivin for 
 
 "But what is we got to keep it wid?" a 
 timid voice asked. 
 
 "We 11 keep it wid what dey is! Ef Gord 
 A mighty looks down on us He can t requi e 
 us to set de Thanksgivin table wid what we 
 ain t got. Y -all git up soon in de mornin 
 an ketch a-plenty o crawfish, an mammy 11 
 inek a pot o bisque for yer, an one o dem 
 pullets 11 go in de stewpan, layin or no 
 layin , an I 11 whup up some eggs an 
 molasses an sweet potaters into a puddin 
 an y -all kin fetch some o dem yaller 
 niggerheads an wild roses for de table an 
 we 11 shame de devil in crawfish cabin to- 
 morrer! Yaas, chillen, I say it ag in: 
 Bless Gord fer freedom ANYHOW! 9 " 
 
 She was by this very much exhausted, 
 so that she was obliged to stop and gain 
 
218 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 breath, for she had not finished. The chil 
 dren had been much impressed by her 
 dramatic manner, but as soon as she entered 
 into the detail of the proposed feast, they 
 had all begun talking at once, but she 
 silenced them with an imperative gesture. 
 
 "Sh ! Hush, chillen," she began, "hush, 
 an listen. I ain t done yit. To-morrer is 
 gwine be a happy day an to-night must n t 
 spile to-morrer, but yo mammy s boun to 
 talk to yer. You see dis moonlight? Well, 
 some day maybe soon an maybe a long 
 time comin , but some day, shore mammy s 
 gwine up yander whar de moon an stars 
 is" 
 
 "An daddy ?" one of the little ones inter 
 rupted. She hesitated a moment. And 
 then she answered: 
 
 "An peace, chillen an rest an de 
 Father s face in de heavenly mansions. An 
 I pray Gord when I git dar to please, Sir, 
 lemme lay down on a sof mansion-bed an 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 219 
 
 sleep. Yo mammy s mighty tired, chillen. 
 An of co se, when I once-t goes, I can t 
 come back no mo , so I m a-talkin now, 
 babies. 
 
 "Dat ole white lady wha brung y -all 
 dem clo es, she s a good oman, an las time 
 I walked into town I called in an stopped 
 to talk wid er. She s a s ciety lady 
 workin on de Lord s side I done proved 
 her, an ef I was to pass up sudden " 
 
 At this the older children began to cry, 
 and seeing their tears, Jane laughed and 
 veered, declaring that she had been only 
 fooling, while she reverted again to the com 
 ing dinner. 
 
 JANE S Thanksgiving table was the first she 
 ever set in the bayou cabin. It had been 
 the family habit to eat almost anywhere, 
 the children generally taking their tin plates 
 in their laps or often even carrying them 
 out on the grass, when they used plates at 
 
 13 
 
220 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 all, and so the table with its center decora 
 tion of flowers instantly dignified the occa 
 sion as a festive event. 
 
 Jane had sent the older children into 
 town early in the day, recklessly giving 
 them several of the few dimes in her pocket 
 to spend for the "biggest watermelon they 
 could tote," and when she had cut it into 
 long slices and arranged them so that 
 emanating from the bouquet they should 
 form a star each of whose points almost 
 touched the plate for which it was intended, 
 the children s delight knew no bounds. They 
 could not sit in rags at such a table as this, 
 and so, after washing their feet in the bayou, 
 they arrayed themselves in all that there 
 was of finery in the cabin; some of it was 
 tolerably good finery, too, albeit it was 
 second-hand, and more or less eccentric as 
 to fit. 
 
 When the feast was ready and they all 
 stood around the table, some one proposed 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 221 
 
 a dance, and before Jane could voice her 
 protest that they could not dance without 
 music, the whole six had struck up a tune, 
 some pounding the table with forks imita 
 ting drums, and others simulating the wind 
 instruments of a brass-band, of which they 
 gave so inspiring an imitation that Jane, 
 fired with the spirit of fun, suddenly caught 
 up the edges of her skirts and began to 
 glide through the figures of an old planta 
 tion dance, turning with many a bow and 
 smirk from one to another, and presently 
 calling one out and another to dance with 
 her. 
 
 It was a great time, if it was brief, and 
 when Jane finally stopped she was so dizzy 
 that she had to grasp the table for support, 
 and her lips were ashen, but her eyes shone 
 like stars. 
 
 When presently they were seated, Jane 
 took the spoon from the soup-bowl and, hesi 
 tating a minute, laid it down again. 
 
222 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 "In Thanksgivin dinners, chillen," she 
 said awkwardly, "somebody is bleeged to 
 give thanks. Yo mammy ain no hand to 
 pray, but Hoi up yo faces, chillen, 
 an shet yo eyes." 
 
 She raised her own face as she spoke, not 
 closing her eyes but looking with; them in 
 tently as if imploring divine aid, and then 
 she lifted her arms and in a low, half-fright 
 ened voice she almost whispered : 
 
 "Bless Gord fer freedom anyhow. 
 Amen" 
 
 The Thanksgiving dinner was by far the 
 greatest event of their lives to the children. 
 Indeed, even the funeral sank into insignifi 
 cance beside it. It was so unlike anything 
 in their previous experience that it seemed 
 almost unreal, as if it might be a dream 
 from which they would suddenly waken. 
 Even their mother was not at all like her 
 self, and more than once the older ones, 
 catching one another looking at her, had 
 exchanged glances. 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 223 
 
 She ate little, barely tasting the food as 
 if for form s sake, and when she saw that 
 the children were nearly done, she slipped 
 away, throwing herself down upon her bed 
 in the other room. It had been her habit 
 of late to take naps during the afternoons 
 and so nothing was thought of this ; and in 
 deed, when, before they had risen, several 
 ladies came in laden with parcels, and they 
 recognized among them their friend of the 
 "Helpers" society, they would have called 
 their mother to see them but that she ob 
 jected. 
 
