He had. It appeared that when the small roast pig, the _pièce de résistance_ of the feast, was laid out prettily upon its platter, fore feet folded on its breast and parsley arranged all round, it so suggested to Sam’l’s vivid imagination a baby laid out for burial that he could not make up his mind to bring it in to be carved. The shoat had to be rescued, reinstated upon an unbroken platter, and brought to table by Aunt Lady herself, the rest of the domestic force being entirely demoralized. Only Sam’l remained serious, painfully, shudderingly serious. “He’s very fond of children,” observed our host, “and does not come of a cannibal tribe, probably. Besides, he seems to have inherited his mother’s nervous temperament. You remember Mahaly, I dare say?” Certainly I did. She was one of the happiest memories of my childhood, though overlaid, as such memories often are, with events more immediate. I would no more have missed the weekly visit of Mahaly to our wash house than I would have missed the circus, and for much the same reason. She stimulated the imagination; she brought far things near; in her companionship nothing seemed impossible, neither hippopotami, nor miracles, nor “ha’nts.” She moved in a world of her own, amid events invisible. One frequently heard her conversing, giggling, coquetting with persons who were not there, which might have been disconcerting to older and more rigid minds. But we loved to hear her tell about them, these invisibles: the King of Yearth, for instance, one of her suitors, who came to court her in the guise of a simple mole, although he lived in underground palaces as gorgeous as Aladdin’s cave. (From which of the classic fables could this have derived, and how?) And there was the Queen of Sheba, African, like herself, but of a “brighter” shade, who was not really dead, but sometimes chose to manifest in the body of some descendant--“ef she kep’ herse’f _to_ herse’f,” added Mahaly significantly. That was the reason she lived quite alone in a ramshackle cabin on the far side of the graveyard, where “nigger folks wouldn’t come pesterin’.” The Negroes were only too content to leave her alone, less out of fear, apparently, than out of scorn. They regarded her as “foolish in the head.” They jeered and laughed at her whenever she appeared, to poor Mahaly’s wincing surprise; the penalty an artist pays for living in a conservative community. For Mahaly was unmistakably an artist in the broader sense of the word. How the queer creature could sing! I am haunted yet by the dramatic pathos she used to put into her favourite washtub ditty: Hark, fum de tomb come do’fum soun’ (Jay-bird jump an’ jar de groun’). I once was los’ but now I’se foun’ (Wash dem dishes an’ set ’em erroun’).