American fiction -- Southern States; Short stories, American -- Southern States; Southern States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
We looked up Mammy in her comfortable quarters. She had been well provided
for. There was some little confusion in her mind at first as to who Elaine
was, but on being made to understand, called down fervent blessings upon
her head.
“Now the old lady kin go happy. I always said that I had nussed Mahs
William, an' of I jess could live long 'nuff to--”
Elaine cut in rather abruptly, I thought.
“Why, Mammy, what a beautiful vine you have on your stoop!”
“What's stoop, honey? Dat's a poach.”
Mammy lived some years longer, aging comfortably, and unvexed by any
question of fractions. She died a serene integer, with such comfortable
assurance of just valuation as is denied most of us, and contented that it
should be expressed in terms that were, to her, the only sure criterion
applicable to her race.
An Incident
BY SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT
It was an ordinary frame house standing on brick legs, and situated on a
barren knoll, which, because of the dead level of marsh and swamp and
deserted fields from which it rose, seemed to achieve the loneliness of a
real height. The south and west sides of the house looked out on marsh and
swamp; the north and east sides on a wide stretch of old fields grown up in
broom-grass. Beyond the marsh rolled a river, now quite beyond its banks
with a freshet; beyond the swamp, which was a cypress swamp, rose a railway
embankment leading to a bridge that crossed the river. On the other two
sides the old fields ended in a solid black wall of pine-barren. A roadway
led from the house through the broom-grass to the barren, and at the
beginning of this road stood an outhouse, also on brick legs, which, save
for a small stable, was the sole out-building. One end of this house was a
kitchen, the other was divided into two rooms for servants. There were some
shattered remnants of oak-trees out in the field, and some chimneys
overgrown with vines, showing where in happier times the real homestead had
stood.
It was toward the end of February; a clear afternoon drawing toward sunset;
and all the flat, sad country was covered with a drifting red glow that
turned the field of broom-grass into a sea of gold; that lighted up the
black wall of pine-barren, and shot, here and there, long shafts of light
into the sombre depths of the cypress swamp. There was no sign of life
about the dwelling-house, though the doors and windows stood open; but
every now and then a negro woman came out of the kitchen and looked about,
while within a dog whined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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