 They knew better than the children that 
 their mother was ill and needed any rest she 
 sought. 
 
 The table had still the festive air of a 
 feast, but there was something almost 
 pathetic in the absence of anything like 
 fragments. Indeed, but for the melon-rind, 
 a few chicken bones and crawfish heads, it 
 would have held no hint of the nature of the 
 meal. 
 
224 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 The children had not been consciously 
 unsatisfied, not having the habit of eating 
 to fullness, and being somewhat deceived by 
 the ocular proof that they had devoured 
 everything in sight, but the avidity with 
 which they made way with the slices of pie 
 and the oranges and bananas that found 
 their way from the visitors baskets to their 
 plates told rather a pitiful story. There 
 were other things in the baskets besides food, 
 a few articles of dress finding new owners 
 around the table, and others being laid aside 
 for the sick woman. 
 
 The visitors were evidently surprised to 
 find any celebration of the day in the cabin, 
 and, indeed, they had feared that Jane 
 might be in bed, and had brought some wine 
 for her. For a time they were quite mysti 
 fied by the whole affair, which was alto 
 gether out of keeping with the woman as they 
 knew her, but when the whole story finally 
 came out, told by the lot, one supplement- 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 225 
 
 ing another and adding corrections here 
 and there until nothing was forgotten from 
 the talk in the moonlight the night before 
 to the grace at table, they understood ; and 
 after they had talked until it was growing 
 late, during which Jane had continued to 
 sleep, one of the ladies, thinking to revive 
 her, proposed taking her a glass of wine. 
 
 She remained some minutes in the room 
 before she called one of her companions, 
 and in a little while the two summoned a third 
 to join them, and when the children would 
 have followed, one of the ladies turned back 
 and led them out into the open before the 
 hut. 
 
 The days are short in November, and at 
 five o clock the stars were out faint but 
 thick as diamond dust in the blue above 
 crawfish cabin. 
 
 In a little while the visiting ladies 
 joined the group of children and they sat 
 together, the children fetching chairs from 
 
226 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 the table, while some preferred to sit upon 
 the grass. 
 
 Invited to repeat the Thanksgiving story, 
 they went over it all again from the begin 
 ning, even to the way their mammy had 
 looked and behaved when she spoke of going 
 up to where the stars were. 
 
 So their friends led them on, over and 
 over the ground, hoping to find a way to 
 tell them how things were. Looking into the 
 very sky whose peaceful, star-lit face had 
 invited her tired spirit, it would seem as 
 if it might have been easy to tell them that 
 even then perhaps their mother was looking 
 down upon them, happy and at rest. But 
 these things are never easy. 
 
 It was late, and the bayou road was grow 
 ing dark when finally the black-gowned lady 
 had courage to say that she wanted the 
 children to go home with her for the night, 
 but when the words were once spoken the 
 rest was simple enough. Jane had not had 
 
Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 227 
 
 a drop of stupid blood in her body, nor was 
 a child of hers slow of comprehension. 
 
 Tears and wails are Nature s best vent 
 for the sorrows of childhood, and when 
 Jane s orphaned brood had wept their eyes 
 dry they were able, even on this first night, 
 while they walked beside their new friends 
 and nervously clutched their hands, to look 
 with them into the star-country and to won 
 der what it might mean to the guest who 
 had just come in. 
 
 "Peace rest freedom" all these she 
 had mentioned "and the face of the Father." 
 
 "But I spec dat right now she ain t 
 studyin bout nothin but rest," said little 
 Jane, the second daughter. "I reckon she 
 was mighty stonished when she wecked up 
 on dat heavenly mansion-bed, arter layin 
 down to rest erse f on dat old cabin cot." 
 
 "An when she gits rested good, what yer 
 reckon she 11 study bout fus ?" This was 
 little Jake s question. 
 
228 Thanksgiving on Crawfish Bayou 
 
 "I know what she 11 study about fus . I 
 don think nothin t all about it," said 
 Ca line, the oldest girl. "De fus thing she 11 
 do 11 be to look down to see how we-all git- 
 tin along, and ef we so fur down she can t 
 stinguish us I spec she 11 sen a angel to 
 fin out how we come on, an when he flies 
 back an tells her dat we s gwine home wid 
 de committee ladies she 11 say, Praise Gord, 
 dey s all right! An now, Lord, gimme 
 freedom! 9 Dat what she 11 say." 
 
TO BO *T 
 
 AY AND TO $1 00 ON TH E E F U TH 
 
 OVERDUE. N E SEVENTH DAY 
 
 1933 
 
 JAN 2 V 
 
 LD 2l-50m-l, 33 
 
Stuart, Mr 
 R.(HcE. 
 
 Aunt Am 
 
 wedding 
 1 1920 
 
 IUL 14 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 ty*s silver 
 
 UNI 
 
 955 
 
 S932 .EY LIBRARIE 
 
 a 
 
 raft B =120112 
 
 JRARY