United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I hea' he's goin' to put up a wind mill, back in an open place he's got, and use the powa for tu'nin', if he eva gits it up. But he don't seem to be in any great of a hurry, and they scrape along somehow. Wife takes in sewin' and the girl wo'ked at the Middlemount House last season. Whole fam'ly's got to tu'n in and help s'po't a man that can do everything."
"And w'en he had wo'ked fer you ten years, suh, you sot 'im free?" "Yes, Sandy, he had earned his freedom." "An' w'en de wah broke out, an' my folks wuz scattered, an' I didn' have nothin' ter do ner nowhar ter go, you kep' me on yo' place, and tuck me ter wait on you, suh, didn't you?"
"If it hadn't been for mother, I don't believe I could have eva finished this dress." She began to laugh at something passing in her mind, and Mrs. Atwell laughed too, in sympathy, though she did not know what at till Clementina said, "Why, Mrs. Atwell, nea'ly the whole family wo'ked on this dress.
Some of the other old Masters, who had lots of slaves on fa'ms close by, was so mean to the slaves they owned. They wo'ked the women and men both in the fields and the children too, and when the ole Master thought they was'n't do'n' 'nuf wo'k, he would take his men and strip off their shirts, and lash them with cow-hide whips until you could see the blood run down them poor niggers backs.
Mammy June shook her head somewhat sadly. "Dat boy always have to wo'k," she said. "When first he went away he sent me back money by mail. The man he wo'ked for sent it. Then Sneezer losed his job. But he never learnt to read hand-writin'. Much as he could do to spell out the big print on the front of the newspapers. That's surely so!"
"All right, Mistuh Tom, you shill have de money; but I wants ter tell you, suh, dat in all de yeahs I has wo'ked fer yo' gran'daddy, he has never called me a 'darky' ter my face, suh. Co'se I knows dere's w'ite folks an' black folks, but dere's manners, suh, dere's manners, an' gent'emen oughter be de ones ter use 'em, suh, ef dey ain't ter be fergot enti'ely!"
"Uh huh! well, now, where did you get this money?" "Why, I wo'ked fu' it, o' co'se, whaih you s'pose I got it? 'T ain't drappin' off trees, I reckon, not roun' dis pa't of de country." "You worked for it? You must have done a pretty big job to have got so much money all in a lump?" "But I did n't git it in a lump. Why, man, I 've been savin' dat money fu mo'n fo' yeahs." "More than four years?
The boy answered with the disgust a sister's company manners always rouse in a brother. "Motha wants you. Says she's wo'ked down, and she wants you to come and help." Then he went his way. Mrs. Atwell was used to having help snatched from her by their families at a moment's notice. "I presume you've got to go, Clem," she said.
One of the ole salves would come to our cabin with his fiddle and we'd dance. After I'se grow'd up, I'se wo'ked for Mrs. Susan Lovell, that was the ole masters married daughter. She lived down the road from his fa'm. She was good to me! You see I was named after Susan Lovell. It was while I was wo'kin' fo' her when the war ended. She told me I was free after the war was over.
I wo'ked fu' every cent of dat money, an' I saved it myself. Oh, I 'll nevah be able to git a job ag'in. Me in de lock-up me, aftah all dese yeahs!" Beyond this, apparently, his mind could not go. That his detention was anything more than temporary never seemed to enter his mind. That he would be convicted and sentenced was as far from possibility as the skies from the earth.
Word Of The Day