I had long ago discharged all of her claims for material and repairs, but I noticed a tendency on her part to prepare my mind for a regular subsidy. I ignored these hints because it was impossible for me to carry out Mammy's plan, and painful for me to say so. She approached the matter in a different way finally, and said, one day: “Mahs William, you been cayin' on yo' fif' for some time now. Doan you think it's time for some of the yothers to look after them?” I suggested that the whole family was about on a parity financially; that one brother was drifting in the trans-Mississippi, another living more precariously than I was. Suddenly a thought struck me, and I proposed that Mammy should apply to my married sister in the country, who could at least give her a home. Mammy was very nearly indignant in her rejection of the proposition. “Me live in de country! Why, Mahs William, I'm town-bred to de backbone. What I gwine do thar? Whar's anybody whar'll want my sponge-cake, jelly, and blue-monge, whar I can git ez much ez I wants to do in town? Who gwine want my clar-starchin' an' pickle-makin' an' ketchups? Dem tacky people doan want none of my makin's.” I ventured to remind Mammy that all dwellers in the country were not tackies. “I know dat, sah; but whole parcel of um is. Besides, heap uv de quality folks is poor an' in trouble sence the revackeration. I'd rather give up my other fif's fust.” Of course Mammy's propositions were contradictory, but I had long known that she was not gifted with a logical mind, so I made no attempt to convict her of inconsistency. From time to time I got small jobs of drawings for architects, as people had begun to bestir themselves and rebuild. I had been assured that I would find no prejudice against me in New York, but would stand on my own merits. I was not profoundly convinced that this was a safe risk for me to take. But living here was becoming impossible. Our own people were out of the question as purchasers of pictures. My still-lifes, from long exposure in the window of a friendly merchant in Broad Street, were becoming the camping-ground of the flies, and deteriorating rapidly. I was not strong in landscape, and the only subjects which suggested themselves were military, taken from my point of view politically, and not likely to be convertible into cash by persons of other convictions. I was leaning against my ceiling one gray afternoon--at least I suppose it should be called ceiling, for it ran from the highest part of the chamber on an angle to the floor, and was pierced by a dormer--and contemplating a bunch of withered flowers which I had studied almost into dissolution, when Mammy knocked.