Page:Autobiography of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes.djvu/32

6 Brothers in Pine Street before going for a cruise. She first told me she had come to get another look at me. She had nothing to say but she had dreamed & thought of me & felt she must come & feast her eyes on me, and bright, glaring, wild like I saw them. It was impossible to meet her stare. She was a great talker, and chatted amusingly about incidents, and proper. Altho' some 20 years had passed since I was borne in her arms, I always felt a great fondness for her, indeed I might almost call it affection. I was greatly astonished when she told me she knew whom I was to marry. "Why, Mammy, I am too young to have thoughts of such a thing." "Yes, I know that, but I know who will be your future wife." I looked at her; was extremely astonished as my looks no doubt showed; and felt an indescribable feeling I yet entertain at the remembrance. She waited a few minutes and repeated again she knew it would come to pass in perhaps not many years. I recovered myself and jokingly laughed it was no doubt like her proficy of my becoming an Admiral when you held me in your arms, but altho' I was a sailor & in the Navy, there was little chance of my attaining that rank for it was not known in this country & probably never would be. She persisted in it, that it would be. She would tell me then the name of her to whom I was to be married and it was Jane Renwick, who some ten years afterwards became my wife. She was very persistent in this & I had only to laugh and tell her if she told me so many things to happen in future I should come to the belief that Mrs. White was a witch. She said something which I understood so far as I was concerned she was awake to my welfare & happiness. By way of amusement I had often the opportunity of a talk with her and what my horoscope in her view forbode, but she declined to tell me her reasons for such. They no doubt were after my jesting which, however, she took in every good faith.

A more sincere and faithful creature and one more attached to a foster child I do not believe has existed. She has offered me time & again her favors and begged if there was any thing she could do for me, it would gladden her heart. All her children were as nothing to this love she gave me and as far as she was able I should want for nothing. I have always had a warm bias in her altho' I cannot [refute] that she had the looks and impressed [many] with idea of a witch &, whether just or not, she would have been in Conn., not a century ago, committed to the flames. I was however fully [aware] that Mammy White had a true sense of religion, though not of any decided faith. She had charity, love for all men, and a deep sense of honesty and her duty toward her maker. So far as I know, every duty was truly & faithfully performed and her conduct unimpeachable in anyway.

I have said she knew of the sobriquet she went by and did not take any trouble about it. She was left unmolested and was free from intrusion. During the War of 1812 my brother commanded a company in a New York Regt which was encamped not far distant on the Common and he ascertained that the prevailing opinion was as reported, but they left her unharmed & she remained kindly treated although [others] were pilfered of almost everything in [the] way of Poultry, Pig[s],