camaniere

Updated: May 18, 2025

Incidents long forgotten came back with singular vividness: he saw the Past as he had not seen it while it was the Present; remembrances of home, recollections of infancy, recurred to him with terrible intensity, the artless pleasures and the trifling griefs, the little hurts and the tender pettings, the hopes and the anxieties of those who loved him, the smiles and tears of slaves ... And his first Creole pony, a present from his father the day after he had proved himself able to recite his prayers correctly in French, without one mispronunciation without saying crasse for grace, and yellow Michel, who taught him to swim and to fish and to paddle a pirogue; and the bayou, with its wonder-world of turtles and birds and creeping things; and his German tutor, who could not pronounce the j; and the songs of the cane-fields, strangely pleasing, full of quaverings and long plaintive notes, like the call of the cranes ... Tou', tou' pays blanc! ... Afterward Camaniere had leased the place; everything must have been changed; even the songs could not be the same.

Lafcadio Hearn - Chita: a Memory of Last Island