Page:Chandler Harris--The chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann.djvu/20

 And so it happened that Aunt Minervy Ann, after freedom gave her the privilege of showing her extraordinary qualities of self-sacrifice, walked about in the midst of the suspicion and distrust of her own race, and was followed by the misapprehensions and misconceptions of many of the whites. She knew the situation and laughed at it, and if she wasn't proud of it her attitude belied her.

It was at the moment of transition from the old conditions to the new that I had known Aunt Minervy Ann and the persons in whom she was so profoundly interested, and she and they, as I have said, had a place apart in my memory and experience. I also remembered Hamp, Aunt Minervy Ann's husband, and the queer contrast between the two. It was mainly on account of Hamp, perhaps, that Aunt Minervy Ann was led to take such a friendly interest in the somewhat lonely youth who was editor, compositor, and pressman of Halcyondale's ambitious weekly newspaper in the days following the collapse of the confederacy. When a slave, Hamp had belonged to an estate which was in the hands of the Court of Ordinary (or, as it was then called, the Inferior Court), to be administered in the interest of minor heirs. This was not a fortunate thing for the negroes, of which