But certain Southerners, loving their old land and custom, have struggled to keep alive the rice-planting, to mend their roofs and doors, to guard the flame upon their old hearths, and to teach good conduct and Christian faith to the young negroes unshackled from slavery indeed, but flung into space without master, or law, or guide. Once engulfed by the towns, these hapless blacks become a prey to every primitive and every sophisticated vice. Struggle is too pale a word for the decades of efforts and obstacles that these courageous Southerners have known, particularly since rice has come to be grown so successfully elsewhere; and when the devoted planter happens to be a woman, the measure of daily indomitableness is full and runs over. Such a life of such a woman is described in these pages; with its humor and it poignancy mingling at every turn, with the performances of the negroes, the performances of the animals, and the ceaseless and miscellaneous distractions and dangers of the mistress, all told with perfect vividness and simplicity. As the narrative proceeds, the reader gradually perceives that he has met with a Southern picture unsurpassed, and that it makes a native document of permanent historic value. It should be the companion volume to that admirable account of Eliza Pinckney written by Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel; together, these two books record the South Carolina lady and her plantation, first in the days of her prosperity and then in the later days. Now and then one meets some one with a natural gift of style so complete that it flows from the pen as song from a wild bird; but most rare is it to find this gift and the experiences it portrays united in the same person. OWEN WISTER. ILLUSTRATIONS The sheaves are beaten with flails Frontispiece PAGE "Cherokee"—my father's place 4 Bonaparte 7 Each field has a small flood-gate, called a "trunk" 9 Marcus began work on the breaks 10 "The girls shuffled the rice about with their feet until it was clayed" 11 Near the bridge two negro women are fishing 14 A request from Wishy's mother, Annette, for something to stop bleeding 17 Green thought it was folly and fussiness 27 She picked her usual thirty-five pounds alone 31 To-day the hands are "toting" the rice into the flats 34